THE DETAINEE FILES: Canada's top soldier wants to know fate of missing Afghan reports

Frankly, the 'scandal of it all' has to do with the question raised of why should we care about any rules of engagement, if we were to treat these detainees as some sort of 'un-uniformed combatant scum' as suggested earlier. If we are, as a nation, fighting a war on behalf of a people as we did in Korea, in WW2, and even, if not especially in WW1 where the German army did not pose an immediate or forseeable threat to a sovereign Canada, then one wonders why a moral code of prisoner conduct applies in any war . . . but it does . . . or at least it used to, according to my grandfather and great grandfather.

Let's assume Kelly is right . . . we shouldn't worry about it. But the problem with a 'kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out' attitude in this case is, who is to say what constitutes the right to apply that apathy towards a detainee? After all, there are many reported cases of child soldiers, who have been polluted to fight a war that they might not otherwise have done if they weren't consistently brainwashed. It would seem that in cases like that (which are highly provable as existing), one might want to have a bit of care as to what happens to a person like that. Although one would think that an authority assuming a higher moral ground would treat all people alike in terms of NOT torturing or executing them arbitrarily or giving them to people that would, perhaps the thought of mistreatment of children that were coerced into fanaticism would at least give the more bloodthirsty of our country a reason to pause and at least honestly think a little harder about dismissing all people in a fashion that's more reminiscient of burning crosses.

The problem posed with the proposition of 'It's not our problem' in terms of what happens afterwards to handing over of prisoners is akin to the very same rules that we have in place as to why we don't send back illegal immigrants that are in immediate danger of being persecuted, tortured, or executed in their home countries . . . ergo, the term 'refugees'. It's a humanitarian ideal that we purport to uphold even though it does take time and effort to sort through. But that's the problem . . . a lot of times, doing the right thing is a bit more time consuming, and more expensive . . . and if we don't want to do it, then we don't have the right to assume that we are on any sort of 'side of right', because if we are going to be in a war, any detainees we capture are under our protection, which becomes a mandate as ordered by the very laws of decency and engagement of war that our forefathers fought to found and preserve in any of the wars we fought, regardless of archaic historical nonsense one might refer to as if it were some sort of moral axiom.

I would hope that qualifies as a scandal . . . otherwise, Canada has definitely lost its way.