by Matt Gurney - from the National Post
Here’s a disturbing report. It’s speculative at this point, but should set off alarms for Canadians all the same:
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court says that if the federal government won’t look into how Canadian soldiers handled detainees in Afghanistan for possible war crimes violations, he’s willing to. … “We’ll check if there are crimes and also we’ll check if a Canadian judge is doing a case or not . . . if they don’t, the court has to intervene,” Moreno-Ocampo told filmmaker Barry Stevens in his documentary called Prosecutor.
In other news, Syrian soldiers are gunning down their own civilians … but the country still just got a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. Well, I guess someone had to pick up Libya’s slack. And why was Libya given the boot? Oh, yeah, they sent soldiers to gun down their own civilians. Hmmm.
Yes, the UNHRC and the International Criminal Court are not the same bodies. But how much faith we should have in the ICC is directly linked to how much faith we should have in heavily bureaucratized international institutions. The answer? Not all that much. Once the ICC has found a way to haul Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir in on the war crimes and genocide warrants they have had out on him since February of 2009, maybe then they should check in on Canada again. Or, perhaps, having given up on being able to actually punish countries that won’t want to be punished, the ICC has decided it’s easier just to go after the nations that do generally adhere to international law? It’s a lot easier that way.
Canadian soldiers should not be above the law. There are rules in war, and when those rules get violated, there should be punishment. It’s one of the downsides of fighting for ideals, rather than territory, resources or glory of the king/God/whatever. You need to fight in a way roughly suited to your stated objectives — in our case, usually stability, democracy and the rule of law. That doesn’t mean the gloves can’t come off (a la Hiroshima and Nagasaki), because war does have its own brutal calculus. But it means that whenever it’s possible to honour rules and laws of war, it should be done, and when it’s not possible, it needs to be made plain to the world that the only other options were even worse.
Canada has shown a willingness to hold itself to a high standard of conduct on the battlefield. Just ask former Canadian Forces captain Robert Semrau, who was thrown out of the military (and nearly imprisoned) after allegedly shooting a mortally wounded Taliban soldier to put the enemy out of his misery. Such an act of mercy was contrary to the laws of war and to Canadian military laws and codes. It was probably the right thing to do, morally. But it was against the law, and the Forces almost destroyed Semrau’s life upholding their own rules. Read more...
No comments:
Post a Comment