Omar Khadr and the Lessons of Buchenwald

"I can't afford to be bitter," the psychologist records him as saying.  "I did something bad and I'm here for a reason. The only way to survive is to have hope. A lot of people in Guantanamo are bitter. They live bitter lives. I don't think people are bad. If I hope for people to give me a second chance, I should afford them the same."

At this stage of the game, you either believe that Omar Khadr is a youth who has suffered much at the hands of oppressors (including his parents), or you believe he is an inhuman monster who can not be trusted, ever, and should be either contained until death or killed now and have done with it.

If it's the latter, you perhaps see Khadr not as a human, but a symbol of the evil Islamist (or just plain Muslim) barbarian hoard that seeks to destroy Western culture and conquer Western lands with their numbers.  To you, Islam may feel less like one of the Abrahamic religions and more like a zombie hoard that must be kept at bay and ideally destroyed - for purposes of self-preservation, of course, because in this game it's them or us.

Should you feel some empathy for Khadr, however, you probably recognize him as a human who was presented a skewed world view by his parents, thrust into a conflict as no child should be and then abused by agents who either saw him as an animal or a political pawn.  You also believe that political game-playing is still going on.

Here, then, is the most basic question, the test of Khadr's humanity.

Could he produce children with other people - African, East Asian, Caucasian?  Of course he could.

Would a child of Khadr's be susceptible to developmental influences?  Without doubt.  Pick the kid up and raise him in China with Chinese parents, his culture and outlook will be different than if he grows up on a remote First Nations reserve, or on the streets of Mumbai, or in a massive Rosedale home.

If we recognize Khadr is human, however, then we might need to consider the possibility that other individuals in the group he's been lumped into - terrorists, Islamists, Muslims, whatever - they might be human, too.  Like we are.  

And if it's possible that, in spite of his whole life being a sad saga of manipulation and abuse, Khadr is still capable of hope and change, then the same holds true for all of us, doesn't it?

It's a very uncomfortable question, this, with deep meaning.  If a die-hard ideological terrorist can learn to change his ways, then the reverse is likely possible, too, isn't it?  And if people are so malleable given the right influences, what does this say about our individuality, our pride of self?

Consciously or not, we much rather us-vs-them narratives that focus on us being right and them being a threat.  The more of a threat they feel like, the less human they will seem to us.  Instead they are animals, even vermin.  You don't waste precious resources talking with vermin or accommodating vermin, do you?  They live in squalor, they spread disease - the only thing to do with vermin is destroy them.

We can talk about the inherent violence of Islam.  We could talk about the inherent violence of Christianity, too, reflecting on the crusades, Inquisition, various wars of conquest.  We can talk about Europeans, about Muslims, about Arabs - but the bottom line is that underneath all the layers, we are all human.

In the Concentration Camps of World War II, inmates - including my grandfather - had their humanity stripped away from them. The SS treated inmates like vermin, and intentionally so; the more they could dehumanize their captives, the more they sapped their morale while also strengthening the resolve of their troops to treat all foes as inhuman.  

Camp survivors will tells stories about being so weak, so broken that when someone near them died in their tracks, those who lived had neither the strength nor will to care.  It was all one could do to survive, and when survival was such a high bar to reach, you couldn't focus on anything else.

People who've never endured that type of horror often say "you could have resisted more" or "you could have fought harder", which is a bit like telling an asthmatic to just breathe more or a cripple to suck their pain and walk.  It's no different than suggesting a 15 year old Omar Khadr should have spontaneously developed an understanding of the world separate from what his life experience had presented to him and be one of us in their ranks, stopping his dad and the adults around him from committing terror or die trying.

We've got this quaint notion of what counts as a real human - rational actor, uninfluenced by environmental circumstances, willful enough to climb any mountain and overcome any challenge physical, psychological or external.  People not meeting that standard; well, they're not quite human, are they?  And not as deserving of the fruits that come to those that are human?  

It's a real easy notion to convince yourself of if you have never suffered, or if you see the end-game for suffering as being the removal of those who cause you ill.

I've never met a single Holocaust survivor who wishes that all Germans die for their sins.  They don't believe in an eye-for-an-eye.  Having seen the absolute worst of humanity - having had their own humanity stripped from them and gone through the painful, lonely process of regaining it - survivors don't endorse dehumanization in any form, directed at anyone.

They know all too well the ugly outcome when dehumanization of the other is a strategic objective.

The tortures and abuses Omar Khadr faced pale in comparison to what Holocaust survivors endured. By his own admission, Khadr threw a grenade; rest assured that there were many Buchenwald inmates who were incarcerated for fighting against the Nazis. The regret Khadr is expressing sounds much like that of the children and grandchildren of Nazis that I know, which equally sounds like the regret you might hear from a drunk who killed someone while driving.  There's this disassociation from the person or community that committed inhuman acts that doesn't deny responsibility, but rather recognizes a terrible reality - that whatever we think of ourselves, we each have within us the ability to do stupid, selfish, inhuman things to those who have done nothing to deserve it.

We're only animals, after all.

A lot of people in Guantanamo are bitter. They live bitter lives. I don't think people are bad. If I hope for people to give me a second chance, I should afford them the same."

It's funny that, for all the talk about original sin and stories about floods, golden calves and the like, there are still those of other Abrahamic religions quick to pounce on Muslims as uniquely ungodly  and especially capable of ungodly acts.  The underlying theme of the Old and New Testaments is that people are flawed; we must recognize that and aspire to be more than base instinct to be deserving of the greater love which is there for us regardless. 

If Omar Khadr is rejecting the path that his life set out for him and seeking the positive, that is a hopeful story.  He's right on the money when he says we should afford unto others the opportunities we would like to afford ourselves.  Think about that in terms of economic disparity, electoral prospects of marginalized individuals, of women on boards and in Parliament, even access to the subway.  

If you believe humanity is incapable of securing its own salvation, then life to you is probably a race to the finish, or a circling of a shrinking water hole.  Both scenarios involve an end-game with a last-man-standing, which is exactly how the Nazis viewed their conquest.

On the other hand, if you believe what Khadr has said - that there is good in people, that we are capable of better, then you have to recognize the good and bad in everyone.  The good won't thrive unless it is nurtured.

Bitterness, competition, end-game planning or hope, collaboration and constant adaptation.

That's the real us vs. them - where we come from, as a species, and what we can, at our best, aspire to be.

What Do Omar Khadr and Pussy Riot Have In Common?

 

  

The Russian Orthodox Church said Sunday the rockers would deserve mercy if they repent for their February stunt. Earlier, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had said that keeping them in prison any longer would be “unproductive.”

 

 

Two governments trying to look tough and decisive are facing legal cases that are causing all kinds of political headaches.  Things are way out of hand with Pussy Riot - a political statement/publicity stunt that should have merited at most a slap on the wrist and some discouraging words has seen musicians treated like terrorists and their children left as collateral damage.  Where Omar Khadr is concerned, the jury of political opinion has largely condemned a man on hearsay; the facts don't matter when your emotions lead.

 

The broader legal ramifications are less of a concern in Putin's Russia than they are in Harper's Canada.  Although there is much in common between the political approach of these two men, we have a much stronger domestic legal system here.  Despite what polls and pundits might be telling us, Canadians are far less receptive to legal rights being trampled in the name of security.  When we are made to question the stances we have taken on Khadr - and we will be - I can guarantee there will be some displays of cognitive dissonance across the nation.

 

Which is a good thing, because there is much to question.  We Western countries like to believe we are bastions of free speech and tolerance; some pundits have, in essence, told those who took offense to The Innocence of Muslims to calm down or get a life.  Yet we are happy to vilify a child-soldier in the absence of fact and we are willing to lock up young women performers because they offended someone's religious sensibilities.  Here in Canada, we even threaten activists whose opinion we disagree with and attack officials who try to shed light on uncomfortable facts.

 

Both Harper and Putin are praying that their little legal bundles of joy will just somehow go away.  That's not going to happen.  The choices they have made or refused to make will have consequences, which is as it should be.  Justice is supposed to be blind, but it seems it's our leaders trying to block out inconvenient truths.

 

The Truth will set you free.

 

CFN - You Can’t Take the Risk Out of War

War isn’t a game, video or otherwise. When a person gets shot, stabbed or blown up, it’s not “hearts” they risk losing – it’s their limbs, lives and ongoing quality of life. Winning is no tonic against injury, either; soldiers who come home still bear the physical and psychological scars of combat. If the war happens on a soldier’s home turf, there’s every risk that they won’t have a physical home to return to, either. I will never forget walking around a bombed-out downtown Sarajevo still littered in rubble and “beware of landmines” signs in 2001, six years after the Bosnian War was supposed to be over. The spoils may go to the victor, but when the spoils are in ruins, what has really been won? 

 

This is why military strategists from Sun-tzu on keep developing new ways to mitigate personnel and infrastructure risks at the same time as increasing chances of meaningful victory. The evolution of warfare has seen the development of increasingly complex offensive and defensive technology and tactics, but it has also included the nurturing of warrior codes of conduct like bushido, chivalry or the Geneva conventions. At its core, diplomacy is really a military strategy designed to mitigate the risk of destructive combat and avoid losses on both sides.

 

Of course, we wouldn’t fight in the first place if there weren’t rewards to be had. Land and resources are of definitive value to expanding populations, which is why so many wars are fought over them. A balance of power might encourage a military code of conduct, but when the balance shifts, we can always find wiggle room. Hawaiian Chief Kamehameha seized on the arrival of European weapons and tactics as an opportunity to tip the balance in his favour and conquer all the Hawaiian islands; Spanish conquistadors might have honestly thought they were doing God’s work in bringing Christianity to native heathens, but this noble quest didn’t stop them from slaughtering innocents and stealing their land and gold.

It's Never The Crime, But the Coverup That Condemns Us

"Torture is at the very centre of these prosecutions. Unless these trials are moved to a system with traditional due process protections, we face the shameful possibility that Khadr and others will be convicted with statements that were literally beaten out of them."

 

 

Omar Khadr is coming home.

 

There's not a lot of sympathy for Khadr here at home.  The general impression is that he's a bad kid, a soldier-killer from a bad family.  A psychologist has even suggested Khadr is "evil."  All of this, of course, is based on the impressions we have been given by governments, the military and the media.  None of us really know Omar Khadr as a person, not at all.  He hasn't been allowed to be one since 2002, when he was fifteen years old.

 

Once back in Canada, though, all of that landed perception is going to be challenged.  Looking at the evidence, there's already a pretty compelling case to be made that the handling of Khadr was a complete bungle in which many were complicit.  Sadly, this isn't a story without precedent - remember Maher Arar?

It could very well turn out that Khadr didn't kill Christopher Speer, was tortured into admitting he committed the crime while he himself was severely wounded and all this happening while he was 15 years old - a child in the eyes of the law.
 

Of course, the facts won't matter to some.  They've already made up their minds; anything else will be interpreted as spin by sympathizers or the whine of bleeding hearts.  There's a word for this confabulated justification of emotional responses - bigotry.

 

We keep telling ourselves that we are fighting against those who seek to destroy Western Civilization as embodied by freedom of person, freedom of speech and blind justice - yet we're narrowing that definition to exclude those we don't like.

Maybe it's time we start re-evaluating whether the greatest threat comes from troubles lapping at our shores, or from willful ignorance within our borders.

Profiling The Kadhrs: This Smacks of Eugenics

Welner also discounts much-cited comments by some U.S. guards at Guantanamo that the Toronto native is a “good kid” and “salvageable” – calling them “shallow in their prognostic significance.”

 “When one leaps to the conclusion about Omar Khadr’s future because he is friendly, one might recall that Osama bin Laden has always been described as gentle, likeable and charming,” New York-based Welner told Postmedia News.

“Lest we forget,” Welner said, “Omar Khadr’s university-trained father, for whom Omar translated, was ‘good’ enough that others would give him their money for his orphanage – yet he was raising money for al Qaida, and (was) a high-ranking member” of the terror group.

Dr. Michael Welner is a forensic psychiatrist, one of many looking for ways to quantify evil.  He has been called to offer testimony on the likes of Luka Rocco and, of course, Omar Kadhr.  This, to be, is more than dubious science, as evil is a linguistic catch-all and not a scientific concept; it's a little too familiar.

Even more disturbing are the connections Welner is making between Kadhr, his father and Osama bin Laden; it doesn't matter what they say, it doesn't matter how they act, they are fundamentally evil and that evil can't be overcome.

If we believe that as a concept, what's the conclusion to be drawn?  That some people, groups of people, perhaps even whole tribes are not suitable for social living.  What do you do when you have people that you don't want around?  You run them out of town.  Or, failing that, you contain them.  When you create a distinct divide between yourself and a perceived other, you permit yourself to stop seeing them as human and remove responsibility on your part to treat them as human.

We're seeing what that looks like in Syria.  We've seen it before - in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, in Nazi Germany.  Simple solutions with finality are never the answers they seem to be on paper.  There's a reason for that - life isn't simple.  Answers aren't simple.  We might prefer them to be, we might even delude ourselves that they are, but simplicity exists in our minds only.

There are psychotic people in the world - people, human beings - who do not have the neuro-psychological capacity for empathy.  They aren't evil, they're limited, just as someone born with any deficit is.  While these folk can be dangerous to society and must be contained, they aren't monsters, any more than a shark is.  Beyond this, the brain is a very plastic organ; with the right training, accommodations and environment, most neurological conditions can be managed.  It's just takes conscious effort on the part of everyone.

This issue isn't about Omar Kadhr - he's a symptom, not a disease, one person that none of us has ever spoken to.  This is about what we are willing to accept as fact on the belief of so-called experts.  We cannot allow for philosophies - for that's all they are - like Werner's to stand unchallenged.  We've seen before what happens when prejudice is justified by science.  It's not a path we want to walk again.

UPDATE - Now, Francois Legault is adding his own piece to the eugenics file, saying Quebec kids should be more like Asian kids.  What's really being asked is, what motivates behaviour?