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June 15, 2005

Family reunion

It seems to me that we're handling the Khadrs just about right. The allies in the War on Terror can say about these people what they can say about all too few terrorists and potential terrorists: "We know where they are, and we know what they're doing." When lovely Zaynab Khadr returned to Canada in February, RCMP officers were waiting for her at Pearson. They impounded her laptop and it may have yielded some important information. And now that she's back, she can kiss her passport goodbye and live out a pathetic life of terrorist sympathy in some soulless GTA apartment block. I can think of few fates more fitting.

Indeed, the selfishness of the "deport the Khadrs" crowd astonishes me. Look, I'd rather this family didn't exist at all, but since they do, I'm glad they're in Canada. We're keeping tabs on them. We're stopping them from leaving. Notwithstanding various pie-in-the-sky vigilante murder scenarios, the only practical alternative to the Khadrs staying here is to send them to a country crazy enough to accept them: Pakistan, perhaps, or Egypt, where they may have a claim to citizenship. And those are probably the best case scenarios. They're not going to Bermuda, put it that way.

One cannot legitimately claim to support the war on Islamic terrorism if one advocates sending the able-bodied Khadrs back to the Middle East. We need fewer terrorists over there, remember? Whose fault will it be when one of them blows himself up in some Iraqi town square? Jean Chrétien's?

Posted by Chris Selley at June 15, 2005 11:42 PM