Why The "Fight Against ISIS" Is A Farce

Prime Minister Harper's current political "divert the public's attention" strategy is to beat on the war drums over ISIS.

Yes, ISIS is a brutal lot, and they are doing a lot of horrible things.  Should they be held accountable for their actions?  Absolutely.  Are the western powers the right people to "hold them accountable"?  No.  Not in the slightest.

Way back in 2002 (before I started this blog), Bush the Lesser decided to invade Iraq, turning one foolhardy war in Afghanistan into two wars.  Invading Afghanistan was foolish enough, invading Iraq was ludicrously stupid.  Both of these were essentially colonial wars of occupation.  Over a decade later, the invading forces pulled out after fighting bloody wars against insurgencies in both countries with dubious results.

Those of us old enough to remember the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, will remember the western powers pouring vast sums of money and munitions into the "Mujahideen" resistance, which ultimately gave rise to the Taliban.  Yes, the same Taliban which eventually took control of Afghanistan and gave support to the development of al Qaeda under Osama bin Laden.

Starting to see a pattern here?  Namely that factions and squabbling among quasi-militarized groups in the area are incessant, and more importantly that foreign interventions have this nasty tendency to end up creating the conditions for the next escalation.

So, returning to Bush the Lesser and Iraq, there's an important bit to consider.  Bush wandered into Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein, declaring "Mission Accomplished" a year later.  The fighting in Iraq would continue for a decade after that.  However, deposing Hussein and banning the Baath party was the beginning of the problem, not the end of a problem.  You see, the United States in its usual ham-fisted manner left some half-million Iraqis wandering around loose with no money and lots of weapons.

These people became the military leadership of what is now ISIS.  That's right.  You can pretty much blame the existence of ISIS on the ham-fisted approach taken in Iraq (and to some extent Afghanistan).

So, fast forward to today, and Canada's current government is in a mad rush to get into a shooting war against ISIS.  Quite frankly, this is a ridiculous thing to do.  Even if we (the western powers) were successful in dismantling ISIS, the odds are that whatever intervention we make will create the conditions for yet another violent, paramilitary organization to arise.

The simple reality is that wars of occupation are guaranteed not to succeed in today's world.  An aerial campaign against ISIS is unlikely to be effective in the long run.  It is not terribly difficult for an organization like ISIS to disperse in ways that make aerial attack ineffective, and even if a ground war were to be undertaken, it will create the same problems that we saw in Iraq.  WWII style heavy equipment warfare simply is the wrong solution here.  This is a war that needs to be fought behind the scenes.  Dismantling ISIS cannot be done using standard military approaches.  Attempts to do so will simply result in the rise of a new rival - likely originating by whomever becomes the  local "resistance" against ISIS.

There is a role for western powers in the region, but it is not the military role that Harper has been putting forward.  Ultimately, we have to take a "hands off" approach, and allow the region as a whole to settle its own squabbles.  The current borders are the consequence of a failed exercise in nation creation as the colonial powers pulled out of the Middle East in the early 20th century.  Those borders were created to satisfy the political and economic objectives of the colonial powers, not the peoples who live there.  While we can, to some degree, provide humanitarian intervention and relief, beyond that, it is not ours to prop up states which have only limited validity in the eyes and minds of the people who live there.

Harper wishes to style himself a "War PM" to deflect attention from Canada's growing economic woes (pay no attention to the 20,000+ jobs lost since November, 2014 in Alberta).  Make no mistake, by committing Canada to an expanded role against ISIS, Harper is hoping that Canadians will forget the mess that he has made in this country.  He is hoping that Canadians will be so scared by the horrific behaviour of ISIS that we will rally behind his brand out of fear.  

No. Just No.

As I had expected, the first steps in the Harper Government's overreaching reaction to this week's events in Ottawa are starting to surface.  

Introducing Harper's Thought Police:

Sources suggest the government is likely to bring in new hate speech legislation that would make it illegal to claim terrorist acts are justified online. 

The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on Thursday that Canada’s law and policing powers need to be strengthened in the areas of surveillance, detention and arrest. He said work is already under way to provide law enforcement agencies with “additional tools” and that work will now be expedited. 

The dilemma faced by law enforcement agencies was highlighted by the case this week of Martin Couture-Rouleau.

Wait a second here.  First of all, the notion of "terrorism" is remarkably vague.  As has been pointed out before, "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".

Just consider this for a moment.  A law like this is highly subjective in its enforcement.  Speak out against the actions of an oppressive government, and you could be "condoning terrorism", or if you speak on behalf of an oppressed people, suddenly that becomes a "crime" for which you can be arrested and detained.

I want to bring to your attention section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in this country:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.

So, think about this, the Harper Government wants to arbitrarily constrain this right to speak out on various topics.  The notion of what constitutes "terrorism" is subject to the momentary views of the government.  In this government's case, I imagine that speaking out on behalf of the Palestinian peoples would be considered "terrorism", as would criticizing the invasion of Iraq.

Unless these measure have incredibly precise definitions associated with them, it is not going to be much of a leap for these laws to make an entire class of political prisoners in this country - people who just happen to view things differently from the official views of our politicians.

Yes, I said that - political prisoners - for that is what this government is creating.  For those of us who remember the Cold War era, in Russia, such people were called "dissidents" and imprisoned; and China has quite a collection of "ideological prisoners" as well.  Such honourable company to be keeping as a nation.

Remember That Obscure Concept Of Due Process?

The Harperites are busy erasing it.

Remember Mr. Abdelrazik?:

Under a UN Security Council resolution, Ottawa has the power to punish anyone who provides Abdelrazik with material support.

Even if he got a paycheque, he couldn't withdraw funds from his bank account. After a court battle, he won an injunction that allowed him limited monthly withdrawals from his credit union account.

Both CSIS and the RCMP have acknowledged they have no evidence against Abdelrazik. He was exonerated of any ties to al-Qaida by the Sudanese Justice Department in 2005.

But efforts to have his name removed from the list have been unsuccessful. The federal government and other authorities have continued to apply the sanctions.

Does anybody else see something horribly wrong here? We have a man whose life is being constrained not because of a crime he committed, but because his name got on some arbitrary list somewhere and the agencies of government involved have refused to remove his name from it - in spite of having absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that got his name on the list in the first place!

Someone please explain to me how this is even remotely related to the concept of justice - much less the more ill-defined terms of "security" in the post-9/11 world, where our government seems to have decided that "security" means invading people's lives without cause and casting suspicion upon all in the name of extending the government's invasion into our lives.

North America is starting to sound a lot like the stories we used to hear coming out of the old Warsaw Pact countries.

Could They Be Any More Blatant?

This business about Terrorism arrests (cue doomsday music) reeks of politics.

In the last little while, we've had the HarperCon$ prattling on about the "Russian threat", now terrorism has reared its ugly head? Hmmm...smells rotten to me.

It starts to really stink when we get the oh-so-wise Vic Toews urging people to spy on their neighbors.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’s pitch Thursday comes shortly after Mounties charged three Canadian citizens of South Asian heritage in connection with an alleged domestic terror plot.

He urged “all freedom-loving Canadians” to “be vigilant” against terrorist threats.

But the minister later singled out assistance from ethnic communities as key.

Asked to define what he meant by vigilant, Mr. Toews cited the example of Canadian Somalis, disclosing that this community – which is overwhelmingly Muslim – had recently brought suspicions regarding extremists to authorities.

“I think it’s that kind of vigilance that is absolutely necessary in order to deal with these kinds of problems,” Mr. Toews said.

Uh huh. I don't know about you, but this smells to me. Not only is it designed to stir up fear among Canadians in general, it deliberately makes "Others" out of visible minorities. If this doesn't scare you, it should. The last time we saw government propaganda of this nature, it was in WW II era - and it was used to justify some amazingly horrific acts on the part of both citizens and governments in North America; and it's well documented just how the Nazis used that same technique.

The "Why We Shouldn't Leave Afghanistan" Propaganda

In the last few days, there has been an upswing in media reporting on the consequences of western powers leaving Afghanistan before the country is stable. Perhaps we should be appropriately skeptical and wonder aloud if "stable" is a code phrase for having a nominally friendly puppet government in control?

Up first is Time Magazine talking about the horrors of what the Taliban does to women ... it's not pretty by any means. Cutting someone's nose and ears off for leaving a bad marriage is certainly abusive in the extreme - and it is particularly shocking to someone with a westernized sensibility about the world.

Then, as if to reinforce the issue of female subjugation, we get a little article about a mosque in Iran offering "temporary marriages". In western cultures we called these brothels in the not so distant past.

I'm not going to spend a great deal of time indulging my sense of outrage over the mistreatment of women in Iran, or Afghanistan, come to that. I think that these countries are all a good couple of hundred years behind the times when it comes to how they treat half of their population.

The real question that is in my mind is whether the "West" has any moral or ethical justification for attempting to intervene in Afghanistan?

The current war of occupation in Afghanistan has its roots in America's reaction to the events of 9/11/01. Ostensibly, the purpose was to go after Osama bin Laden and his allies within the Taliban-led government. While the Taliban government was overthrown, there hasn't been a great deal of success with hunting down bin Laden. (Not that this comes as any great surprise)

At this point in time, what we have appears to be a barely functional government in Kabul whose influence doesn't extend beyond that city. The rest of the country is being overtaken - province by province it seems - by a growing Taliban insurgency that is becoming more emboldened as times goes by. (An insurgency that seems to be fuelled by resources and advice from a supposed ally in the "War on Terror", I might add...)

While there is certainly an emotional case to be made for continued presence in Afghanistan, is there a reasonable moral or ethical case to be made for continuing an occupation that started a decade ago?

Morally, there's a certain obligation to "put things back together" after the invasion which toppled the Taliban government. However, anyone who thinks that the current situation in Afghanistan is a "rebuilding" exercise is fooling themselves. At best, this is buying time for a shattered Afghanistan military to be rebuilt. Anything that is done while western troops continue to "enforce the peace" at gunpoint is going to be seen with suspicion by the Afghan people - and rightly so.

Ethically, I just can't justify long term military control being exercised over a foreign country. At best it comes out as a power grab; at worst it's an attempt to impose our values on people whose context and experience have led them to different places. It seems the height of hubris and arrogance to think that once NATO troops leave Afghanistan that the situation will be substantively different than happened after the Soviets left. (and, if one looks through history, military occupations of that region aren't exactly sources of long term change in the society)

It might sound harsh, but I think Afghanistan will have to sort itself out. I do not see any reason to believe that continued intervention there will have any positive effects ... at least not within the next two or three generations ... and I don't think we can afford to occupy that country for multiple generations.

We're Fighting For This?!?

Okay, here's one that should get religious right wing thoroughly up in arms over our involvement in Afghanistan. Child Prostitution. That's right, our Army is in Afghanistan fighting - and dying - so that the rich and powerful men can buy male child prostitutes.

... the horrific tradition called bacha bazi, which means “boy play.” Boys, some as young as 11, often orphans, are bought by former warlords and powerful businessmen, then trained to sing and dance for the entertainment of male audiences. They then become sex toys for anyone who can afford to pay their masters

How lovely. Essentially this is institutionalized pedophilia and child prostitution.

Would somebody care to explain to me just how we are 'making a difference' here? If there is one thing that this, along with the steady growth of the Taliban's influence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, demonstrates it is that foreign intervention in that region is like sticking your hand in a bucket of water - remove your hand from the bucket, and the water doesn't look any different. (BTW - has anybody else noticed that nobody's ever found Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, the man whose supposed presence there was the ostensible reason for invading in the first place?)

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to believe that there is either a moral or ethical imperative that justifies the war in Afghanistan, much less Canada's involvement in it.

There's A Difference ...

I'm sorry, but shoving a pie in someone's face is political protest, not terrorism.

I personally think that PETA is ridiculous, over the top, and annoying. But they do not constitute a terrorist organization in any meaningful sense of the world. Liberal MP Gerry Byrne needs to get his perspective back.

Our politicians have gotten far too thin-skinned of late. "Pieing" Premier Klein resulted in criminal charges a few years ago, and now we want to label a protest group "terrorist" for organizing a similar attack on a minister of the crown? Give me a break.

Let's quit taking ourselves so seriously, Mr. Byrne. We have enough problems with government politicians attempting to undermine our democracy and the valid political expression of the people - this is hardly the time for us to be getting all uppity about an over the top protest organization that is guilty of poor taste more than anything else.

Insecurity Response

In the wake of the Christmas Day attempt at man-bombing a plane, there has been a renewed level of agitation from the right-wingnuts for racial and religious profiling to be used for screening people at the airport.

The problems with this are myriad. How do you identify someone's religion? For that matter, how do you identify if someone is of a particular ancestry - especially in North America where there are a lot of people born and raised here who might appear to be of Arab ancestry? Or for that matter, just what makes someone "visible" as a member of a particular ethnic population?

The practical answer is that you can't - and it won't work - ever.

Such approaches to threat management are just as ineffective as the ridiculous restrictions that have been placed on people flying into the US in the last week.

They do, however, have some insidious side effects that we should be thinking about. Let us presume, for a moment, that there was such a profiling scheme implemented. In effect, what you have just created is two queues at the airport - one for whatever group(s) you designate as deserving additionally scrutiny, and one for the rest of the population.

How is this any different from the racial segregation policies that were a part of South Africa's Apartheid era?

They aren't. Period.

In fact, such policies plant the seeds for the same kind of insane limitations on freedoms and liberties that were in place for decades in South Africa. (Not to mention segregation era USA, come to that) What they do is confirm the assumed notion that so many people have that being different is somehow a threat. This is precisely the kind of policy that makes neo-Nazi and other racist organizations ecstatically happy - because it gives them the "moral authority" (in their view) to beat the tar out of whomever raises their ire.

In fact, what it lays down is the foundation for exactly the kind of racism and bigotry that our very laws have been designed to eradicate.

As an aside, just how do you "know" somebody's religion? You can ask them, but the determined will quite happily lie to you about it; and people change religious affiliation all the time. How many of us in this society are "lapsed Catholics", or perhaps are Catholics that switched to one of the Charismatic churches?

The real answer is to investigate and root out threats one at a time - as they turn up. Not with heavy military action, but with counter-intelligence and espionage. Focus on undermining the very organizations that facilitate these actions the same way they operate - in the shadows.

Saying It Doesn't Make It So...

Sure enough, one of the organizations that claims to be affiliated with al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the nutcase who tried to blow himself up on a plane.

Anyone familiar with terrorist organizations will recognize that the claim of responsibility often has little to do with actual involvement. This was a common tactic in Northern Ireland, and I have no doubt that the same thing is going on here. Unless they have video of this idiot "training" with them, or there is other evidence linking him to another organization, I am inclined to assume that the incompetent boob is another Richard Reid.

Overreacting

Okay, another incompetent moron decided to try blowing up an airplane. Somehow, I fail to see how this response by the US has any effect at all:

Frustrated passengers were searched not just at the usual security checkpoints, but also at the gates before boarding their flights.

Passengers said they were also barred from using any electronic devices and weren’t allowed to get out of their seat, even to go to the washroom, for the last hour of their flights.

Okay - more thorough searches I can understand. But restrictions on using electronics? Really? Just what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

Or, come to that, banning people from using the washroom during the last hour of flight. That isn't just ridiculous, it's unsanitary. This guarantees that accidents will happen, and they'll happen in the cabin. (young children in particular, but also adults who are prone to air sickness come to mind) I fail to see what restricting washroom access has to do with anything security related. The only thing it does is get passengers on edge, uncomfortable and cranky.

This kind of response is a fear reaction with roots in any reality that I can think of. It doesn't make anyone safer than they already are. It isn't about security.

Flanagan Sort of Gets It

I suspect that Beelzebub is shovelling a dollop of snow out of his demesne today, Tom Flanagan wrote something that I almost agree with in the Globe and Mail this morning.

The reasoning seemed persuasive, but it neglected the limitations of Western power that have manifested themselves so visibly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yes, Tom ... if the NeoCon warmongers had been paying attention in 2001, they could have saved taxpayers billions of dollars, and countless military families the pain of losing their loved ones or having them come back maimed for life - because it was obvious back then that all out military invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq was doomed to fail in the first place.

As far back as 2001/2002, I remember arguing that you don't fight shadows with heavy armor - you fight shadows with shadows. You fight shadows by removing the dark crevasses that they hide in by shedding light on them. All out conventional war creates more shadows, it does not eliminate them. It never has and never will.

What the NeoCons don't understand about foreign policy can be summed up in the Afghanistan and Iraq experiences - military force is the threat you use in today's world. The real work happens much more covertly. You don't defeat terrorists by blowing up the compound that one of their leaders lives in, you defeat them by undermining their activities and efforts.

The question we face now, is what to do with Afghanistan and Iraq. Long term military occupation is unlikely to feasible or politically palatable to taxpayers, and it is hard to imagine that we have any real allies in those countries right now.

Canada's Presence In Afghanistan

Eric Margolis nicely sums up the problems with military occupation in Afghanistan, and ends up recommending that it's time for Western powers to get out of that mess and let the people who actually live there take control over their own destiny.

We can't solve Afghanistan's social or political problems by waging a cruel and apparently endless war. A senior British general just warned his troops might have to stay for another 40 years. (He later retracted).

The western powers, Canada included, have added to the bloody mess in Afghanistan. Time to go home.

Canada's Conservative Government - Missing The Point

I don't think it's any secret that I'm no fan of the current conservative government in Canada. Their handling of several foreign affairs files makes my point for me - this is a government that has placed ideology and assumed guilt ahead of due process and law.

Whether we are talking about Mr. Abdelrazik, Mr. Celil or Omar Khadr, the Conservatives have failed to perform their duty to Canadians who are being detained abroad.

When they file papers like this in court, I think it tells you a great deal about this government's attitude to Canadians who dare travel outside our borders:

Canada's legal duty to protect its citizens, even children, ends at the border and there is nothing in domestic or international law that obliges the government to seek Omar Khadr's repatriation, say federal arguments filed in court.

We don't need to go into the game playing that Mr. Abdelrazik has been subjected to:

In a toughly worded 107-page ruling, Judge Zinn pilloried the government's claims of trying to help Mr. Abdelrazik, concluded that Canadian anti-terrorism agents were implicated in his imprisonment in Sudan, denouncedthe UN terrorist blacklist as an affront to justice and basic human rights and slammed Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon for high-handedly ignoring due process of law.

When comments like the following are made in Parliament, I think it tells us something about the toxicity of the current government:

Said Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, under fire in the House of Commons Thursday by NDP MP Libby Davies: “Inasmuch as I have never been a member of the NDP, we will actually read the decision before taking a decision on it.”

In short, Minister Nicholson is saying that the government is going to drag its heels on this, and find every way it can to subvert, dodge and avoid carrying out its duty to a Canadian citizen. I don't think I have ever experienced such a small-minded, mean-spirited government...except possibly the PC government in Alberta in recent months.

I have criticized many of their legal reforms as violating all sorts of key principles of justice, and their conduct towards Canadians held abroad is so appalling as to simply leave me wondering if they even understand what law and due process are actually intended to serve.

Priorities ... and Getting Them Wrong...

I see that Harper is getting ready to add another dust collector to Canada's legal libraries.

Speaking at a Canadian Jewish Congress 90th anniversary luncheon in Toronto, Mr. Harper said legislation will be introduced this week by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan "to enable victims of terrorism to seek justice" and compensation from individuals, organizations and foreign states that support terrorism.

Why yes, what a lovely sounding idea. Let's tie up Canada's courts with lawsuits against people and powers that aren't even residing in Canada. Brilliant! I'm sure that Canada's courts have lots of spare time to deal with these lawsuits - and that's assuming that the accused party can even be brought before the courts to face these charges.

This has nothing to do with any meaningful sense of justice or improving Canada's profile on the international law stage. This is all about Harper trying to shore up his crumbling electoral support. Like any conservative, he knows that ridiculous "get tough on crime" laws that are utterly unenforceable are an easy way to make political points. Real governance, on the other hand, seems to elude this particular Prime Minister - who is obviously more about showboating and slandering his opponents than he is about actually governing Canada effectively.

Winning Their Hearts and Minds

So, a questionable bit of field judgment and an unfortunate bullet trajectory killed a couple of Afghani children today.

This is NOT how you bring the people of an occupied land to your side. If anything, it drives them into the arms of the already present adversary:

Shopkeeper Din Mohammad said foreign soldiers had better stop accidentally killing civilians or they will suffer the same bitter fate as the defeated Soviets.

"They must stop this," said Mr. Mohammed, who was visiting his son at Mirwais hospital when he saw the children's lifeless bodies carried in.

"Otherwise the day will come when everybody will stand up against the foreigners in a holy war – a jihad."

"It's happened once before [with the Soviets]. If things continue like this, history will repeat itself."

Anybody with their head screwed on will have figured out that this was likely to be the reaction - the occupying forces cannot afford to make a single slip - one incident like this will be remembered by thousands for a long time - much longer than a few "rebuilding" exercises will be - especially if more of those projects turn out to be prisons.

It really doesn't matter what kind of idiotic sophistry Mr. Mackay wants to use to spin things here in Canada:

"Look, soldiers do everything they can to make proper judgment. They exercise professionalism, they follow rules of engagement, but they're human and they're living in a very tense environment with these suicide bombs that have occurred in the past," the Defence Minister said.

"With these approaches, soldiers have sometimes a split second to make a decision on protecting their fellow soldiers and protecting themselves, protecting fellow civilians that are in the area."

That is quite irrelevant to the impact of these events on the ground in Afghanistan. What has happened in this incident has handed the Taliban (and other groups) a propaganda tool - one that is incredibly easy to exploit.

No matter how well-meaning Canadians convince themselves that our presence in Afghanistan may be, we cannot forget that a society that does not want to be occupied will ultimately win out - and Afghanistan's history is that of a society unwilling to be occupied.

HarperCon$: Sticking To A Post

Apparently, Harper still thinks he's the leader of the opposition:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper remains unmoved and his spokesman, Kory Teneycke, has accused the Liberals of “revisionism and hypocrisy” for only now adopting the cause.

“This is the process the Liberals chose, and we're sticking with it,” Mr. Teneycke said in an interview Sunday.

In short, Harper is going to stick to his stance on Omar Khadr because he thinks he can pin it on the Liberals politically.

How mature of him. He's willing to throw a Canadian citizen away for points. I have news for you Mr. Harper, politics isn't a videogame. You don't come out on top for having a 'high score'...and I don't think you get any bonus points for being a cold-hearted, unfeeling clod either.

But his new spokesbot can't stop, and comes out in a full out lie:

"This information was in their hands when they made these decisions," he said.

... and then there's the other side of the story.

But today, Liberal Dan McTeague – a parliamentary secretary who had been given a special responsibility for Canadians detained abroad – says he regrets telling Canadians that Mr. Khadr was being treated humanely.

“I said it many times, ‘We've been given assurances by Americans.'… I said it in [media] scrum after [media] scrum, I had to take them at their word,” Mr. McTeague said in a recent interview with The Globe and Mail. But now he says he was not in the loop on a sleep-deprivation program, that, according to a newly released Canadian briefing note, U.S. military officials had used against Mr. Khadr in 2004.

“That information was not made available to me at the time,” Mr. McTeague said. “Obviously I wouldn't have made that statement had I known that.”

Off the top of my head, either Spokesbot Teneycke is utterly clueless about what happened, or he's busy trying to apply as much spin as he can get.

Let's be clear about something here - I wasn't exactly impressed with how the Liberal governments dealt with the Khadr file either. However, we get to work with the facts we have today, and we must assess today's government on the basis of what we know today about that file. Leaving Mr. Khadr to fend for himself in a pseudo-legal "trial" that may or may not be fair is becoming less and less tenable as each day goes by and each new revelation escapes from the guarded worlds of Guantanamo Bay and CSIS.

The Harper government stands on its own actions - or lack of them.

Harper: 'Compassionate Conservatism' At Work

Apparently, advocating for Canadian citizens held abroad in dubious circumstances is a matter of whether Dear Leader thinks that the person involved is guilty of something.

In the case of Omar Khadr, Harper clearly sees no problem with Guantanamo Bay, and the treatment of Omar Khadr.

Never mind claims of torture, or that under some international law conventions he would be a Child Soldier. (Even under the much older Geneva Conventions, he would be on the borderline). Of course, Harper won't pay any attention to the fact that the "judicial process" being created at Guantanamo Bay keeps getting declared illegal even when the Bushites have tried to create a legal fiction to separate Guano Bay from normal US law.

I don't necessarily like what the Khadr family has done in the past, but allowing a foreign government to detain, torture and "kangaroo court" a Canadian citizen is utterly dispicable. If, as is claimed, Khadr is accused of "serious crimes", then let him be tried in a criminal court of justice.

On Thursday, Mr. Harper said Mr. Khadr is accused of serious crimes, and there's no real alternative to the special military hearings he faces – and he has no intention of asking for him to be sent to Canada.

Since the Bushites have already shown their complete lack of of regard for due process, law or human rights, it is then incumbent upon Canada to act as an advocate for the well-being of her citizens. To blithely disregard someone who is being denied even the basic, and long standing right of Habeus Corpus is unconscionable.

They Don't Give Redress To Their Own Citizens

What makes the Europeans think that Washington is going to treat their data any differently?

The two sides are said to have reached agreement on about a dozen areas, but a big sticking point remains legal redress for Europeans who feel they are being victimised by US possession of information that may be incorrect or used incorrectly.

If I were living in the EU I'd be very upset with this whole charade:

A comprehensive transatlantic pact clearing the way for the unprecedented supply of private data on European citizens to the American authorities is to be promoted by France in support of the US-driven campaign to combat terrorism and transnational crime.

The French government is expected to use its six-month presidency of the EU, starting tomorrow, to build on 18 months of confidential negotiations between Washington and Brussels aimed at clearing the complex legal obstacles to the exchange of personal information with the Americans.

The controversial proposed pact, a "framework agreement" on common data protection principles, is likely to enable the Americans to access the credit card histories, banking details and travel habits of Europeans, although senior officials in Brussels deny US reports that the Americans will also be able to snoop on the internet browsing records of Europeans.

I think Sarkozy is just a little to cozy with BushCo for his own good. The EU should be insisting on several key actions as acts of "good faith" before they even consider enacting this agreement:

1. Fair trials for anyone charged and held at Guantanamo Bay, and those who are not charged, must be released.

2. Open and transparent recourse for anyone who finds themselves on any of numerous US lists such as the "no-fly" lists that result from the government's "information gathering" efforts.

3. An immediate and permanent end to "extraordinary rendition" and other forms of questionable detainment.

If the United States cannot, or will not, enact such changes at home, I don't think any foreign power would be well served by signing up to hand over data on its citizens.

Making Us More Secure...

In the wake of 9/11, governments in both Canada and the United States have gone to great lengths to make our respective countries "more secure". For the most part, these have been window dressing activities, intended to buffalo the public into believing that the politicians are doing something.

One of Canada's more amusing moves was to create a "border snitch line" where people could call in and identify possible threats.

As we might expect, most of what gets called into this line is vindictive or tin foil hat crazy. How surprising. After all, most people wouldn't recognize a terrorist threat if it bit them, and come to that, most terrorists are going to be pretty closed-mouthed about their intentions until it's too late. (Ya figure?)

Besides, isn't that what the police have telephone numbers for in the first place?

It Does Little To Change My Opinions

In spite of the efforts to sanitize Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners held there, it's clear enough to me that the entire model that BushCo cooked up when they decided to use Guantanamo Bay for holding their prisoners remains not only legally dubious, but morally and ethically vile as well.

The simple fact is that the American government has had neither the honesty to call these people what they are - Prisoners of War (POWs), or to charge them with actual crimes and bear the consequences of attempting to apply US criminal law to events that happened halfway around the world from the USA.

Besides the obvious jurisdictional problems that attempting to apply US legal codes in foreign lands presents, the harsh reality is that the American government likely could not assemble sufficient evidence to make their claims against the detainees stand up in a court of law.

If they were to be honest, and declare them to be POWs, the United States would have to admit that they were engaged in a war, but then the problem becomes just as sticky for the Americans because the first question would be "who is the enemy?" - something which BushCo knows it cannot answer in terms that would satisfy the Geneva conventions that the USA is signatory to. It would also recognize a fairly broad set of rights as being applicable to the Guantanamo detainees that are currently vigorously denied.

However, the US has created a "double damnation" problem for itself. Not only is it unlikely that any body will ever hold the Guantanamo Bay trials being planned to be valid expressions of any understandable legal construct, but the the vast majority of the detainees held there today are now in something of a legal limbo - their home countries do not acknowledge them as citizens, and the US and its allies refuse to consider these people as refugees or other forms of civilian war casualty.

Given the conditions that the Americans have kept these people under, I can appreciate that there would be some reluctance to simply turn them loose in American civil society - it's a little bit of a "Tiger By The Tail" moment, and that isn't something that any of use really want to experience. However, that problem is a direct result of American ham-handedness in the entire affair, and it is now up to the American government to negotiate with other countries to find a home for captives who are arguably victims of American foreign policy in the first place.

Any "criminal trial" held at Guantanamo Bay is unjustifiable. Not only is the Bush Administration concocting a "judicial system" here based not upon any sense of reasoned law, instead they are dependent upon political expediency that puts them in an ever precarious position - for not only are the charges themselves (those few that have been laid) questionable (How can someone who is a participant in a "non-war" be held accountable for "war crimes"? If these people are "war criminals", then by definition they are held as "prisoners of war" - oh wait - that means they might actually have rights that can and should be measured...

No matter what steps the US takes to convince us that they are "looking after" the detainees at Guantanamo Bay "well", they are still holding people in a legal no man's land that is unconscionable - no matter how "humane" the conditions are.