Lessons Learned?

Don't hand over prisoners to guys whose ideas of justice fall somewhere between 'neolithic' and 'barbaric.'

The Conservative government claims that the release of some 4,000 pages of documents on Afghan detainees puts to bed the issue of whether Canadian Forces knowingly transferred them to be tortured, but the Ottawa Citizen's editorialists suggest that “the Canadian people will be the judge of that.” Even if no one is technically guilty of contravening the Geneva Convention, that does not expunge the political and military leadership for not thoroughly researching the people to whom they were transferring prisoners. “If Canada could do a better job of upholding human rights in a war zone, this country must acknowledge that and learn from its experience in Afghanistan,” they write, not simply sweep the matter away as the Afghan mission winds down.

There hasn't been a smoking gun document uncovered in the document dump, but John Geddes of MacLean's criticizes the Tories' messaging on the matter, opining that “it's nothing new, sadly, for a cabinet minister in this government to suggest that raising questions about how Canada handled the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities somehow amounts to displaying a lack of respect for Canadian soldiers.” And yet, that's the way Defence Minister Peter MacKay painted the release, calling it a waste of $12 million just for the opposition to score points against the armed forces. Says Geddes: “When MPs or, for that matter, reporters and ordinary citizens, hear that a minister has misled the House or that a diplomat has voiced troubling allegations, deep concern is the normal response – and not a sign of low regard for Canadian soldiers.”

Christie Blatchford, writing for Postmedia, surmises that the whole affair proves “Canadian soldiers are better, more reliable and infinitely more trustworthy bearers of what is good in this country, and of the public trust, than Canadian political leaders.” That conclusion is based on the fact that, in 2005, Paul Martin's government declined to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with the U.S., as doing so at the time was “politically unpalatable.” Instead, we transferred combatants captured on battlefields to Afghans, whose standards of safety and justice for prisoners fall far short of even the laxest of American protocols. Blatchford notes that troops and officials in Afghanistan, such as Richard Colvin, were more than forthcoming about their apprehension over the transfers. “Soldiers and government officials had to make the best of a bad arrangement,” she writes, and it was one that was struck by our elected leaders.