Gee, where does Fadden get that idea from? Perhaps he’s smoking something. Or maybe he eats pizza with some of those funny mushrooms on it. Then again he probably just reads the Toronto Star.
Take the case of Omar Khadr, seen by the liberal elites as the most victimized member of Canada’s first family of terrorism. To recap, the 15-year-old Canadian born Khadr was in Afghanistan in 2002 when he and some of his jihadi associates became involved in a firefight with U.S. forces. A grenade was thrown and when the battle was over, U.S. medic Sgt. Christopher Speer lay dead and Sgt. Layne Morris was seriously injured. Khadr was taken into custody by the Americans and later transferred to Guantanamo Bay where the now 22-year-old remains. Khadr is facing charges in the death of Speer and the wounding of Morris.
Last Wednesday the following headline blared from the Star’s website and on the front page of its print edition:
Omar Khadr ‘innocent’ in death of U.S. soldier. There has been no trial; it was the Toronto Star that proclaimed their favourite victim, innocent. The proper way to do a headline is the way the CBC did it on their website:
Khadr photos show he’s innocent: lawyer. While the Toronto Star ultimately referred to the belief in his innocence was the view of Khadr’s lawyer, for those who merely glance at headlines, Omar Khadr is innocent.
Doubts have been around for some time as to whether or not the pride and joy of the Canadian left actually threw the grenade that killed Speer and injured Morris. The pictures that the Toronto Star was relying on show Khadr buried under some dirt and rubble, lying next to the body of an adult “freedom fighter”. It’s possible that Omar’s buddy in the hole actually threw the fatal grenade. But this does not alter the fact that the little darling was not some innocent tourist who just happened to pass by and was, as cops love to say, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The promising young member of Canada’s most prominent West-hating family, who went to Afghanistan to fight and hopefully kill infidels such as Sgt. Speer, Omar Khadr is not “innocent”; he is a terrorist and an excellent example of Fadden’s thesis about how the elites treat terrorists and suspected terrorists as some kind of folk hero.
There are a lot of legal arguments that can and have been raised that Omar Khadr should not have been dealt with as he has been. He was 15 at the time; an age where most combatants of that age are treated as victims of organizations that utilize child soldiers. Were he found guilty of murder in Canada he would have had the benefit of the country’s lenient youth criminal justice system. And there are political arguments that the Harper Conservatives as well as previous Liberal governments should have done more to repatriate Khadr from U.S. custody. But these legitimate arguments do not justify turning Omar Khadr into a folk hero and a victim of an uncaring Canadian society. The way some of the leftist elite Canadians view the little terror tyke supports Fadden’s thesis that terrorists and suspects have literally turned into heroes and martyrs.
Fadden also refers to how the media described members of the Toronto 18 when they were first arrested in June 2006. They were portrayed as too young, too naïve and more importantly, too stupid to actually plan and carry out a major terror attack in Canada. This came not so much from a desire to make turn them into heroes or victims as it did from the fact that many of the elites on the left simply cannot fathom the fact that a terrorist attack could ever take place, least of all in an area where they sip their lattes as they ponder all that is wrong with Canada. The editorializing about these poor, inept disaffected youth came to an end as a few of them entered guilty pleas to terrorism charges. Then the media stuck to the facts.
Perhaps Fadden’s surprise at the reaction to how the elites view terrorists and suspects comes from a lack of knowledge of the media. Fadden states that no others are treated as terror suspects are with pictures shown of them with their children and with the acceptance at face value of any criticism they make against Canadian officials. That’s not exactly correct; there has hardly been a black, drug dealing gang member who has been shot to death who was not described in the media as a good father who was in the process of turning his life around when he was so horribly cut down. But the CSIS head makes a good point about how terror suspects are treated by the elites.
There is no solution to the problem that Richard Fadden sees in the fact that many Canadians are more worried about the rights of terrorists than they are about the security of their country and who have their heads completely buried in the sand when it comes to threats to Canada. Unfortunately, many Canadians will only acknowledge real terrorist threats when Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver is hit with a major 9/11-type attack. And if that happens, the leftist elites will be the ones who will scream the loudest because the Canadian government failed to protect them.
Richard Fadden was appointed last June as the director of the Canadian Security Intelligent Service (CSIS). According to Fadden too many Canadians close their eyes to the ongoing threat of terrorism and many of the elites treat terror suspects as quasi heroes.
