Retain Him, Our Compliments

Trouble is, they have no wish to detain him any longer. Without the admission of guilt, which many claim was coerced, he might have stood trial, refusing to acknowledge his guilty status, so that if the prosecution was successful in finding him guilty on all counts brought against him, principally that of murder as an enemy combatant, he might have been sentenced to life in prison.  Life in prison within the United States means just what it states.  Quite unlike Canada, where a defined period of time is allotted, and the lifer still has the right to seek clemency through early parole.

It simply made far more sense for Omar Khadr, whom many describe as "intelligent", to take the other route available to him.  To rejoin his extended family in Canada, citizens all, although they are also more familiarly acknowledged to be Canada's "al-Qaeda family".  The father an avowedly high-placed member of al-Qaeda, and a major financier through the raising of 'charitable' funds to advance their cause, and the mother unreservedly supportive of al-Qaeda's mission to overturn the degraded West, and institute a global Caliphate.

Of course, under the global Caliphate it's doubtful whether they would still be able to collect social charity through welfare, assisted housing, universal medical care and education.  Which is why they are avidly engaged, though they claim to despise this society, in grasping as much of these citizenship entitlements as they can, while they yet may.  As for youngest son, Omar, he will be in more direct geographic contact with his family.  And they can be proud of him, that he has not forsworn his dedication to jihad.

Young Mr. Khadr has a reputation to uphold, one he is very proud and conscious of; not only the legacy of his father's dedication to Osama bin Laden and his pathology of hatred for the despised West, but his star standing as a prize specimen of Islamism's finest; a youth well doctrinated into violent jihad and its twisted relation to Islam and the Koran - a high-value standard-bearer of the ascendancy of the inevitable.

The conscience of a Western society has been moved by the seeming misfortune of a youth whose values were sternly drawn by the example and the instruction of his father.  As though none of us is born with free will, and the capacity to look beyond the obvious into our inner hearts and instinctive values.  Omar Khadr passed the test of Islamist indoctrination, making his parents proud, and elevating his status as an example to other Muslim youth.

Israel, the singular state that has always, since its birth, been the recipient of Muslim hatred and revenge-wishing that would have it disappear off the face of the Earth, must also grapple with the issue of home-grown terrorists.  Those with Israeli citizenship, reaping all the benefits that come with that citizenship, yet conspiring to destroy the state, and the lives of other citizens who happen to be Jews, not Arabs.

There are some within Israel, some lawmakers who have been musing within the Knesset that the time may have arrived when citizenship should be revoked from those who actively conspire to destroy the state.  To many within Israel, and not only Arab MKs and Palestinian-Israelis, but Jewish Israelis who value the concept of equality and the sanctity of state sovereignty and allegiance to the state, and democratic ideals, this appears an unspeakable travesty.

But is it?  Or is it a potentially practical solution to those citizens who conspire to destroy the very social and political conditions that allow them to aspire for their enlightened and socially advanced futures?

Instead of, for example, gently admonishing in a court of law and committing to short prison sentences, young Muslim men who have been nurtured within Canada, and who choose to turn their plans toward destroying Canadian society, perhaps they should discover they run the risk of becoming stateless, their citizenship revoked in exchange for planning terrorism against the country that represents their best interests.

It's a thought.  Most Canadians have no wish to welcome Omar Khadr back into Canada.  Nor are we particularly pleased to host his extended family whose values are clearly so different than our own.  We generally do not make common cause, in any event, with those who literally spit in our faces.  And this family has done that, and much, much more to demonstrate their contempt for Canada.

They should be cordially invited to leave, to return to Pakistan where they would be feted.