Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Hello Canada, goodbye terror
Ottawa Sun ^ | 2005-11-12 | Geoff Matthews

Posted on 11/12/2005 8:59:54 AM PST by Clive

Perhaps someone can explain why we should be losing a lot of sleep over the plight of an accused teenaged terrorist languishing behind the barbed wire of a Cuban detention centre.

Or for that matter for his mother who, from the safety of her adopted Toronto home, fires verbal blasts at the Americans holding him prisoner and a Canadian government that has already been far more generous to her family than it deserves.

Maha Elsamnah wants us all to be shocked at the treatment of her 19-year-old son Omar Khadr, a suspect in the murder of a U.S. army medic who is being held in a military jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

This would be the same woman who last year proudly proclaimed to a television interviewer her pride in the actions of her martyred husband, who died in a firefight with Pakistani troops along the Afghan border.

She even expressed hopes the kids -- including young Omar -- might one day choose to take up the al-Qaida family values, perhaps as suicide bombers, and themselves be remembered as martyrs.

This is the same Elsamnah who, in a CBC documentary, said she was proud of Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. "Sometimes innocent people pay the price," she said. "They deserve it. They've been doing it for such a long time, why shouldn't they feel it once in a while."

Khadr was 15 when he allegedly threw a hand grenade that killed one American soldier and wounded another during a firefight between U.S. troops and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan in July 2002.

That Khadr would be a suspect in such an attack should come as no surprise. Along with his siblings he was raised by a father who was a close associate of bin Laden and taught to hate the U.S. and its allies.

Khadr's father, Ahmed Said Khadr, was killed in a gun battle with U.S.-led coalition forces in Pakistan in October 2003. His brother, Karim, was paralyzed during the incident in which his father was killed, and despite his apparent involvement was allowed to return to Canada after a high-profile campaign by his family in April 2004.

Elsamnah, meanwhile, continues to miss no opportunity to voice her support for al-Quaida and her hatred for America and its friends.

"The Americans are gods now," she told reporters this week. "The Americans can do anything. They make the law. Nobody can tell them anything. Nobody can disagree with them."

The Canadian government has been no help at all, she charged. "Ottawa is allied to the Americans, so what do you expect?"

Elsamnah seems to find it odd how out of sorts the Americans can get when someone attacks their very way of life. When someone aligns himself with an avowed terrorist like bin Laden whose sole purpose in life is to threaten and disrupt the U.S.

She accepts the safety and security that has been provided to her by a compassionate nation, but then goes on the attack when we don't do her bidding.

Canada is a great country for many reasons, not the least of which is freedom of speech. Those who have made their homes here can say things that others may find hurtful or offensive, secure in the knowledge that unless they cross the line into hatred or racism they're welcome to their opinions.

EDUCATION IN TERROR

The freedoms we enjoy, however, do not and should not give anyone the right to promote or condone terrorism. Elsamnah's son has been arrested on charges that he engaged in horrific acts against humanity. Far from suggesting he is innocent, she has boasted about the education in terror he has received. Never once has she spoken out against the scourge of international terrorism.

The only wrong that has been done, in her eyes, is the arrest and detention of her son for an act of violence that took the life of a medic.

Perhaps, given our country's perceived failings, Elsamnah would be more comfortable living elsewhere. In Afghanistan, perhaps, where she and her husband raised their children during the 1980s.

Canada has a proud record of welcoming people from troubled nations throughout the world and making them feel at home. Is it too much to expect, in return, a rejection of terror?


TOPICS: Canada; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: alqaedacanada; gitmo; khadr
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-46 next last
To: VeniVidiVici
Strong family resemblance.
21 posted on 11/12/2005 9:50:21 AM PST by ncountylee (Dead terrorists smell like victory)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: martin_fierro

Here is a Khadr timeline from the CBC:


http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/khadr/timeline.html


22 posted on 11/12/2005 9:53:39 AM PST by Clive
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Clive
Elsamnah seems to find it odd how out of sorts the Americans can get when someone attacks their very way of life

Well, yeah ... flying airplanes into our buildings is a bit annoying. Not as bad as desecrating a Koran, mind you, but annoying nevertheless.

23 posted on 11/12/2005 9:57:22 AM PST by layman (Card Carrying Infidel)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DustyMoment

"...the stuff she is spewing sounds a lot like hate speech."

It's only hate speech when it's directed against someone the liberal government "annoints" as worthy of such a designation.

America and Americans are not in that category.


24 posted on 11/12/2005 10:16:47 AM PST by Bob J (RIGHTALK.com...a conservative alternative to NPR!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: I see my hands

Much public speech that is free speech in the USA would be considered "Hate Speech" in Canada.

Just saying that Canada Federal Politics was tyrannized by
French Canadian politicians from 1969 to 2002 can get you arrested for political hate speech against French Canadians. No one cares whether it is true or not!


25 posted on 11/12/2005 11:01:49 AM PST by Candor7 (Into Liberal Flatulence Goes the Hope of the West)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Clive
His brother, Karim, was paralyzed during the incident

Excellent! Hope its from the neck down, respirator, the works.

26 posted on 11/12/2005 11:13:53 AM PST by dagnabbit (Vincente Fox's opening line at the Mexico-USA summit meeting: "Bring out the Gimp!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: EDINVA

"...but why would Canada welcome the very people who made their own country a 'troubled nation?"

It is a strange Western disease that we invite the people into our countries that want to destroy our way of life. Can any Canadian seriously believe that once this woman gets her wish of destroying American society that Canada's wouldn't be next?

The fox is in the North American henhouse and we don't seem particularly concerned about it.

"All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us."

--Abraham Lincoln


27 posted on 11/12/2005 11:24:15 AM PST by Owl558 (Pardon my spelling)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: dagnabbit


28 posted on 11/12/2005 11:26:56 AM PST by GMMAC (paraphrasing Parrish: "damned Liberals, I hate those bastards!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Clive

First kill Omar then Maha then Ahmed. 123! Eazy peazy - Al Jazeeree.


29 posted on 11/12/2005 11:31:31 AM PST by DogBarkTree
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Clive

Does this mean the Canadians are starting to come to their senses?


30 posted on 11/12/2005 11:36:28 AM PST by desherwood7
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Owl558

Ole Abe was right, as usual


31 posted on 11/12/2005 11:41:01 AM PST by EDINVA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: Clive

Elsamnah deserves all the rights including freedom of speech available to all citizens of western nations. However if she were bending over for whatever purpose, and I happened to be walking by wearing steel-toed boots, I'd give her such a kick in her @##, she'd remember it the rest of her miserable life. Gawd, I hate these people.


32 posted on 11/12/2005 11:48:21 AM PST by driftless ( For life-long happiness, learn how to play the accordion.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: driftless

LOL I say we send her a nice PORK ROAST!


33 posted on 11/12/2005 12:36:46 PM PST by Arpege92 ("I am happy, be it yourselves." - Pope John Paul II)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: Arpege92

I'll happily have a big BBQ pig roast in her honour. Yum!


34 posted on 11/12/2005 2:16:26 PM PST by coydog (My bathroom djinn can beat up your bathroom djinn!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: Cicero
The National Post has not been on 'our' side since shortly after Conrad Black sold it.

The Sun chain of newspapers is the only voice for conservatism in our MSM.

The Western Standard magazine also contributes, but the NP has become a mouth piece for the Liberals.
They are just not as blatant about it as the CBC.
35 posted on 11/12/2005 3:20:41 PM PST by fanfan (" The liberal party is not corrupt " Prime Minister Paul Martin)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Bob J

You're right.


36 posted on 11/12/2005 5:44:39 PM PST by DustyMoment (FloriDUH - proud inventors of pregnant/hanging chads and judicide!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: DustyMoment

"Canada, our "good neighbor" to the north, might do itself a favor by ejecting this woman and her evil spawn"

A bayonet thrust is cheaper.


37 posted on 11/12/2005 7:41:10 PM PST by Levante
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: fanfan; Cicero
Sorry to disagree with you best FReep buddy but, with columnists like Lorne Gunter, John Ivison and most of the time Andrew Coyne, Barbara Kay and George Jonas, the Post has hardly abandoned us.

Additionally, the Toronto Sun - the de facto national voice of red-Toryism* - drags the rest of the chain far enough leftward on its own to make a complete mockery of your contention.

Without even enumerating the Toronto Sun's entire lengthy list of outright feminist and left-of-center female writers headed up by Sheila Copps, Michele Mandel, Liz Braun and the ever-horrid Marianne Meed Ward, any rag that gives the vile Eric Margolis regular employment and runs Doonesbury quite plainly ain't no conservative publication.

... and Lorrie Goldstein, Bob MacDonald and occasional pieces by Salim Mansur and Michael Coren don't even begin to balance those last two offenses.

* 'RINOism' to our American friends
38 posted on 11/12/2005 7:42:41 PM PST by GMMAC (paraphrasing Parrish: "damned Liberals, I hate those bastards!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 35 | View Replies]

To: fanfan; Pikamax; Former Proud Canadian; Great Dane; Alberta's Child; headsonpikes; coteblanche; ...
OK, OK, so it doesn't relate directly to this thread but it's taken me almost a week to find the link!

IMHO, this absolute gem has gotta be
the Canadian political cartoon of the year:


39 posted on 11/12/2005 8:56:36 PM PST by GMMAC (paraphrasing Parrish: "damned Liberals, I hate those bastards!")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: GMMAC
Thanks...will rerun in Today's Toons 11/15/05.


40 posted on 11/13/2005 3:36:02 AM PST by pookie18 ((Hillary Rotten) Clinton Happens...as does Dr. Demento Dean, Bela Pelosi & Benedick Durbin!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-46 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson