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?
Mike Graston is the best political cartoonist in Canada, even though he leans small-l liberal. I'm surprised that given he works in heavily Muslim Windsor, that there hasn't been an intifada against him for that cartoon.
That's a shame. It was such a good paper, too.
I'm leaning more and more towards a subscription to the Western Standard.
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