WINNIPEG – I don’t have to introduce myself to you. You know me as well as any of the citizens of Adler Nation. And you’ve read and heard my thoughts about the things that matter to me and why they matter. You would be the last person on earth to be surprised that I am disappointed in the extreme decision that you’ve made on Omar Khadr, someone who unfortunately was born in this country to a mom who has done nothing over the years but insult everything you and I both stand for. When Oh Canada is played at those hockey games we love to watch, our hearts pound like a drum and our blood runs hot. But as you know, the Maple Leaf that fuels our furnace gives hers an arctic chill. She is a Canadian by convenience.
She unwillingly abandoned her land for this land because her husband wanted to freeload from here in order to support their wretched cause, which is NUKE Western civilization as we know it, to plunge the world into the darkness of some tortured brutal version of an eastern religion so brutal that men are afraid to shave, women are afraid to show their faces, a place where there is no music, no dance, no trace of Judaeo Chistian values, no rule of law, not our kind of law that they are now using to blindfold us…The Khadrs fondest fantasy is a world which moves from Oh Canada to NO Canada. That was and still is remorselessly their Cause. The Khadrs took Baby Omar out of this country when he was just a baby, feeling nothing but contempt for our flag and our values. They joined up with the dark side in Afghanistan, befriended the Mass Murderer Bin Laden and his ilk. Their primary interest over there was not to help the people of Afghanistan who 152 Canadian Forces members have died for. Her family was there trying to kill as many of our allies as possible and don’t kid yourself for one moment. The Khadrs would have been only too happy to kill as many Canadian soldiers as possible. None would have been spared, a bullet, a grenade or a knife. Poor, poor Omar who deprived one unarmed medic of his life and deprived another soldier of his eye, has complained to his government-paid lawyer that the Americans who revived his murderous body, deprived him of sleep. How much sleep has he deprived the widow of Sgt Speer and her kids? Many more hours of sleep. He deprived a husband and a father of his life. And now he counts on Canadians to get weepy for his story and sleepy while he raids our treasure in the name of the Rule of Law, a law their cause would happily blow up. Blowing things up is what pleasures them the most. And their fondest desire would be to blow us all up. Every time one of those road side explosives that Omar used to assemble blows up a Canadian soldier, a Canadian family grieves. But the Khadr family celebrates.
Prime Minister, I don’t know because you’ve never shared with me whether you have tried to hold your nose and purchase this foul smelling dead rat of an argument that Omar was just a child victimized by his father, not really doing what he was doing because he wanted to, just a child soldier. The U-N says so and the Canadian Supreme Court has rubber stamped it so. I and millions of other Canadians say, “So what?” We don’t need a bunch of hooligans on expense accounts at the United Nations or a small gathering of lawyered-up lawyers in Robes and Ermine to tell us the difference between a thug and a child, between a young man who is doing something not of his own volition and one like Khadr making and planting bombs enthusiastically.
We know what child soldiers are. We know about all those families in Africa where mothers are raped and fathers are torn from limb to limb, hacked to death and their little girls are murdered and their little boys are kidnapped, ripped out of the arms of their fathers and mothers and taken away to be turned into murderous monsters performing the same ugly deeds that their captors have performed. And we know that in many cases, governments represented by the United Nations not only condone but actively participate in helping this kind of activity. These same governments wish to judge us on how we treat Omar Khadr? Are we supposed to have our values informed by these barbarians? What does that make us? Groucho Marx once said I never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member. It’s considered a classic laugh line. Prime Minister, there is nobody on this side of the microphone laughing at the idea that my prime minister is taking seriously the judgment of that club of bottom feeders which I would happily see dismembered. Writing cheques every year. They cash millions of dollars every year. Hard earned Canadian Tax Dollars. To some in this country that’s the price of membership in the international community. On the Canadian streets I played road hockey on, when some of our dads had to pay protection money to protect their little businesses from being ripped off or burned down, we called it Extortion. We didn’t respect the goons running the racket. But we understood the consequences. And now these goons who run the United Nations tell the greatest country on earth that we have a solemn moral duty to rehab Omar Khadr. We Canadians don’t take our moral cues from an organization that buried its moral compass in the jungles of Rwanda, that shot up its moral compass in the mountains of Yugoslavia, that defecates daily on its moral compass in Darfur.
But it’s not just the United Nations that tries to sell our citizens on the fairy tale of Poor Poor Omar Child Soldier. There’s also that other high priestess of Morality. Heather Mallick, part of that same crowd that trashes you Prime Minister at every opportunity, the ones who like to say behind your back that you’re just a front man for right wing rubes, people with little education, born again Christians, and Holocaust Deniers. Yes, her moral highness who highly approves of your decision to allow Omar Khadr back into this country wrote this in recent days about the trial:
The last time the name “Speer” and “war crimes” shared the same courtroom was in Nuremberg in 1946. Then it was Albert Speer on trial for being awfully good at running the Nazi war machine that killed tens of millions.
That’s Heather Mallick, Prime Minister, exploiting the good name of a good man destroyed by Omar Khadr, exploited the good name of Sgt Christopher Speer, a victim of a war crime as a device to introduce the name of a War Criminal who was one of the Architects of the Nazi War Machine that killed tens of thousands of Canadian servicemen. You have visited some of their graves in France, Prime Minister. You have walked on those beaches in Northern France where good Canadian kids bled and died for Heather Mallick’s right to introduce the name of a monstrous war criminal in order to diminish the death of a victim of a war crime, in order to compare our allies to the Nazis and to the Taliban and she is in favour of your decision Prime Minister. I am not trying to convict you of Guilt by Association. I am asking you as a Canadian citizen to please make decisions that have the ring of moral justice for the victims of Khadr and not his fan club. Prime Minister, I don’t want to end this letter on a sour note, and not because I want to be kind. But because I don’t want to be ungrateful for the many good things that you have done especially for our forces. So I want to attach to this letter another letter written to me a few weeks ago by a citizen of Adler Nation, Rob Cullen, a police officer in York Region.
THE LETTER
Last night, while working in my usual role as a police platoon sergeant, we were called to a VSA . . . vital signs absent, in the basement apartment of a house just north of Keswick.
The victim was 78 years old. A retired firefighter, he had served from 1959 to 1989 with the North York Fire Department. It no longer exists, having been enveloped by the Toronto Fire Department. The victim had succumbed to a heart attack.
His small basement apartment was very tidy. Upon the walls were tons of framed photos. Pieces of history from 1940s and ’50s baseball, hockey, entertainers, and horse racing. Certificates of gratitude from the North York Fire Department, the City of Toronto, and the pigeon racing club he belonged to after he retired. He had a very organized collection of 78 rpm records from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Ella, Fats Waller . . . and he had the turntables to play them. The last album he played was Frank Sinatra.
He was very well read. Books of history lined his bookshelves, with an emphasis on Ontario and especially Toronto history. His specialty was the Avro Arrow . . . the huge limited framed edition print on his bedroom wall reflected his interest. Maybe sometime, somewhere, he saw the world’s greatest plane fly. He was a huge supporter of our troops. An article from the Toronto Sun about the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion sat on his desk. Pictures of cops and firefighters were found here and there.
But as we found out, he had no next-of-kin. As the sergeant, it was my job to notify them. I had no one to visit, no one to see. No nieces or nephews, no sons or daughters. He was truly alone.
Satisfied with what I had seen, I left the detectives and constable on scene to await the coroner, and have the body removed to its final rest. As I walked down the driveway, the constable followed me out and said, “Hey Sarge, wait up! Can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Whatdya need?”
“Sarge, they’re gonna carry this guy out in a plastic bag. All the neighbours are watching. He was a firefighter for 30 years. Sarge he’s got no one . . . we can’t let him go like that. Can you find us a Canadian flag, so that when they take him out of the house, we can lay it on the gurney when they roll him to the hearse?”
7:30 on a Tuesday night. Where to find a flag? . . . Yup, the Dollar Store. The only thing open and, sure enough, they had one. Contrary to popular opinion, not everything at the dollar store costs one dollar. At this point, the cost was not really an issue. I bought the flag, and took it back to the scene.
The coroner released the body, and firefighter Robert Wilson was brought up from his apartment. Before he left the door, the flag was draped in its full glory across him, to honour the life of a man who was willing to give it at any time. For the 50 feet it took to take him to the removal vehicle, the neighbours watched in silent respect. The people from the funeral home tucked the flag secure and removed it with him. I expect it will be buried with him, too.
For a short time, the time it takes to walk a body 50 feet, he wasn’t alone. He was a firefighter, a hero. He was a Canadian. All it took was a flag to show it.
Maybe it’s time we find our heroes before their only honour comes from a dollar store.
Signed Rob Cullen
***
Prime Minister, I don’t think you need Sgt Cullen to help you find your moral compass on the Khadr Decision. When it comes to Canadian values you don’t need him or me to tell you that we are good country. But I just wanted to remind you on behalf of so many Canadians who contact me that We are a Firefighter Wilson country not an Omar Khadr country. Robert Wilson never sued the Canadian government for the service he provided lovingly and honourably. Omar Khadr is suing us for 10 million dollars and that’s just the opening number. We should be trying him for treason, but he is playing us for chumps. Prime Minister, I ask you to put a torch to take Firefighter Wilson’s hose and douse that Child Soldier fantasy and instead focus on Child Canadians, real Canadians who want to grow up in a land where they too can look at the same flag that drapes the boxes of our heroes and have the same feelings. The so-called Rule of Law in this country should never have become for the Khadrs what a fire hydrant is for dogs. And this country should never be used as an ATM for murderers and thieves. I don’t claim to love this country any more than you do Prime Minister. But I am asking you for the love of Mike, on behalf of the Rob Cullens and the Firefighter Wilsons and so many others who have made so many sacrifices for this country, to please reverse your decision to open up our borders and our wallets one more time to the Khadr Family. Our beloved Canada, Prime Minister, is spelled C-A-N-A-D-A, not K-H-A-N-A-D-A. It’s not their country Prime Minister. They’ve already taken too much.
Thank you for reading this Prime Minister. God Bless you, Laureen and your children, and God Bless Canada.
Charles Adler
Charles Adler is a national radio columnist, whose show runs on the Corus Radio Network. Charles can be heard Monday to Friday online by visiting www.charlesadler.com.
Adler’s column appears on NetNewsledger.com on a regular basis, as a means of offering new ideas, insights and opinion to the region.