The Fearful Lives in a Land of the Free

April 5, 2008

I warned the audience they might not like all they heard from me. And sure enough, when I told the audience that they were perfectly at liberty to condemn Israel and America - indeed, that they should condemn both when they abuse human rights, occupy other people’s countries and shoot innocent civilians - but that I wanted to know why I so rarely heard them condemn the vicious police states in the Middle East and other areas of south-west Asia from which they originally came, I was greeted with silence. A smattering of Muslim diplomats sat like statues, thus identifying the cruelty of their regimes.

Canada’s hopeless military involvement in Afghanistan is a subject of considerable controversy within the Canadian military. When the politicians have had their say, I’ve discovered, soldiers usually let us know their views.