Being Canadian

Posted by Ian

Apr 5

This entry is part 3 of 22 in the series democracy

I remember being in Hawaii when the news broke about the Canadian Embassy hiding several US citizens, and smuggling them out of Iran, during the Iran Hostage Crisis, in the 1970’s. You know, when Jimmy Carter was President, and had the ‘Rose Garden’ strategy? Yet, here was good old Canada, doing what it could, at peril to its own lives, to help save citizens of another country.

At that time, we also had supported the rights of US Citizens to flee the draft, and seek safe harbour in Canada, though today we routinely deport them back to the United States.

Back then, people showed their pleasure, or displeasure, by taking to the streets, and protesting what they perceived were errors in judgment by their elected officials. They held up placards, in front of the actual entrances to where the speakers were going in and out of. Today they are kept at a distance, out of the media spotlight, so as to avoid possible danger to the speakers, or so it is claimed.

When a ship refused to fly our flag, when in our territorial waters, our Government had the balls to say they would take a helicopter, and plant the flag on the stern of the ship, if need be. Today we promise a citizen, wrongly accused of terrorism, a passport then renege on it, because a foreign government has him on their no fly list.

A fifteen year old Canadian kid, is taken by his father, made into a soldier in a foreign land, though there is no proof of that, and we allow this Citizen to be held for years, in a secret prison, tortured, and denied proper legal council, all because a foreign government decreed him a murderer on the field of battle.

The argument that the Taliban don’t honor the Geneva Convention on the treatment of Combatants is true. They don’t, but then, neither did the Japanese during WWII. How many Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner on the field of battle, then charged with murder because they killed a soldier? Yet today, that is what we have done with not only foreign combatants, but with their children as well, as in the case of Omar Khadr.

None of us actually know exactly what happened there. That is why, as a democratic country, we rely on our judicial system. Yet that has been denied this Citizen of Canada, because we call him a terrorist, not a combatent. I don’t know, but the name game is wearing thin. It wasn’t the Taliban that attacked the Twin Towers in New York City. It was Osama ben Laden & his group who did, and yet it is the Taliban we are fighting.

Many of those who died attacking the towers, were Saudi National Citizens, but it is the Taliban who we blame, who we claim supported the actions, and who, as the ruling government, we attacked in response. WE INVADED AFGHANISTAN, AN ACT OF WAR UNDER SANCTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS.

I don’t know if Khadr threw the grenade or not, yet I do know that we are treating hm as a terrorist, though he was captured on the field of battle. I know that under our democratic principles, he should be charged, and tried, in a court that has jurisdiction over him. When did that become the United States?

Yes, we tried many Japanese Soldiers, and German Soldiers, for crimes they committed during WWII. However, that was an International Trial system, done in the open, by judges from the winning powers. The war was over, before we tried these people, not during the war.

Soldiers captured, either German, Italian, or Japanese, were held in prisoner camps, were allowed to be visited by the Red Cross & Swiss, and were not tortured. Not how it works today, is it?

I was proud to be a Canadian, back then, when it meant standing up for principles, when it meant being held accountable for our own words, deeds. When being a Canadian meant honoring the rule of law, the rights of human beings.

Gay Talk

Being Canadian