It's supposed to be Sept. 12 that's to say, the post-9/11 era. For over seven years the entire Western world was forced to live out a kind of geopolitical Groundhog Day in which Bush, Cheney, Rummy and the rest of the gang woke up each dawn to the same eternal Tuesday morning in September, the same long shadows of the Twin Towers, the same undying certainty of another six decades of hard, cold, martial winter. It wasn't only the ideologically opposed among the campus left and the Euro-elites: the vast mass of a once supportive citizenry got ground down, too, exhausted by the very lingo of the "war on terror" and anxious to inter it with the Bush presidency. That's why Barack Obama was cheered from Berkeley to Berlin. He offered liberation. To invert the old line, war may be interested in him, but he wasn't interested in war. And in those heady days of late 2008 that seemed almost plausible. Jaw-jaw is better than war-war, as Churchill said, although he might feel differently if he had to sit through an Obama state of the union. But what about law-law? In the United States, the United Kingdom and even Canada, it's not enough to move on to Sept. 12: the Bush era itself has to be put on trial. In London, something called "the Chilcot inquiry"� has been investigating the process by which the country signed on to the Iraq invasion. For weeks, the usual bunch of shifty grandees have killed any potential awkward line of inquiry with the all-purpose brush-off, "You'll have to ask Mr. Blair about that."� So finally they did, summoning the now reviled prime minister into the witness box to grill him on the "legality"� of the Iraq invasion. Outside, protesters denounced "Bliar,"� as his name is now universally spelled: "BLIAR LIED! THOUSANDS DIED!"� Like a pedophile serial killer, he was smuggled into the building before dawn, lest the mob turn on him: "The People vs. Ex-Generalissimo Bliar"�"”or, at any rate, as near as his former comrades on the left seem likely to get to hauling him up before a war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Come to think of it, one wouldn't entirely rule that out. George Monbiot, the Guardian columnist and "climate change"� warm-monger, is now overheating on the Bliar front and"”following an aborted attempt to perform a citizen's arrest on neo-con hard man John Bolton during his book tour"”has now started a website called arrestblair.org offering a bounty for any plucky Brit willing to do the right thing and deliver the war criminal into custody.
In Washington, despite ever whinier and self-pitying references to all the problems he's "inherited"� from the Bush junta, President Obama isn't yet ready to have his predecessor arrested. That's not to say his unlovely attorney general hasn't looked into it: Eric Holder's Justice Department was happy to waste much of the last year investigating Bush administration lawyers to see if their legal advice on interrogation methods was grounds for disbarment. Instead, however, they decided to demonstrate their postwar bona fides by taking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who planned 9/11, out of Guantánamo and giving him a criminal trial in New York City. In the Obama world view, KSM did not perpetrate an act of war but simply pulled off the equivalent of a liquor-store holdup with a somewhat higher body count: it's not a war, it's a law enforcement matter.
Meanwhile, in Ottawa, the Supreme Court of Canada has denounced the use of sleep deprivation techniques on KSM's fellow Gitmo poster boy, Omar Khadr. Their Lordships were gracious enough to acknowledge that the federal government exercises the royal prerogative in respect of external relations, but hinted strongly that they'd be mighty tempted to wade in if Mr. Harper's ministry doesn't jump to it and start pressuring Washington re: shipping home the Maple Kid. That's quite an accomplishment: an ugly little nickel 'n' dime jihadist is one court decision away from fundamentally reshaping the Dominion's entire conception of government.
In the fevers of Western civilization's death throes, few delusions are more potent than the notion that everything can be litigated"”everything, from insufficient government support for an enemy combatant, to the nation's casus belli, to the aggressor's act of war itself. Invariably, this descent into self-paralyzing legalisms is justified with the pious insistence that unless we wage this war in a manner consistent with "our values,"� then the terrorists will have won. As it happens, "our values,"� as variously demonstrated in London, Ottawa and Washington, are at odds with our entire history. But when an advanced society now goes to war it is obliged to demonstrate its even-handedness to ever more absurd degrees, to the point where we have no dog in our own fight.
What's striking is the passion attached to all three campaigns. There are many reasons why Canadians might be appalled by the Khadr family's story. They might be mad at Immigration Canada for letting 'em in and giving 'em citizenship in the first place. They might be furious at Jean Chrétien for personally intervening to get ol' Pop Khadr sprung from jail in Pakistan so he could resume his, ahem, "charity work."� Canadians might reasonably be steamed at this magazine for peddling the same old sob-sister hooey as the other media eunuchs in the politically correct harem: "Caught in a muddle: an arrested aid worker appeals for Chrétien's help"� (Maclean's, Jan. 9, 1996). They might be ever so slightly peeved at young Omar's brother, paralyzed in a firefight in Pakistan and not fancying a prison hospital in Peshawar, flying "home"� to Toronto to enjoy the benefits of Ontario health care.
They might raise an ever so slightly quizzical eyebrow at M. Chrétien for telling another of Omar's brothers, a mere weapons purchaser for al-Qaeda, that "once I was a son of a farmer, and I became prime minister. Maybe one day you will become one."� Indeed.
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PreviousCredibility is what's really melting
The great political force of our lifetimes is self-hatred. In the 20th century it was famines and gulags; in the 21st it's environmentalism and sharia. Either way, self-haters work HARD: I fear these self-destructive litigation tournaments will NEVER end. For comic relief, I suggest going to askimam.org and doing a search for "jinn." I guarantee hours of amusement. Then do "hair gel": that's a productive one too. For those of us who aren't afraid to recognize enemies, let us show them our hearty contempt by laughing at them.
Thanks again Mark. Truth is indeed beauty. So the inmates have taken over the asylum. Is there any hope? Truth, truth and more truth. Keep at it for the rest of us.
Mark Steyn turns from argument to fuming in this one. I tend to agree with his point, but there’s hardly an argument in these paragraphs, mostly harumphing and peevish sniping. Did Steyn for sure write this one? How much stimulant was he on, if he did?
I thought his tone was rather mellow on this one.
Peter, you've obviously never been to Iraq
Correct, but if you were to go, would you go now or 20 years ago? You could not pay me enough to go there now… Remember that Simpsons episode when Homer finds the old Times (I think) magazine with Saddam on the cover, saying "that was when we were friends with Saddam".
We were never "friends" with Saddam. Try to get at least the most basic facts correct. The Realpolitik policy was to play one odious regime, Iraq, against another, Iran. A common comment at the time about the vicious war between them was, "It's a pity they can't both lose". The Iraq/Iran war took place while memories of the hostage crisis in Iran were still very fresh, and NO one ever had any illusions that Saddam was anything more than a dubious proxy useful for irritating Iran.
I'm in complete agreement about the idiocy of the Left regarding the witch-hunt carried out against Bush administration lawyers and the current court proceedings involving Blair. These are manifestations of the Left's insatiable hatred for any happy warrior who outmaneuvers them, and their lust for revenge through public disgrace and humiliation of former political enemies.
But what does this have to do with Khadr? Yes, his family took advantage of our country. Yes, Chretien was a horse's ass with an ego the size of a modest Latin American country. But Khadr is being held prisoner when it is unclear whether he was even a combatant. You can't take everyone in a combat zone prisoner on the assumption that they're enemy combatants. There are conflicting allegations concerning whether he was even involved in the firefight during which he was captured – these need to be resolved.
Now, I'll readily admit that part of the problem is the Taliban's frequent tactic of disguising themselves as civilians. This inevitably leads to civilians being killed/captured as combatants. It's a violation of the laws of war and they should be executed if, after capture, they are tried by court martial and found guilty of such crimes. And yes, the Left bears responsibility for encouraging this problem as well.
But that's the Left. We don't take our standards of behaviour from them: if we do, they win. Rather we take our standards of behaviour from a fundamental belief that humans have inalienable rights. Therefore it is wrong to hold someone without trial (in this case court martial) and evidence who may in fact be a civilian.
Gaunilon – you should remember that your good Cdn. citizen, Khadr threw a hand grenade that killed an American soldier in that particular battle in Afghanistan, so I'd say he was involved in the "firefight" even though he may not have fired a gun? The U.S. arrested him for killing this soldier and for being part of the group of terrorists they were fighting that day, so the U.S. has the right to bring him to trial for killing the U.S. soldier. Up until Obomba took office, the Gitmo detainees were considered enemy combatants captured as part of the war against terrorism. Now with Holder they have conveniently become regular convicts to go to trial in U.S. criminal courts even though they are not citizens of the U.S.
You don't know that he killed anyone. Neither, apparently, do the soldiers who captured him. Their initial report, as I understand it, gave a different account of the firefight.
Anyway, the point is that he has a right to a determination as to whether he actually fought or not. If not, he's a civilian. If yes, he's a Taliban child soldier. You can't detain him on the assumption of the latter. Perhaps this has already been done – perhaps it's been established that he really was fighting. In that case the Canadian government should make that fact public so that a lot of us who otherwise support harsh measures against combatants don't continue under the delusion that he might be a civilian being held for lack of effort to establish his status.
You just had to know a fictional character would come into it when you hear the mantra of "The Left' puked out like it is a disease. You might try coming into this century. Or, come to think of it, stay in th eMiddle Ages with "the Creator"
Actually I was just quoting the US Declaration of Independence, that medievalist fictional rant from the religious wackos who started this thing called the United States of America. I understand said "USA", as they now call it, is waging some kind of war out in the Middle East. But you know how ignorant religious types like me are.
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