It surprises me little that it goes the way it goes. Harper and his
people came up out of a reactionary subpolitic with little but
resentment and outrage with regards to the courts. They perceive
the judiciary as one of their more fundamental opponents
in ‘fixing things’ appalled by years of low sentences and special
deals and frustrations and home sentences and rulings against men
in divorce and child ownership and the whole checks and balances
thing is just a missing page in their government diagram.
Marry that prevalent purview with the astonishment of a
Canadian citizen travelling overseas to fight in a war
on behalf of another country, against basically the Canadians
as much as the Americans, and well, blow them over with a feather
if they’re going to think they should be helping him. The footage
of Khadr planting roadside bombs, which apparently exists,
tends to discount all other niceties. Legally, he’s Canadian,
but in terms of worldly activity, he is apparently an Afghan
who has taken up fighting for Afghanistan against the
invading Western forces, making use of Canada as serves
rather indifferently.
But there is of course much more to it. As a youth of 15
responsibility for it all falls to the parent. The parent only
conveniently signed on for Canadian citizenship while
maintaining a view hostile to Canada and its alliles,
and put his son to the task, as another might have him
take out the garbage. “Papa’s making me skin the chickens
again tonight. I don’t even like chicken.” Furthermore,
from the sounds of it, he wasn’t the most enthusiastic
presence in that battle, where a grenade was thrown
by someone. The soldiers found him facing a wall praying
expecting to die in an overwelming onslaught one imagines.
The further spin from there is the validity of invading western
forces. Villagers on any other continent are certainly not
made privy to the thinking in tall buildings continents away
that prevalidates such invasion of their village. Windsor,
where I lived from age 9 on, would not be expected to welcome,
understand or tolerate any invasion by any force ever.
So say I, like young Khadr, were living in Toronto,
and heard armies had marched upon Windsor,
were bombing it from the sky. To suggest that it would be
‘illegal’ and an act of ‘murder’ to fight back, upon having rushed home,
really isn’t feasible. Stick with the Windsor argument:
whom could militarily invade Windsor, bombing it from the sky,
advancing on neighbourhoods with machine guns, and
declare it illegal to fight back, in short, it is insane.
Would an invasion ever occur where the bombing machine gunning
invaders would be universally welcomed? COME KILL US, YAY.
Can any of you think of an occasion where it would be
legal to invade Windsor? Where the annihilating invaders
would have any kind of moral authority to deem resistance illegal?
But then if he is fighting as an Afghan against Canada
he is an Afghan, and is still protected by child soldier legislation.
And anyway, he is actually a Canadian, of then different views.
It’s actually valid to say that the legal system doesn’t have the answers
to most of it, but the legislation around child soldiers is the whole case.
Canada plays it pretty soft for its citizens overseas in every instance
including just visitting America or Mexico. Our citizenships
are pretty flimsy outside the country.
Things I’m glad I don’t have, a passport, a drivers’ license, a credit card.
(And in pour the identity thieves to take advantage of this admission.
It might do me good to be in other countries, or further out on the ocean,
or seeing other ways of life in person, but there is media,
and Toronto is a multicultural richly varied populace.
And Canada is large and fascinating, very different different places.
Different establishments on a given street in Toronto.
Parts of Windsor I’ve never seen. Towns I’ve never
settled into for a few days. And all kinds of people.
Ha! So lucky! Identity thieves would likely face the
same stone cold unexplained rejection I do, credit card wise,
they pitch them to me year round, for decades, and reject me
if I apply. End of aside.)
So that is Khadr, practically American now after the years in guantanomo
i grew up in guatonomo, being tried by the same nation
whose soldiers were just going to gun him down as he prayed,
but were overrulled and ordered not to. Having not murdered him
in the process of invading the village he was living in
they charge him with murder. They could charge themselves with murder
since it was what they intended, as they charge people with terrorism
who didn’t commit an act of terrorism but intended to.
Khadr could testify against them and when he was done
he could just say, he wants to be an Afghan who hates the West,
and they could murder him and charge themselves again,
or he could say he was a Canadian and wanted to study sociology,
and they could wonder if he was lying. Child Services says
he should have been rehabilitated at the time and then
brought forth into a new life. The invading army
just barely didn’t shoot him in the back. And now they
face the real questions. What was the reasoning
of the officer that said not to murder him?
Oversion 
The what if it happened in Windsor idea works, but I wonder if it could be taken back a bit farther?
What if a group of people had arrived in Windsor from Houston back in, say 1950 and set up a little religious school funded with pots of oil money and stoked with fundamentalist enthusiasm. What if they produced all sorts of graduates who believed it was an excellent idea to stone people they caught committing the crime of adultery and were frustrated that it was illegal in Windsor to stone a person for the crime of adultery because Canadian law prohibits mob stonings under most circumstances.
What if these people spent a lot of time and oil money getting their act together, eventually getting a few of their graduates elected in a few wards….and that they used these wards as a base to promote other excellent ideas they brought with them from Houston….like that under no circumstances should a woman ever wear pearls or gold, hold a position of authority, teach or wear their hair in a braid. What if they started driving around in pick-up trucks flying the Confederate flag scaring women wearing their hair in neatly tied braids, beating some of them up, giving some of them bob cut trims.
What if they formed into a mob of outrage and marched on the Martin clan mansion and burned a gardener for the crime of working on the sabbath?
What if they basically took over all of Windsor and started rounding up all the people they suspected of homosexual leanings and that they established a cure or kill policy with these unfortunates.
What if they identified ever person who had ever been a public supporter of the Liberal Party or the NDP or the Conservatives as having shown homosexual leanings and killed them all.
What if they held onto their power in Windsor for about fifty years, burning cursed books and closing cursed schools and forcing dress codes more in harmony with their Houston aesthetics…and eventually everybody in Windsor stopped resisting the grey uniforms and the dietary restrictions and the haircuts and the circumcisions because they got tired of arguing with people who would cut the hands off or crucify anyone who disagreed with them, even on the vaguest theological issue.
what if they then started saying the women of Detroit should get bob cuts too and that they blew up a fire station in Detroit to support their position.
When the Americans attacked Windsor at this point and rounded up the fundamentalist army would you consider this an attack on the values of Windsor, an attack upon the identity of the municipality or would you reach back into history to a time before the arrival of the Deuteronomical laws.
Comment by C. Malcolm — January 31, 2010 @ 3:09 pm