samkorn's blog

As Syrian President Bashar Assad continues to torture and kill his citizens, including children, the best that Canada and the U.S.A. can come up with are delicately-worded suggestions of possible sanctions,the diplomatic equivalent of a slap on the wrist.

Whereas the United States has previously actively advocated for regime change in Egypt and Libya, it hasn't even come close to doing the same for Syria, citing "strategic interests" in the area. Canada is, as usual, echoing official U.S. rhetoric on the matter.

Could the real reason behind official Canadian and American foot-dragging on Syria be that we might have skeletons of our own hiding in our closets? Would it possibly have anything to do with the American program of "Rendition", where enemy combatants and possible terror suspects were illegally flown to Syria and other like-minded countries? There they would be aggressively interrogated by local proxies using any means necessary, including torture, to extract information vital to U.S. and Western interests.

A good case in point is Ottawa's Maher Arar who, with the help and tacit approval of Canadian authorities, was intercepted in the U.S. and flown by the Americans to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for one year. Cleared of any wrongdoing later in Canada, Arar was eventually awarded $10 million in damages by the Canadian government.

The fact that Canada and the U.S. continue to idly stand by and sit on the fence while these terrible events unfold in Syria (Human Rights groups estimate that 1,300 Syrians have been killed so far), is both scandalous and shameful.