What Price Salvation?

      The story of the Maher Arar case desperately needs answers, especially as we consider the so-called notion of a War on Terror, a war that itself is given to terrorizing tendencies. I don't know what's worst in this story: the Canadian government's silence and wilful ignorance, the American government's reprehensible and duplicitous use of torture by proxy, or the blatant abnegation on all sides of international law. And then there's the flimsy (and by no means assuaging) claim that 'things could have been worse' for Mr. Arar had he not held a Canadian passport.

      The Canadian goverment needs to get substantial answers and reparations for Mr. Arar from the U.S. government, and to pressure the U.S. to acknowledge its disgusting hypocrisy in this so-called War On Terror. Strange how one form of terrorism is cowardly and evil, while another form is given the stamp of a 'necessary and legitimate action.' Sending a man to be tortured elsewhere in the name of the prosecution of a war on terror isn't justice-- it's the gesture of Pilate washing his hands.

      As for the possibility that the US received its information from Canadian intelligence: perhaps, even quite probably. But one wonders if this passing on of information hasn't become a necessity given the new world order created in the wake of September 11th-- and one wonders if Canadian intelligence really fathomed that our southern neighbours would send off a Canadian citizen to be tortured by Syria. After all, what right did the U.S. government have to deport a Canadian citizen to anywhere but Canada? Such tactics aren't governmental: they're more typical of the mafia. Are we re-entering a world of internment and blacklisting, of paranoid scapegoating?

      And, of course, the coverage of this story seems to warrant barely a peep in the United States. A few newspaper articles here and there, but nothing (that I've seen, anyway) on the major networks. Gee, I wonder why...