I am tired of hearing about Omar Khadr as theb”victim”. He is in no way a victim of any sort. He fought in a war and killed a US serviceman. The true victims are the family and friends of the soldier that was killed. Khadr did his time at Gitmo and his alleged mistreatment is based on Khadr’s testimony. Should we believe that Khadr’s story is true? Should we believe that Khadr is a changed man? I think not. —Bluesnozer
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2015.
There will be many situations that will occur over your lifetime of which you will tire. Simply ignore them.
Well, he’s on the loose so we’d all better hope he’s telling the truth. I’d be happy to never hear his name again, but with the inevitable class action suits and demands for compensation this little “salon guerrilla” darling of the left will be in our faces for a long time to come. One thing though, if the Canadian Government gives him so much as a penny, I truly hope the Americans present us with a very detailed, itemized bill for his medical care, travel costs and room and board. They lost far more than we gained in this whole squalid affair.
Best wishes to Tabitha Speer and her kids, and Sgt. Layne Morris.
Canada seems to be a society of victims and users. By users; I mean those who adopt the guise of “victim” to garner sympathy for whatever reason. Khadr knows the system. I dislike the term “bleeding hearts”, but in fact that is what our Canadian society has become. Pay Khadr no mind. I have said all that I need to say on the subject. Ob
Khadr was fifteen years old at the time of the killing. His father was an off-the-wall jihadist and his mother wasn’t much better. The question is not so much whether he is guilty of murder but how his father managed to get a Canadian passport in the first place. I understand they’re still pretty weak on background checks for immigrants. No passport, no problem.
OK lets think about this for a second. Assume he threw that grenade. He killed a US soldier in battle. A soldier who had invaded a foreign country (Khadr’s parents country I guess?). He was led there to defend his (parents) country, and during a battle with these invaders he killed one. Now, these invaders (the US and coalition) have killed many people resisting them, and many civilians and innocent people a long the way. These invaders also torture people.
How is it that we have not seen any similar action taken against coalition forces? We have video evidence of people killing civilians and plenty of evidence about torture, yet nothing. How about the families of all those civilians, and the families of those that were tortured for information who will certainly suffer from PTSD? Where’s your bleeding heart for them?
It’s clear why we haven’t seen anyone charged from the coalition forces. We’ve been sold this us vs them, good vs evil, people from the middle east are terrorist propaganda. You’ve bought in OB, and you look like a fucking hypocrite.
And you ARE a bleeding heart. Point and set.
Us vs. them is not always a bad thing. Certainly not in the current war that islamofascism has declared upon the civilized world. And if Khadr was ,in fact, fighting for “his” country, then why the fuck wasn’t he sent back there. Can’t have it both ways. he’s either a Canadian, in which case he was fighting against our coalition allies and only an acident of geography or timing kept him from being in direct combat with Canadian troops. Or, his loyalty was to al-qaeda and the vision of a global caliphate in which case, he has set himself up against anything even remotely resembling those amorphous “Canadian Values” which his family so clearly depise. Except for those they can benefit directly from, of course. It’s not hypocrisy to dismiss this entire clan as the parasitic, liars , trespassers and thieves they so clearly are.
@Take a Step Back,
Finally, someone smart!
I’m not sure where you’re hearing so much about this person…
name doesn’t really ring a bell and I read several news sites daily.
Perhaps you need to switch your media browsing… ?
dunno.
I frankly cannot square this “victim” with the distasteful diatribe launched by his mother and sister in a CBC interview with one of the McKenna brothers a few years ago. You know…the one in which she/they espoused suicide bombing and martyrdom. To have gone so far as to state that she’d be perfectly OK with little Omar dying to defend their faith. That homosexuals and other undesirables should die violent deaths at the hands of radicalized Muslims. To all but say they were OK with acts of sedition/treason against the adoptive country that I’m quite sure they’d fully exploit to their own advantage. Some mother…heh?
I fully support pluralism and all freedoms granted by our Charter, including Kahdr’s right to fully challenge perceived injustice at the hands of any government. What I find infuriating is/are the “citizen(s) of Convenience” seeking to subvert or pervert a country to which they freely emigrated. If the cultural melieu isn’t to one’s liking then adapt or leave. If they stay…the price should be a lifetime of surveillance and intrusion. Tough s@#t…I’m sure the bleeding hearts will be all over this post. I can withstand the criticism, I figure that I speak for the majority.
T.A.S.B. isn’t that smart. She states that no coalition forces have been charged or tried. I just got this from Wikipedia, so imagine what a full scale search of the internet would reveal :
“On 21 June 2003, David Passaro, a CIA contractor and former United States Army Ranger, killed Abdul Wali, a prisoner at a U.S. base 16 km (10 mi) south of Asadabad, in Kunar Province. Passaro was found guilty of one count of felony assault with a dangerous weapon and three counts of misdemeanor assault. On 10 August 2009, he was sentenced to 8 years and 4 months in prison.[308][309]
In 2002, two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners were tortured and later killed by U.S. armed forces personnel at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility (also Bagram Collection Point or B.C.P.) in Bagram, Afghanistan.[310] The prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were chained to the ceiling and beaten, which caused their deaths.[311] Military coroners ruled that both the prisoners’ deaths were homicides.[312] Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners’ legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus. Fifteen soldiers were charged.
During the summer of 2010, ISAF charged five United States Army soldiers with the murder of three Afghan civilians in Kandahar province and collecting their body parts as trophies in what came to be known as the Maywand District murders. In addition, seven soldiers were charged with crimes such as hashish use, impeding an investigation and attacking the whistleblower, Specialist Justin Stoner.[313][314][315] Eleven of the twelve soldiers were convicted on various counts.[316]
A British Royal Marine Sergeant, identified as Sergeant Alexander Blackman from Taunton, Somerset,[317] was convicted at court martial in Wiltshire of having murdered an unarmed, reportedly wounded Afghan fighter in Helmand Province in September 2011.[318] In 2013, he received a life sentence from the court martial in Bulford, Wiltshire, and was dismissed with disgrace from the Royal Marines.[319][320]
On 11 March 2012, the Kandahar massacre occurred when sixteen civilians were killed and six wounded in the Panjwayi District of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.[321][322] Nine of the victims were children,[322] and eleven of the dead were from the same family.[323] United States Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales was taken into custody and charged with sixteen counts of premeditated murder. After pleading guilty to sixteen counts of premeditated murder, Bales was sentenced to life in prison without parole.[324]”
Also, A Canadian Captain, Robert Semrau, assigned to an Aghan National Army training team was court martialed and his career ended for delivering a mercy shot to a critically wounded Taliban whose fellow countrymen were only too happy to leave to the jackals and carrion birds.
We do try our miscreants. We don’t declare them heroes and martyrs.
Hey folks, ya gotta support the troops. C’mon now.
Ya don’t exactly “have” to support our troops; I am going to look askance at those who support theirs, though. lol
A new Caliphate is ISIS’s motivation is it not? I don’t think that was Alqueda’s goal, could be wrong about that. And he was 15, following his parents to this fight. We can’t be sure what his motivations were, but regardless of his citizenship, charging him with war crimes is still hypocrisy. You can say that regardless of how you feel about his motivation, the family of the dead soldiers or your views on these wars.
I disagree that us vs them is not a bad thing. Clearly our views on Islam and their conflict with the west differ. I’ll just say that their hate for us didn’t come from nothing. They don’t just hate our freedom and the fact that we’re not Muslim. A long history of American imperialism has a lot to do with it in my mind.
Are you calling me a bleeding heart op beeatch? Like a libertarian? You forgot Match
If you watch any of Bin-laden’s finger wagging screeds, the caliphate was always his endgame. Driving America from the Middle East, extermination of Israel, imposition of strict sharia in areas already under muslim control were short term goals. No matter.
Khadr was a civilian combatant, not a uniformed member of a legitimate military organization.He was a franc tireur or partisan. They typically do not come under the protection of whatever conventions (Geneva or The Hague, I’m not sure which) govern the laws of the battlefield, When Napoleon’s troops in Spain encountered guerillas their solution was to shoot them out of hand and burn the nearest villages to the ground. Pretty much unchanged since then in practice, if not legality. The fact that such irregular units rarely if ever feel themselves constrained by the Laws of War has much to do with that. And once upon a time, the killing of medics was considered to be a violation of existing Laws of War which is why most armies used to make their medics wear big targets, in the shape of red and white crosses. In fact, in most armies medics were unarmed. WWII and subsequent conflicts have changed that, again in practice if not in theory. In fact, Western nations could be forgiven for assuming that the nations which do obey the International Conventions are not ever going to be the ones we go to war against. The savages that we do go to war with, wouldn’t recognize such ingredients even as toilet paper.
And yes, our views on islam and the west absolutely differ. If people want to wallow in the mire of cultural marxist self-loathing and blame every problem in the world on imperialism, that’s their affair. But I’ll view it as what it is, a peculiar fetish, rather than a reflection of reality. Same with those who have a hijacked a silly superstition and turned it into a genocidal death cult. The West needs to evolve, to be sure. It has and it does. But we have nothing to learn from a bunch of medieval throwbacks. And I surely do hope that we never give up so much in the face of islamofascism that we discover, it really is our freedoms that they despise. Better to defeat the barbarians at their gates, not at ours.
Always like hearing other views. I can’t buy into “they hate our freedom” though. Yea our different life styles play a role, but it’s over simplifying reality.
Sure Marxism isn’t the answer, just like any singular world view or philosophy. Many people are just as devoted to Ayn Rand’s ramblings. None of these high level views reflect reality, but they can be useful to study and understand, as long as you don’t get tunnel vision and apply it to everything. But not considering Imperialism and colonialism at all is a mistake.
Since news crossed into infotainment (after the great O.J. Simpson White Bronco Chase) and regurgitated every news story 100 times a day, little wonder people are weary of coverage.
Step away from the screens and unplug your brain from this horseshit. Idle speculation wastes as much time as endless games of Candyland.
Ernest, the blue waffle is a nice touch. Let me know who your decorator is.
Someone get Jim Varney ala weekend at bernies style and make a
“Ernest, the Blue Waffle” immediately.
Well waffle, didn’t realize there were even that many incidents of people being charged. Although it is odd that of the 15 people charged for torturing and killing the two people at Bagram Theater Internment Facility, only 2 of them received jail time, amounting to less than 1 year combined. Most of them were simply demoted. A far cry from a stint at Gitmo.
Anyone calling Khadr a martyr or a hero is out to lunch. There are arguments for “victim” but you have to put that word in context.
I still feel that charging someone who is fighting on the opposite side of you for killing a soldier to be hypocritical. There’s a big difference between that and some of the examples you laid out above, but I’m willing to soften that view point. The whole medic thing I get, but if you throw a grenade at a group of soldiers and one is a medic, is that a war crime? I’m sure more war-experienced minds have thought of this stuff.
Once he gets his lawyers lined up to sue the Canadian government for violating his Charter rights – hey, come on, he carries a Canadian passport! – Omar is going to make bundle. Stay tuned.
WELCOME TO HOTEL CANADA!
Omar, I have just one thing to say to you: “WELCOME TO HOTEL CANADA!!!”
A pleasure as always,
Cheerio!
Aren’t we dropping bombs in Syria, an action not sanctioned by the UN? Doesn’t fighting an illegal war on foreign ground make you a terrorist organization? Oh, right, we’re fighting for “good”, not the “axis of evil”.
Who the fuck cares what he did as an impressionable 15 year old child, he served his time.
MORAL EQUIVALENCE IN ACTION
Was Syria’s Bashar Al Assad’s dropping barrel bombs on his own people sanctioned by the UN? Was ISIS’ beheadings, crucifixions and mass slaughter of innocents sanctioned by the UN? Was the displacement of millions of Syrians sanctioned by the UN? The UN had no role in Afghanistan, Omar’s turf, or the Middle East conflict. With Russia and China on the Security Council, it can “sanction” nothing. I guess we should just let the slaughter continue, right? I mean, come on, moral equivalence is always a safe stance.
Oh, and by the way, I wonder how Omar’s $20,000,000 lawsuit against the Canadian government for illegally conspiring with the US for abusing his Charter rights is going. Twenty million dollars for a room in Hotel Canada? I consider that a bargain. I’m sure you do too.
A pleasure as always,
Cheerio!
If the permission of the U.N. was actually required before going to war then that august organization might actually serve some useful purpose, other than sponsoring shopping junkets to 5th Ave, for the multiple wives of 3rd World kleptocrats.
Buying into the narrative of our enemies and casting ourselves in the role of “terrorists” might be an enjoyable sophomoric exercise but I highly doubt much good can come of it. After all, to the average citizen of Nazi Germany, the heroic lads of the Einzatsgruppen were defending the Reich by machinegunning naked Jews in Byelorussia and Ukraine and the men of Bomber Command were Luftgangsters and “terrorists” carrying out genocide against the herrenvolk.
Academics and intelligence officials who have studied the manifestos issued by bin laden and other jihadists noticed that , it’s only in the messages directed at the West, that grievance with our foreign policy and retribution for our so-called “crimes against Islam” are the main theme. In the rhetoric directed at muslims, the message is one of piety and duty. Jihad is an obligation, not a defensive measure. It’s not our policies that are to be deplored, but our existence and refusal to submit. That makes us a target, not oil, or support for Israel, or the poor palestinians, who, let’s be honest, nobody in the Arab World can stand. Most Arab leaders breathed a sigh of relief when King Hussein let lose his Bedouin Legions on the P.L.O in the so-called “Black September ” of 1970. They were fully prepared to use the palestinian refugees as pawns in their desire to wipe Israel from the face of the Earth, but not a lot of love was lost for the refugees on Egyptian , Lebanese, or Syrian soil.
There’s critical thinking, and then there’s being so gullible you’ll swap the family goat for a tub of magical hummus just because Professor Chomsky keeps telling you how much you suck.
I’m not disputing any of those facts, MM, and am not condoning anything that Assad has done, but I thought this “if he’s not with us, he must be a terrorist” mentality was reserved for rednecks and Conservatives. Guess I was wrong.
We, as a country, signed up to be part of the UN, did we not? So why is it ok, no matter what we believe, to shed that responsibility whenever we feel like it? It is hypocritical to impose clearly written rules on other countries while we pick and choose the rules we like for our own agenda. That was my only point, not that Assad is a hero among the world’s elite philanthropists. As a western nation, unfortunately, Canada seems to think we walk around with some moral authority which allows us to do whatever we want, unquestioned. We don’t. We can’t even follow the rules that we had a hand in writing. Shameful if you ask me.
We see this hypocrisy on our own soil, in our everyday lives. Police not following their code of conduct to catch criminals, politicians ignoring their ethical responsibility to uphold the public trust by chipping away our rights and freedoms, irreversibly changing our constitutional rights to serve their own agendas, both foreign and domestic. We have willingly allowed ourselves to become a nation of hypocrites on the world stage. My personal feelings on the UN don’t fall far from ESB’s, but that doesn’t change the hypocrisy of our actions.
As far as the 20,000,000 dollar lawsuit goes, maybe we should have afforded the protection we offer to ALL our citizens, whether they be criminals or not. I don’t believe our constitution says anything about picking and choosing who will receive our protection. Our constitutional rights have been watered down to some quasi-insurance policy, where we pay the premiums and they (the government) try to find loopholes so they don’t have to cover us. Apparently, being born to radicalized parents is some sort of “act of God”.
The ‘Harper Government’ wears this lawsuit, alone. they made this decision against pleas from all other parties in our government and, were warned about these very consequences. This lawsuit should be paid out of Conservative funds, as they let a 15 year old child soldier, heavily influenced by radical parents, be tortured by our allies. Bravo!!!!
Yes, you are right. You are wrong. To say that “if he’s not with me, he must be a terrorist” is just false, inflammatory and repugnant. There was no need to read further. I didn’t.
I’m gonna take you back, to the year 1939 when Charlie Chaplin and his Nazi regime enslaved Europe and tried to take over the world….
But then an even greater force emerged, the UN. [pronounced “un”] And the UN, Un-Nazied the world – forever!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lT1o0sDwI
Shouldn’t that be Ernst Stavro Blofeld?
I was kidding about supporting the troops. I don’t even go to Tim Hortons for a double double.
Ah yes CBC radio is blathering on about him right now….