Keeping America Safe: Prosecuting Children as Terrorists
By Dave Lindorff
Created Jun 21 2008 - 3:39pm
President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the rest of the warmongers
and terror-pimps in the White House would have us believe that Omar Khadr
is
a monster. Khadr is the 21-year-old Canadian who is facing one of the
first
show-trials at Guantanamo.
But let's just step back a minute and consider Mr. Khadr's case.
The son of an alleged Islamic fundamentalist, Khadr was sent to one of
those
fundamentalist madrassa schools in Pakistan back when he was 14. From
there,
he went to Afghanistan, to join with the Taliban in fighting against the
remnant warlord backers of the Soviet Union, which had attempted to run
Afghanistan as a vassal state.
Then came 9-11 and the October 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. Young
Khadr
suddenly found himself fighting against the world's most powerful
military.
In 2002, after the Taliban government had fallen, Khadr was still out in
the
hills with the forces of resistance. The Taliban government was gone, but
the war was not over. In fact it's still not over, with the Taliban
resurgent in much of Afghanistan.
In this situation, with some 20,000 US and European troops battling across
Afghanistan, Khadr, by then at the ripe age of 15, found himself with a
group of five older fighters in a compound up in the hills. Some US
Special
Forces came on the location, and, peeking through cracks in the door, saw
the group, armed with AK rifles. They called on the men to surrender, but
the men allegedly refused.
At that point the brave Americans called in an air strike, and clobbered
the
building. After that softening up, they went inside to pick up the pieces.
Someone at that point, and US military prosecutors claim it was the
wounded
Khadr, tossed a grenade while lying injured on the ground. The grenade
killed Special Forces Sergeant Christopher Speer. Speer's comrades opened
fire, with three of them hitting Khadr.
When they went to check on him, the critically injured, yet miraculously
still living Khadr re****tedly pleaded, "Shoot me!" Re****tedly, some of
Sgt.
Speer's buddies were ready to do just that. Apparently the "clicking" of
injured captives by American forces (a war crime) is not uncommon, and
even
has its own slang word. But a medic with the group interceded and stopped
the battlefield execution, and took action to save Khadr's life.
Khadr was eventually ****pped off to Guantanamo, at the age of 15, in
violation of a 2002 protocol signed by the US which extended the
protection
of the Geneva Conventions against imprisoning child soldiers from the
prior
"under 15" standard to "under 18." No matter, "bad guy" Khadr would be one
of at least 2500 children that the US has admitted to incarcerating in
Iraq,
Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere as "enemy combatants."
Today, Khadr is 21. He has spent the second half of his teenage years
confined in a prison camp on the naval base at Guantanamo.
This is what Bush and Cheney are really referring to when they assure us
that they are holding "the worst of the worst" on the island of Cuba.
They are keeping us safe from 15-year-old boys.
And what, exactly, is Omar Khadr's "crime"?
As far as I can tell, if he did toss that grenade (and there is testimony
from American witnesses that the thrower may have been another man, who
was
killed in the resulting US barrage of fire), Khadr was simply
demonstrating
extraordinary bravery of the kind that would earn a silver star, at least,
had it been a US soldier or marine doing the same thing under the same
cir***stances. Consider: he and his comrades-in-arms, battling in defense
of
their religion and, in some cases, their nation, were bombarded from the
air. They were then approached by armed US troops--the very ones who had
called in the air strike. This was a battle, and it was not over yet. For
all Khadr knew, those US soldiers were going to kill them all. And in any
event, Khadr and his fellow fighters had a right to defend themselves to
the
death to prevent capture. Sure it's unfortunate that Sgt. Speer was
killed,
but that's what happens in wars.
Still, a fighter killing another fighter during warfare is not the act of
a
"terrorist." It may be brutal and it may be tragic, but it is the act of a
soldier. That soldier, if captured, is not a criminal, but a POW.
Moreover,
if he is a child, the Geneva Conventions and the subsequent protocol
mentioned above, require that he be treated not as a POW but as a victim
of
war.
Bush and Cheney don't want to admit that the people fighting US forces in
Afghanistan are legitimate soldiers, entitled to protection under the
rules
of war. They want us to believe that anyone who takes up a gun in defense
of
their homeland or of the homeland of their allies, and fights against the
US
military forces that are spread all over the globe like Roman Legions of
old, are "terrorists," deserving of whatever fate we hand them, by
whatever
rules we want to gin up.
But it's worth remembering that this particular "terrorist," at the time
of
his "crime," was simply a scared and badly-wounded 15-year-old kid who had
the balls to toss a grenade at well-armed soldiers on a search-and-destroy
mission.
In an interesting twist that further highlights the absurdity of calling a
15-year-old a hardened terrorist, Speer's widow, Tabitha, and another
soldier who lost an eye in the grenade blast, sued not Khadr, but his
father's estate, claiming that his "failure to control his son" had been
the
proximate cause of their losses. A federal district judge, in February
2006,
awarded the two $102.6 million in damages. In other words, the court
concluded Khadr wasn't responsible for his actions; his father was. And
yet
the US is prosecuting Omar Khadr for being a hardened terrorist at an age
when he was too young to drive!
The Bush/Cheney administration's incarceration and prosecution of this boy
was a war crime. His continued incarceration and the attempt to prosecute
him as a terrorist today makes a mockery of America's motto: Home of the
Brave.
We should all be ashamed.
--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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