JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

A little kindness I would hope.

Having been a child-soldier is only a small part of what happened to this bright and brave young man.

He was shot in the back by American soldiers.

Then he was treated in prison for a long period with no appreciation for his horrible wounds, wounds that would take a long time to heal.

Indeed, his early American military interviewer deliberately used the pain and discomfort of his wounds as a form of torture, making him sit up for his sessions.

He was held in Guantanamo with no access to lawyers or family or the Red Cross, a place which in those days resembled outdoor zoo cages with men in orange suits chained on their knees.

And we know terrible things were done, a number of prisoners having died from their abuse.

Every day would be smirking American torturers who did everything they could to make their prisoners uncomfortable, including sleep-deprivation and ugly acts like the desecration of the Koran.

It would be hard to imagine the terror a 15- or 16-year old experienced under such circumstances.

And in all of this, the basic fact remains that Omar Khadr did not kill that American soldier for which he has been found guilty. We have independent testimony to that fact.

But Khadr was finally reduced to pleading guilty to the charge since it was clear it was his only hope for any kind of future.

However, even supposing he had killed the soldier, Americans just overlook the fact that they were themselves the invaders of the country, and invading soldiers get killed all the time.

Khadr and others in volunteering over there only did what tens of thousands have done in the past, including in emotional events like the Spanish Civil War which drew volunteers from many lands.

And Americans have a long history of being soldiers of fortune, going over to distant lands to kill just for adventure and pay.

There is no tradition of treating such volunteers the way Khadr was treated.

And there is an international convention on the treatment of child soldiers to which the United States is a signatory and which the United States deliberately ignored in all of its dealings with Khadr.

On top of everything else, this is a boy of superior intelligence who has been deprived of any kind of proper education.

In God’s name, one hopes that Harper does not display his worst instincts with this young man, playing to the ugly crowd of witch-burners and anti-humanitarians, but I am not hopeful and feel sure comments will be posted here by the hate-filled extremists to whom Harper regularly caters.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY DENIS SMITH IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

‘“Can I trust this guy?” And he hasn’t given us the answer.’

I disagree with that point in your otherwise excellent article, Denis Smith: he very much has given us the answer.

The truth is Ignatieff has always been a politician, and a rather shallow one. Anyone who listened to him carefully years ago knows that.

Most importantly, Ignatieff’s stuff on human rights has always seemed more of a cocktail-party view than a bred-in-the-bone characteristic: it is precisely the kind of stage persona shallow politicians assume.

He reminds me of a rich blue-haired Boston matron attending a dazzling gala to benefit some cause somewhere out there in the third world. She doesn’t much care in about the nitty-gritty of the cause, and perhaps even knows little about it, but she is concerned with her reputation among a certain social set.

Ignatieff has always given us words with little or no substance, and different words to different audiences, nicely calculated to appeal to each with half truths.

I believe there is no center, no “there,” to Michael Ignatieff, and that has always been the case. His writing and lectures betray that. They are characterized by mannered ambiguity and not particularly insightful or exhibiting the thirst for justice.

The Liberal Party has made a terrible choice in Ignatieff, and it was not even a democratic choice.

The fact that he accepted the leadership in this fashion speaks volumes.

God, we desperately need a genuine leader, a person of eloquence and driving concern for justice. It is regrettable to have to say that Gilles Duceppe displays these characteristics immensely more than Harper or Ignatieff.

That great thumping political cretin, Harper, is shaming our country in a dozen ways, from handing out orders in Foreign Affairs to have the term “child soldier” not used to condemning the UN for deaths of observers in Lebanon murdered while bravely doing their jobs.