The Omar Khadr travesty

punditman says...As punditman noted here, this case is truly bizarre. Punditman continues to view this case as something right out off the scale in terms of propaganda and hypocrisy. Glenn Greenwald echoes the thoughts of punditman when he says: 

...how can it possibly be that the U.S. invades a foreign country, and then when people in that country -- such as Khadr -- fight back against the invading army, by attacking purely military targets via a purely military act (throwing a grenade at a solider, who was part of a unit ironically using an abandoned Soviet runway as its outpost), they become "war criminals," or even Terrorists, who must be shipped halfway around the world, systematically abused, repeatedly declared to be one of "the worst of the worst," and then held in a cage for almost a full decade (one third of his life and counting)?  It's hard to imagine anything which more compellingly underscores the completely elastic and manipulated "meaning" of "Terrorist" than this case:  in essence, the U.S. is free to do whatever it wants, and anyone who fights back, even against our invading armies and soldiers (rather than civilians), is a war criminal and a Terrorist.

By Glenn Greenwald

The only real reason I thought Robert Gibbs' comments yesterday merited a response is not because of the ephemeral melodrama it created -- the White House said Fox-copying, mean things about the Left -- but because of the "substantive" claim he made that comparisons of Bush and Obama were so blatantly insane that they merited "drug testing."  That Obama has vigorously embraced and at times even exceeded some of Bush's most controversial and radical policies is simply indisputable.  I'd request that anyone doubting that just review the very partial list I compiled in Update II yesterday.  In that list, I neglected to mention numerous other compelling examples (recall Tim Dickinson's recent revelation that Interior employees call their Department under Ken Salazar's corporate-serving rule "the third Bush term").  Among my most prominent omissions was the Obama administration's Bush-copying use of military commissions rather than real courts to try "War on Terror" detainees. 

Military commissions were one of those Bush/Cheney policies which provoked virtually universal outrage among progressives and Democrats back in the day when executive power abuses and rule of law transgressions were a concern.  The Obama administration's claim that the commissions are now improved to the point that they provide a forum of real justice is being put to the test -- and blatantly failing -- with the first such commission to be held under Obama:  that of Omar Khadr, accused of throwing a grenade in 2002 which killed an American solider in Afghanistan, when Khadr was 15 years old.  This is the first trial of a child soldier held since World War II, explained a U.N. official who condemned these proceedings.   The commission has already ruled that confessions made by Khadr which were clearly obtained through coercion, abuse and torture will be admitted as evidence against him.  Prior to the commencement of Khadr's "trial," the commission ruled in another case that the sentence imposed on a Sudanese detainee Ibrahim al-Qosi -- convicted as part of a plea bargain of the dastardly crime of being Osama bin Laden's "cook" -- will be kept secret until he is released.  What kind of country has secret sentences?

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Omar Khadr: Justice Mangled is Justice Denied

punditman says...

The sheer bizarreness of the Omar Khadr case and the trial now unfolding has astounded punditman from the beginning. Punditman is not easily astounded nor is he readily shocked at the rampant criminality of the powerful. But this story, because it has always been so transparently unjust (and stupid), actually continues to amaze Punditman's sensibilities.

Setting aside the shameful and disgusting role of the Canadian government, the sickening opinions of some citizen-fascists (displayed by many a comment on the inter webs as well as recent polling results), punditman's opinion has always been rather simple minded regarding this farcical charade: here we have the world's superpower accusing a child of war crimes. This laughable fact alone has been enough to make punditman wish he lived on a planet where things made a lick of sense. Punditman always thought that the charge of war crimes was reserved for, well, grown ups who command armies and stuff like that. Not so on post-9-11 planet cockeyed.

For a little refresher on the case's real deal, here is the Globe and Mail's Lawrence Martin:

At issue is not whether Mr. Khadr is innocent or guilty of killing an American medic during a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. For argument’s sake, let’s say he’s guilty. Let’s say he knew what he was doing as a 15-year-old, that he had not been brainwashed since he was 8 by his al-Qaeda father. Let’s say that his action in the firefight was unprovoked, that prison-guard reports that he is well-behaved and salvageable are hogwash, and that he is basically rotten to the core. Even if this were all true, any self-respecting society that believes in the principles of fundamental justice would not respond to his case the way Canada has. Omar Khadr has been held eight years without trial.

So true. Moreover, is it just punditman or has any other half lucid observer of this case noticed its supreme hypocrisy? It's fine for the United States, (and allies), with "global reach" to invade countries under dubious or unlawful pretenses, to occupy, to kidnap, kill and torture at will, to bomb weddings via drone, form assassination squads, kill other people's kids, (I am just getting started!), all the while piling up terabytes of half truths, lies and propaganda—and with no punitive legal repercussions. Then to have the temerity to seriously look the world in the face and apply a different set of rules for those they deem enemy combatants? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Is it a fool's errand for Punditman to search for some moral compass and sense of balance here in cockeyed world?

Yes, terrorism exists. It is a crime. Individuals and groups engage in it.  There are things that can be done to mitigate against it and sometimes there is nothing that can be done to stop specific acts. But there are ways to not make it worse. And as the exhausting list of suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan makes clear, war is not one of them. So nation states and armies also engage in terror. Surely by now, this endless War on Terror Everyone's Freedom has made a mockery of the very freedom our armies are supposedly sent thousands of miles offshore to defend and impart. What dweebs we are for allowing this debacle to continue unaddressed.

For more on the mangling of "justice" at Guantanamo Bay and the Khadr case, Chase Mader has a very detailed and insightful piece here. 

 

Enough punditman gut reaction. Instead, punditman is compelled to get all legal and technical in order to discuss this topic in polite company. So here he goes: trying a detainee who was 15 at the time of his alleged crimes violates the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, a United Nations measure ratified by the United States in 2002. The idea is to safeguard from prosecution, those juveniles involved in armed conflict. You see the UN recognizes that kids are not born with grenades and rocket launchers for appendages and instead end up in war zones due to adult coercion or pressure. A simple enough concept for grown ups to endorse, but not apparently for the sleazy clowns we elect to run our governments, beholden as they are to the stylish military ethos and creeping fascism of our times.   

So, yes, Omar Khadr is now 23 years old and has been held for eight years without trial.  For what it's worth, this show trial is prohibited under international humanitarian law. Since World War Two's Nuremberg trails, no international criminal tribunal has ever prosecuted former child soldiers as war criminals. Nor should any military kangaroo court, which should not even exist. In a democracy, that is.