Some bridges need burning

The federal government has spent $1,335, 342.37 on legal fees trying to block the repatriation of one of its citizens imprisoned in a foreign land.

That was the total bill, as of July this year, but the tab is rising as Ottawa prepares to go to court once again to appeal an Ontario judge's ruling that the government has to do everything in its power to bring Omar Khadr, accused of being an al-Qaida terrorist who killed an American soldier in Afghanistan, back to Canada.

Khadr is being held in the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He is the only Canadian and the last Western national to still be held there. He has been there for seven years. He is now 22 years old, having allegedly committed the murder of the American soldier when he was a stripling youth of 15.

That has prompted sympathizers in Canada and elsewhere to claim that he was a victim himself, a child soldier conscripted by Islamist terrorists against his will, like the genuine kidnapped and coerced child soldiers of the Congo and Sierra Leone.

The federal government's legal costs in this case are almost entirely due to actions brought by Khadr's supporters to have him brought home, although all the facts indicate that he was no "child soldier" but an enthusiastic supporter of al-Qaida who had been born and bred by his parents -- both notorious supporters of Islamist terrorists -- to wage war on Western civilization.

As much as some Canadians might not want to admit it, Western civilization does include and, in fact, defines this country. Even viewed through the misty myths of multiculturalism, Western values remain the core of this country's essence, defining its nature in a way that some see as a narrowing of its welcome to immigrants but which more realistically sets out a country that is willing to embrace everyone who is as equally willing to embrace Canada as Canada is to embrace them.

In the 19th century, it was Icelanders and Ukrainians and Mennonites who came and tried to bring their countries with them. They all kept part of that culture in the privacy of their own lives even as they and their children endured the process of becoming proud Canadians.

Today, many immigrants come from Asia and Africa. They naturally want to bring their countries with them, too, just as the 19th century immigrants from Europe did. But the process is the same now as it was then. New Canadians can keep part of their country in their homes, but when they walk out into the larger society, they need to embrace Canada as it is and Canada as it will inevitably evolve. Bridges often need burning.

Times change, but the principle doesn't. Being Canadian means embracing one country, one law, one loyalty. That doesn't preclude multiculturalism, it encompasses it.

A lot of Canadians don't seem to see that though, and they are not mostly new immigrants struggling to cope with a new world, but Canadians who have been here for generations and seem to have somehow lost the understanding of not only where they came from, but of where they are and what it means to be here.

This week in Montreal, a war criminal was convicted of multiple murders committed in Rwanda during the tribal genocide there in the 1990s. Desire Munyaneza was convicted under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which allows the government to pursue the prosecution of war criminals no matter where the crimes were committed.

It is a useful but controversial piece of legislation and Munyaneza's conviction will almost certainly be appealed, but most Canadians don't seem to care much about it, which is a pity because it sets a precedent for civilized nations everywhere that crimes against humanity cannot be escaped by the criminal escaping the country they were committed in.

The new head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service this week pointed out another anomaly in Canadians' awareness of the world around them. Dick Fadden fears that too many Canadians have the lost the memory of the horror of 9/11, lost the capacity to appreciate the genuine threat that domestic terrorists, like the Toronto 18, pose to Canada, and have come to the point where they actually make "quasi-folk heroes" out of terrorists who would cheerfully behead the prime minister -- they are not necessarily Liberals -- and blow up CSIS headquarters -- not necessarily NDP.

But, as Bob Dylan once sang in an entirely different context, the times they are a-changing. A recent poll shows a marked drop in sympathy for young Omar Khadr among Canadians. Once, many were anxious to bring him back, give him a good scolding and let him go home to his al-Qaida cell. Today, 52 per cent have no sympathy for him and a plurality believe that he will get a fair trial either at Guantanamo Bay or in the U.S., where he should be tried.

That may be an anomaly in itself, but hopefully it is instead a sign that, as the Conservative government involves Canada more realistically in world affairs, Canadians are becoming more aware that the real folk-heroes here are the soldiers on the front lines and the security services behind them.

tom.oleson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 31, 2009 A18