Obama's Shame, & Ours: "a pledge never to take legal action against the United States"

I wonder what it's like for a former constitutional law professor today, especially given his promises, or a prime minister even, when they look at their own eldest children, almost exactly Omar Khadr's age when he was dragged to Afghanistan, and think on their governments' behaviour. "A pledge never to take legal action against the United States" - that tells you all you need to know about American justice (sic), the USA, & Obama, and how sick this whole thing is. Some confidence in one's system of government and justice when this is a condition of a plea deal. And who's to say our own government won't try the same thing? And shame on Norman Spector, who seems to be saying Canada should not fufill its legislated, imperative consular duties as best it can, defending all Canadians' rights abroad as vigourously as possible, that it should pick and choose instead. I'd be curious to see him him devise a coherent list of legally recognised exceptions to our consular responsibilities - who, and why, do we defend when, under what circumstances, and who, and why, do we abandon, under what conditions? I'd like to see how we put this into law. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. Spector is completely wrong on the media in his piece: they asked Chrétien, rightly, why were we not upholding our responsibilities, and doing all we could for Khadr père. And so we did. You might as well say the media is at fault for reporting sympathetically on a hit and run victim who later goes on to commit a crime. How is anyone supposed to know how things are going to turn out? What one does know, and what one can write about, are what are our laws, our responsibilties, our standards, and what we are doing about them. All you can do is try to do the right thing today, and do your best tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next. We are Canada. We are not some piddling rights-abusing tin pot dictatorship. At least my Canada isn't. The media will wear their credulity, their quiescence in the government line (or that of some banally evil assholes within it) on the Arar case their whole lives. In Salutin's wonderful phrase, they spoke power to truth, rather than truth to power, on that one. With the consequences we know. But they were right to question our behaviour re. Khadr père, as they would be to do so on any such case. Even if Khadr père had been arrested 1000 times by a torturing regime, in a system without due process, and a 1000 times the Canadian government was failing in its consular responsibilities, then a 1000 times it would be the media's DUTY to question such dereliction of duty by the government. And a 1000 times we, Canada, would be right to save him, even if a 1000 times, he was later on to act criminally or unjustly. A right is a right is a right. Right is right is right.

As for Obama & Harper, Canada & the USA, I wrote the following after Obama's swearing-in and visit to Ottawa, and I later noted Spector's then clearheaded analysis, as opposed to his nonsense today.

From Colony To Nation To Colony - 20/02/09: "President Obama seems a good guy, like Jimmy Carter or Gladstone or Blum, by the standards of imperial leaders. But he remains the CEO of an empire that has its structural demands, beyond whatever personal morality & good intentions its leaders may possess & evince.(...) Obama seems a good guy & means well, but we're also all comparing him to the last guy! Given the structural demands of American political economy & of empire, however much we find him simpatico, an American President is an American President, pursuing a national-imperial interest that is not ours. And we would do well to remember it."

Colony To Nation To Colony Postscript - 25/02/09 (quoting Spector): "Canada is in the process of aligning its foreign policy with the US to a degree not seen since the days of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan.(...) Few Canadians have clued in yet to the policy similarities between Mr. Harper and Mr. Obama on issues such as climate change, extraordinary rendition and Afghanistan. Our British cousins, on the other hand, have already noted that Mr. Obama is refusing to recognize prisoners rights at Bagram-Afghanistan's equivalent of Guantanamo. Nor did it escape notice that Mr. Obama's Pentagon produced a report last week that found Guantanamo to be in compliance with the Geneva Conventions.(...) Here too, then, the positions of Mr. Harper and Mr. Obama (and now Mr. Ignatieff) are aligned."