It's easy to forget now that there was a time when most people agreed about the need to aggressively go after terrorists. We're 16 years removed from 9/11, and the culture's default presumption long ago became that we overreacted to the attacks, and that it's more important to appease Islamists and defend their civil liberties than it is to prevent them from doing what the most radical elements among them do.
But it wasn't always this way, and it certainly wasn't this way in 2002, when the Bush Administration was dogged in its aggressive pursuit of terrorists and our allies were right there with us. That certainly included Canada, which had a Conservative government at the time and didn't want radical Islamists coming on its shores either. When the Bush Administration developed the brilliant idea of housing detainees in a U.S.-controlled sector of Cuba - where we weren't imposing on an ally but we also didn't have to worry about detainees getting access to civil rights under the U.S. system of justice - other nations helped us to round up the bad guys.
One such nation was Canada, which shared intel with the U.S. on a Canadian citizen named Omar Khadr, who was picked up on the battlefield and confessed to killing a U.S. Army medic. With the help of the Canadians and the intel they shared, Khadr was sent to Gitmo, where he spent 15 years.
It's a new era, and Canada has a new government. Preventing killers from killing is no longer the priority. Now it's make sure no one gets upset or offended, especially the terrorists. So as a reward for killing a U.S. Army medic, Mr. Khadr is about to become a very rich man:
Canada's Liberal government will apologize to former Guantanamo Bay inmate Omar Khadr and pay him around C$10 million ($7.7 million) in compensation, two sources close to the matter said on Tuesday, prompting opposition protests.
A Canadian citizen, Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at age 15 after a firefight with U.S. soldiers. He pleaded guilty to killing a U.S. Army medic and became the youngest inmate held at the military prison in Cuba.
Khadr later recanted and his lawyers said he had been grossly mistreated. In 2010, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Canada breached his rights by sending intelligence agents to interrogate him and sharing the results with the United States.
The case proved divisive: defenders called Khadr a child soldier while the then-Conservative government dismissed calls to seek leniency, noting he had pleaded guilty to a serious crime.
"Meet Canada's newest multi-millionaire – Omar Khadr," said the Conservatives as they unveiled a protest petition.
Tony Clement, the Conservative Party's public safety spokesman, said "it is one thing to acknowledge alleged mistreatment, but it is wrong to lavishly reward a convicted terrorist who murdered an allied soldier who had a wife and two children".
Not that Justin Trudeau's Liberal government doens't dispute the basic facts - that Khadr did, in fact, engage in a firefight with U.S. forces and did, in fact, kill the medic. Their apology and payout are based on the idea that the Canadian government circa 2002 shouldn't have helped the U.S. to nab him, irrespective of the fact that he committed the terrorist act both countries agreed he committed.
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There is also the question of why a 15-year-old Canadian citizen was on the battlefield fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan in the first place. And remember, this is a war we're talking about. One of the reasons we don't bring these guys here for trials is that you can't treat battlefield captures like police arrests that require you to prove a crime beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that Khadr was firing at our forces is all the reason we need to hold him indefinitely or until cessation of hostilities. If the Taliban wants their prisoners released, they can surrender. That would end the war and put us in a position to negotiate people's releases.
But the left wants to treat every battlefield capture like a matter of criminal law in which everyone detained gets a lawyer and the presumption of innocence. It doesn't work that way in war. The Conservative Canadian government of 2002 understood that. The Liberal Canadian government of 2017 under Justin Trudeau does not - or doesn't want to.
At any rate, if you're a Canadian terrorist and you decide to take up arms against the United States, it looks like crime will pay for you. Eventually anyway.
