Sunday, March 22, 2009

What part of "is" or "a" didn't you get, Doc?


Blogging Tory Jabba the Roy is all about the pedantic nitpickery:

omar khadr is not a child soldier

Let's go to the official record, shall we?

Official Definition of a Child Soldier - from Cape Town Principles

A child soldier is any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity, including but not limited to cooks, porters, messengers and anyone accompanying such groups, other than family members.

In other news, Jabba and the rest of the Blogging Tories would like to stress that a lot of people aren't "real" Canadians just because, you know, they're citizens and have those convenient Canadian passports and stuff. Like that's supposed to convince us.

Stephen Taylor must be so proud.

9 comments:

Pearce said...

See, the article he links to actually makes some good points, but ignores the fact that Khadr was involved with terrorist activity prior to his capture at age 15. He was systematically indoctrinated into radical Islam by his family, and put into service at a very young age.

By the vast majority of reasonable metrics, including ones Canada is the signatory to, Khadr is in fact a child soldier. To state otherwise is to argue semantics over his age at the time of capture.

That kind of "pedantic nitpickery" as you call it should not be the metric used to decide the fate of Omar Khadr. It approaches the situation with a shocking level of short-sightedness.

But hey, we're talking about the Blogging Tories here...

sooey said...

You've got to wonder about their priorities and those of our government. He's clearly not a threat to anyone at this point. It's as if the country is overrun with paranoid nutcases devoid of all reason.

Ti-Guy said...

He's clearly not a threat to anyone at this point.

Everything's a threat to the fright-wingers.

vw: "airab" Jesus, what'll be next..."jooz?"

Cameron Campbell said...

Seriously, if he were released and brought back to Canada, does anyone here think he wouldn't be the most surveilled person in our country's history?

WV: "matingur" the noise Khadar's daytime surveillance team leader would make as he was woken by the night guys "Matin? grrr"

The Seer said...

It's not like Omar Khadar is someone dangerous like Tommy Douglas.

Ti-Guy said...

Pull yourselves together...it's spelled Khadr. Even Jabba got that right.

sooey said...

That's some family Omar is stuck with, too. Like the Muslim Trailer Park Boys or something.

Cameron Campbell said...

Pardon...

The Mound of Sound said...

Pearce is right, Khadr was plainly indoctrinated as a young child. Call it "brainwashed" if you like, it doesn't really matter. That Gazette article fails to recognize that we understand children can be manipulated into just about anything. It uses the most facile sophistry to contend that he "volunteered" for service as an enemy combattant and, hence, is not to be considered a child soldier.

I'm a lawyer too and long experience has taught me that shills like Anglin are a dime a dozen.