Chris Selley's Full Pundit: Torture? In Afghanistan? For shame!
It's the cover-up that kills
In which Canadians yet again prove their infinite capacity to be amazed that Afghanistan is a really horrible place.
The Toronto Star’s editorialists are well scandalized by Richard Colvin’s “bombshell” allegations of torture and cover-ups of torture in Afghanistan. Now, don’t get us wrong — this is big, bad news. But we’re not totally clear yet what the bombshell is. That people get tortured in Afghan prisons? That Canada handed over prisoners to the Afghans, who may well have tortured them? That politicians knew about this? (We knew about it — why wouldn’t Peter MacKay have?) That the government discouraged record-keeping and otherwise covered up the mess? Clearly our policies were out of sync with our international partners’, and especially with Canadians’ expectations of lilywhite war-waging. But at no point this week have we found ourselves at all shocked.
The Globe and Mail’s editorialists look back to the Paul Martin days, when the government first decided to transfer detainees to the Afghans rather than to the Americans. And they think the fact the Afghan government pointed out “that it was not ready with adequate prison capacity … should have been a hint that Afghan jailers might not meet Western professional corrections standards.” Oh, for heaven’s sake. Western professional corrections standards? IT’S AFGHANISTAN. It’s, like, the worst place on earth. There’s no Western standards in anything, anywhere.
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