Time Immortal

Because, you know, it wasn’t enough when they whored themselves out to the abortion lobby. Now they’ve filed a lawsuit that could endanger Canada’s mission in Afghanistan…which, apparently, is being seriously considered by a judge.

A top military commander says in a sworn affidavit Canadian troops would have to quit fighting the Taliban if they could not hand prisoners over to Afghan authorities.

Listing a long series of possible embarrassments and defeats, Brigadier-General Andre Deschamps outlined what he says would be the dire consequences, including losing the war, should a Federal Court judge rule in favour of a request by human-rights groups to issue an injunction banning the transfer of detainees to Afghan prisons because of the risk of torture or abuse.

…

Gen. Deschamps sketches a variety scenarios. Taliban fighters might surrender in droves, he warns, if they knew Canada would release them because it could not either hold them or transfer them. “The insurgents could attack us with impunity knowing that if they fail to win an engagement they would simply have to surrender and wait for release to resume operations,” he said in a sworn affidavit.

…

Gen. Deschamps says such an injunction would result in Canadian Forces retreating to secure bases because they “would not be able to capture individuals who pose a threat to the Canadian Forces, our allies or the [International Security Assistance Force] mission.”

Think about how absurd this injunction is for a moment: Canadian forces are in Afghanistan to assist the legitimate Afghani government in policing its own state against Taliban insurgency. The Afghani government has every legal right to demand that prisoners be turned over to them merely and solely on that basis. Until and unless Canadian troops switch to an occupying role within Afghanistan, and thus assume the capability to mete out justice on those taken prisoner during battles — subverting the authority of the aforementioned legitimate government of Afghanistan in the process — they are merely acting in an agentic role to achieve the goals of the Afghani regime.

So it’s not really alarmist to suggest that, were this lawsuit by Amnesty International to succeed, Canada’s mission in Afghanistan would be horribly impaired by the necessary modification to our troops’ rules of engagement…so much so, in fact, that it would likely become impossible for Canada to remain an effective combatant in Afghanistan.

Either that, or the rules of engagement could simply be changed to “take no prisoners” and left at that. But somehow I think Amnesty International would view that as a counterproductive result. I know for a fact I would — the last thing I want to see Canadian troops involved in is the murder of captured enemy combatants.

Fact is, the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan do not have the necessary infrastructure to support the taking and processing of prisoners of war. Even more than that, though, they really don’t have the right to take their own prisoners, because they’re not in Afghanistan serving Canadian interests; they are there to help the Afghani regime secure its state. Almost by definition, any Taliban prisoners taken by Canadian troops should be turned over to Afghanistan for detainment and processing, if in fact we a) recognize and b) wish to promote the legitimate government of that nation and its right to administer law and order within its borders.

I like Drew’s comment at Ace of Spades: “A lot of these so called “human rights” groups aren�t so much anti-Western as they are just plain pro-terrorist.”. I’d even go one further and suggest that there’s an undercurrent of genuine racism (not that lamey-fakey kind that progressives so often accuse other people of) in the Amnesty lawsuit. Implicit in their thinking must certainly be the idea that the Afghani people are simply too unsophistacated to handle anything so onerous as the administration of law and order within the boundaries of their own nation-state.