Yesterday Glen Greenwald posted on the different reactions the United States and the Canadian governments have taken in regards to the horrible case of Maher Arar. Arar is the Canadian citizen who was wrongly accused of being a terrorist based on information supplied by the RCMP, but, unbeknownst to the Canadian authorities, was to be rendered to Syria by the U.S. government and tortured by the Syrians.
As Greenwald highlights, the Canadian government has compensated Arar for his horrible ordeal:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized Friday to Maher Arar for Canada's role in his "terrible ordeal" and announced he will receive $10.5 million in a legal settlement with the government, the largest compensation package for an individual in Canadian history.
"We cannot go back and fix the injustice that occurred to Mr. Arar. However, we can make changes to lessen the likelihood that something like this will ever happen again," said Harper.
A commentator on Glenwald's post entitled "A tale of two governments" accurately noted the following about Harper and his government.
[***Note: Haloscan is apparently down, so temporarily I am unable to access the comment. Basically it noted how Harper and his party are very Conservative, would have supported Bush's invasion of Iraq had they been in power and here and simply acting opportunistically. I will add in the comment later, when Haloscan is back up***]
Later Greenwald updated his post, noting (from Crooks and Liars):
...the Canadian report specifically recommended that the Canadian Government "review their policies governing the circumstances in which they supply information to foreign governments with questionable human rights records," and specifically urged that "information should never be provided to a foreign country where there is a credible risk that it will cause or contribute to the use of torture."
One of the most infuriating aspects of the Bush presidency and all of the complicity that has enabled it is that a rational person with pride in the history and values of the U.S. no longer has any basis for objecting to characterizations like this of our country. Those descriptions aren't the by-product of some sort of reflexive anti-American sentiment or overwrought internationalist righteousness. They are just undeniably and objectively true characterizations of what our government has done. And it is infuriating to have to accept that.
I would just like to add the following observation. I believe that perhaps Greenwald is obscuring the issue to some degree by titling the post, "a Tale of Two Governments." In essence the roots are much deeper than simply one government behaving much worse than another. While there certainly are significant numbers of wingnuts in both societies, the problem clearly goes much deeper in the United States. George Bush was not only elected (somewhat) as president, he was reelected. You can blame this all you want on the media (certainly warranted, but does not take away from my point, since a competent media is a vital part of a functioning democracy) and the inadequacy of the Kerry campaign. Nevertheless, at the time he was reelected, Bush had already led the country into what was clearly a disastrous war, had instituted policies of torture, illegal imprisonment and illegal rendition many times over, had utterly failed to respond to Katrina, and had overseen or been responsible for numerable government scandals and lies. Granted his approval rating is in Nixon territory now, but I find it very difficult to believe that if the impossible were occurring, that is, the war in Iraq was going well, and the economy was doing better, his rating wouldn't be much higher. Further the Democratic victory had as much to do with the lawlessness and atrocious behaviour of the likes of Mark Foley and Tom Delay than Bush himself. Moreover, I very much doubt significant numbers of votes went to Democrats that otherwise would have gone to Republicans solely due to issues relating to torture and human rights. Again I point to the 2004 election.
Meanwhile in Canada, Bush sycophant Harper, someone who went on Fox television after the invasion of Iraq to apologize for Canada not supporting the war, is, as the commentator above noted, most likely playing the role of the political opportunist in the Arar case. This is because he is well much aware that the idea of Canada supporting regimes which advocate torture, or much worse, actually contribute to the torture of an innocent (even more so, a Canadian - contrast this with the Padilla case in the United States) not only would be unpopular but absolutely devastating to a government that hopes to consolidate its power and turn a minority into a majority. It's an astute political move, but we must ask why it is such in Canada, while in the U.S. the issue barely consitutes a blip on the press's radar screen.
The point here certainly is not to proudly proclaim Canada's superiority. Being against the torture of anyone, never mind an innocent fellow citizen, is something that absolutely should be taken for granted in any just and democratic society. That it is not in the United States is clearly the problem here.
Of course, on the face Canada referring to the United States as a foreign government with "questionable human rights record" must really be a slap in the face to the true democrats (small d here) in the United States, as accurate as it clearly is. Nevertheless the temptation to place the blame squarely on the Bush folks is not sufficient. There are societal and cultural issues that need to be confronted. We must remember that the United States is an immensely powerful country. It is indeed a dangerous time when such a powerful country does not possess such fundamental concepts of democracy and justice to the degree that torturing and rendering innocent people does not spell the government's doom.
Mark Crispin Miller makes a convincing case that Bush was not re-elected.
Posted by: Bruce | February 04, 2007 at 11:53 PM
Take the Pledge
All Presidential Candidates should make pledges like those below. If they refuse, then you should refuse to vote for them.
1. No More Oil Wars.
2. Work for independence from foreign oil on day one.
3. No more wars for corporate profit.
4. No more secret deals for $4 per gallon gas.
5. No more Chicken Hawks promoting wars of choice when they themselves avoided combat.
6. Make government green--if you can't make what you have the most control over green, I don't care about your plans to make the country green.
7. No more torture.
8. No more lying about torture.
9. No more re-defining torture.
10. No more drunken hunting.
11. No more secret deals with big corporations to divide up the spoils before the war even starts.
Posted by: Poetry | May 27, 2007 at 05:28 PM