Paul Martin emerged from the shadows last weekend, appearing on CTV’s Question Period. For those who may have forgotten, Martin was the guy who was the Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada for a few months between the long reign of Jean Chrétien and the seemingly never ending minority government of Stephen Harper. Martin was arguing that Omar Khadr, the youngest member of Canada’s first family of terrorism, should be repatriated to Canada. In the interview Paul Martin proved one thing. Despite the passage of time, he’s still, er, Paul Martin.
The littlest Khadr
The littlest Khadr was captured by US troops in Afghanistan in July 2002 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay. It is alleged that in a firefight he threw a grenade that killed US medic, Sgt. Christopher Speer and injured Sgt. Layne Morris. Khadr was 15 years old at the time he was captured. To put that into some kind of perspective, the terrorist tyke was locked up at the US detention facility in Cuba for the entire time that Paul Martin was prime minister which admittedly was not that long. Nothing of course was ever done to attempt to get little Omar back to Canada, the country that his family despises, of except of course for the laws that make paying cash to doctors illegal. This comes in handy when one or another offspring of the Khadrs gets severely wounded from their jihadist pastimes. From the time of Khadr’s being taken into custody in July 2002 until February 2006 when Stephen Harper took the reins of power, the Liberals did absolutely nothing to try and get Khadr back to Canada to face the harshness of Canada’s Youth Justice System that would have seen him banished to open custody and bound by a probation order not to possess grenades, had he been found guilty of killing Speer and wounding Morris.
Now that Stephen Harper and his uncaring and mean Conservatives are in power, Liberals, both current residents of their front benches and has-beens are hitting the media and moaning that Canada should do something to bring him back to the sucker country that granted his Western-hating family citizenship. Martin told CTV, “If we had known then what we know now, then we would have taken strenuous steps to repatriate Mr. Khadr to Canada.” The truth, of course is that even if Martin had “strenuously” tried to do something, Omar would still be sitting in a cell in Cuba. After all, it wasn’t for nothing that Paul Martin was known internationally as “Mr. Dithers”. He would have dithered and hemmed and hawed and nothing would have been done by the time the country waved goodbye to Paul Jr. But, we could have all rested assured that Prime Minister Martin was making Khadr’s repatriation one of his thousands upon thousands of priorities.
In true Paul Martin fashion, the former PM never did say exactly what it is that we know now that we didn’t know then. The only thing that has really changed in recent months is that there is now information that another fighter was alive after the 2002 firefight ended and it is not so clear cut that Khadr was the only one that could have thrown the grenade that cost Speer his life and Morris, an eye. But very few people outside of his lowlife family are saying that he should be freed outright because he is totally innocent of any wrongdoing. The strongest argument for bringing him back to Canada is that he was 15 years old when he engaged in the alleged conduct and therefore is a child soldier. But we knew that then although for some strange reason it only became an issue when his defense lawyers brought it up as it appeared his trial was fairly imminent. The caring Liberals who see all sorts of human rights abuses gave this one a pass. Now all the Liberals that could have fought to bring him back to Canada are coming out of the woodwork and moaning that the fact he’s still in US custody is all Stephen Harper’s fault.
A recent poll taken about Canadians’ reaction to portions of Khadr’s previous interrogations at Gitmo revealed that the public doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for the Khadr kid. His crying, either before or after he was given a McDonald’s hamburger by his interrogators didn’t move too many Canadians. The reality is that this is all about politics and has nothing really to do with Omar Khadr. The Liberals are just attempting to take attention away from Stéphane Dion and how he’s going to improve the economy with his beloved carbon tax. So they drag Paul Martin out of retirement with his “if we only knew then” line to try and score political points.
If we only knew then what we know now; Paul Martin would never have won the Liberal Party leadership.
