It’s something about stories like this one; for whatever reason my opinion on what “should” be done swings back and forth more than a little kid on the swing set. On one side Omar was associating with some VERY questionable people, and from the available information they appear to be Al Qaeda. The circumstantial evidence is enough to make any westerner cautious of both him and his entire family. I mean, the family had close business practices with Osama bin Laden, the Taliban, and other Al Qaeda members, he was brought up in a school (taught by his dad) that told him it was every Muslim’s path to die as a martyr, and his family still stands by these ideas of martyrdom to reach the virgins.
Side comment on the virgin thing: I know hormones are raging when kids hit puberty, but the clip from “60 Minutes” made this Muslim belief seem more like plain pornography than religion. I wonder how much this plays into the decision to become a suicide bomber or a martyr in general.
Back on target now, I can fully see why someone would want to defend someone like Omar Khadr given his age (15) and loyalty to his father. If I’m not mistaken I think there are even US laws that prevent children from being prosecuted for knowing about a crime of their parent (or some variation of that). In addition, all the evidence of Omar’s part in the death of the medic seems overwhelmingly circumstantial, and if he were put on a criminal trial in the
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I think that's a major problem with how the U.S. is pursuing the GWOT. It's okay to label it as a war, but if it is, it should be prosecuted as such in its entirety. I'm going to twist a metaphor Pope John Paul II once used in referring to the principles of Catholicism: IHL is not a buffet table. You don't get to choose when to apply some and not others. The U.S. can't say it's a war when it's convenient. It either is, or it isn't. It can't be both.
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