RSSI still don’t really understand the Khadr case
Oct 26
Maybe someone can help enlighten me?
So, he’s being sentenced today: Khadr threw grenade to kill ‘many Americans’. But I’ve never really understood the decisions for what to do with these prisoners.
Looking back for some context, there’s some info on Wikipedia about POWs after WW2. It looks like the allies kept the Germans imprisoned and used them as forced labour, but it doesn’t indicate what the final outcome was. Were they all eventually let back home?
It seems a bit odd to be prosecuting someone who is effectively an enemy soldier for fighting in combat. This idea obviously doesn’t scale to a large conflict, where there could be thousands of such prisoners. Maybe the difference is that after a traditional conflict it’s less threatening to eventually let the losing side go home, since there’s little incentive to continue fighting. In this case the fighters are less tied to a specific nation but more an ideology (supposedly, maybe they just want people to stop messing with them?)
It seems the historical precedent would be to just kill the POWs, so I guess this is an improvement at least.
Nov 01, 2010 @ 08:58:36
I thought the important thing about the Khadr case was that it was our first glimpse into the ugly reality of the war. Before there was Abu Ghraib, there was Omar Khadr. He was tortured, his medical needs ignored, even when they knew he was only 15. If you believe his story, of being swept up in the war of his father, he’s a very sympathetic and human face of the enemy.
A part of me is proud of Canada for standing up to US, for standing up for the little guy. It takes guts to stand up for someone Khadr. If he didn’t have Canadian citizenship, he would have disappeared into the shadows of extraordinary rendition long ago.
Nov 02, 2010 @ 19:28:11
He was born in Canada. At age 11 he was taken to Afghanistan by his father and for four years lived amongst the Taliban, fighting the invaders, ours & Us troops. At age 15 he was wounded in a battle with US troops. The sole survivor, under rubble, with two bullets in the back.
The US medics did attend his wounds even before the wounds of the marine who eventually died. It is questionable he threw the grenade etc. Etc.
But the point is he was a child soldier and as per the UN treaties that all Nato countries signed, you do not lock up, torture or try child soldiers.
The US has wanted Canada to Repatriate him for the last four years to avoid trying a child soldier and they have finally forced Harper to do so.
You might want to read some of the posts on Prog Blogs….