In response to my latest post on the Canadian Afghan detainee transfer scandal, Jonathan McLeod of The Politic and Canned Goods and Ammunition offered the following thought,
By the way, if, when this all started to come out, the government had just admitted that something wrong might have happened and started an inquiry right away, I think they could have come out pretty unscathed (well, maybe not MacKay). Thoughts?
I think that is exactly right. While I am pretty incensed over the idea that my government was in any way complicit in delivering Afghans into torture scenarios, what has really angered me and undermined any semblance of trust and confidence in the Harper government is the way in which it has chosen to respond to the issue: with evasion, obstructionism, dismissiveness, and contempt.
At the end of the day, we don’t know whether anyone has been tortured as a result of the decisions of our government, and that is precisely the problem: by all accounts the Harper Government doesn’t want to find out. And finding out is of primary importance here; more than a government cover-up, more than the resignation of those involved, more than the impact of disclosure on the next election. In short, getting to the bottom of the moral situation far outweighs the importance of getting to the bottom of the political situation.
Let me be clear: If, as Jonathan suggests, the government acknowledged that there may have been something amiss and began coordinating an independent inquiry into the matter that concluded that decisions which Harper et al. made delivered Afghans into torture scenarios and that government should have known better, I would be angry. But after openly and honestly looking into the matter, my response would have been to acknowledge that they did the right thing. Had such an inquiry found that there was no wrongdoing whatsoever, Harper et al. would have scored even more points in my books for getting to the bottom of things when they had, in fact, done nothing wrong.
In short, responding as Jonathan suggests would have been a win-win situation by my lights and, honestly, I think most Canadians would have landed on this issue in a similar fashion, despite the Opposition parties’ efforts to make as much political hay as possible. What the Conservative’s actual response tells me is that they don’t trust Canadians to have reacted in that fashion — or, to put it bluntly, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives don’t trust Canadians, full stop.
That is, frankly, a sad statement about the governing party of this country.
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Forgive me for missing something that might be obvious, but the point of this line of posts is that it’s very likely that Canadian military personnel have apprehended people in Afghanistan and delivered them to third parties who tortured them. And that’s bad. Therefore it follows that Canadian authorities have a responsibility to incarcerate such people themselves.
From here it looks like Canada has no such responsibility. They don’t have the personnel or logistical capabilities to do that. Therefore the moral taint for being complicit in torture is pretty weak in this case. To say otherwise is to assume that Canada has more control over the cultural disposition to torture in Afghanistan than in fact it does. All of this assuming that the underlying allegations are true, of course.
Koz, the point is that if we didn’t have the ability to ensure that people — at least some of whom are likely innocent according to reports from commanders on the ground — wouldn’t be subject to torture upon being transferred to authorities by Canadian military personnel, then we should have struck an arrangement with another force who did have such an ability. What looks like might have happened is that we did not have such an ability, we knew that the lack of such an ability would result in the torture of some detainees, and we did not follow the correct course of action in addressing that issue.
But the key, as you say, is whether the allegations are true, which we don’t know. And so the imperative, at least in my mind as a Canadian who is deeply troubled by this whole affair, is to do what we need to do in order to find out what in fact happened to the best of our ability and then act accordingly. That my government is actively complicating that process is what has me steamed.
“But the key, as you say, is whether the allegations are true, which we don’t know.”
Actually, I’m taking it for granted that the allegations are true.
It seems to be that the whole “deeply troubled” angle means, contrary to Jonathon’s comment, that the Watergate standard does not apply, ie, “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.” What may or may not be scandalous in this case is the crime, ie the “crime” of being complicit in torture, especially of innocent people.
But to measure complicity requires some understanding of what the alternatives were. If, as you imply, they allowed innocent prisoners to be tortured in a situation where the Dutch were willing to assume custody of them, that really is scandalous.
I agree, the Canadians don’t know whether anyone has been tortured as a result of their actions but some want to engage in a session of self flagellation as a result of what might have happened. Isn’t there something more productive they could be doing?
I suppose that if you don’t take the possibility of delivering people into torture as particularly troubling, then yes, there are lots of “more productive” things you could do.
As well, though we may not know that anyone was tortured, we can be pretty damn sure that they were.
No, it doesn’t trouble me. If your country is going to stick its hand in a cesspool like Afghanistan, doesn’t be surprised if it comes out dirty.
And I suppose that if I made the point that those military personnel engaged in the detainment and transfer of Afghans have noted that many, if not most, of them were, and I quote, “local yokels” of little to no strategic importance, meaning they were not members of the Taliban and therefore innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, and that those folks were quite possibly tortured, you would respond with some kind of “omelets and eggs” comment. Meaning, to put it pointedly, that not only are you not concerned about the idea that people may well have been tortured, but it doesn’t bother you that innocent people may well have been tortured.
Would that be about right?
No, it does bother me that innocent people are held and possibly tortured but I am also am honest with myself that there isn’t much that I can do about it. The place is cesspool and bad things are sometimes going to happen to innocent people, as they do in the rest of the world.
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. So, a sizable part of what this is all about is that something could have and should have been done about it. One can’t be held responsible for all the bad that happens in the world, or, perhaps, even all the bad that happens in a portion of the world in which one is active. But one ought to be held responsible for the bad that happens in the portion of the world in which one is active that is within one’s power to stop/avert.
That the current governing party of my country is unwilling to really look at whether some bad happened on its watch that it could have stopped/avoided makes me angry.
Part of the reason this scandal is a big deal is that Canadian law dictates that we not give prisoners to people or countries who will likely torture the prisoners. It appears that many senior officials knew of the torture, but didn’t want to do anything about it. Thus, they committed a crime.
There can be an argument about whether or not this is an appropriate law, but that does not change the fact there is a law and it was broken.
Further to Koz’s point that Canada does not have the means to properly police the situation, that may be (no doubt is) true. However, again, if the government had come out and said, ‘we can’t live up to our obligations,’ that would have been better than the deceit in which they have engaged. Of course, such an admission would require a big re-think of our involvement (but, obviously, we need one anyway). It seems to me this could have been a politically opportunistic defense by the Harper government. They could have claimed that they were hamstrung by the obligations and defence cuts enacted during the Chretien/Martin years.
If it came out that we, Canada, tried in earnest to live up to our obligations, but failed, that would be one thing. It really looks like we just didn’t even care enough to try.
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