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Canada’s Own
I’m sure you’ve all aware by now of the raid that disrupted – and hopefully halted – the plot to bomb locations in Ontario, including the CN Tower and Ottawa’s Peace Tower, with home-made fertilizer bombs.
The seventeen men arrested are all Canadian citizens, and most were born in Canada. CSIS assistant operations director Luc Portelance calls them “homegrown”. More arrests are expected.
This is an open thread on this event, and more broadly, terrorism in Canada. How do you feel about this? What’s your take?
June 5th, 2006 at 8:47 am
i feel sad…that’s my take!
June 5th, 2006 at 9:05 am
I guess two things come out of this for me:
1) Al-Qaeda is not an organization, but an ideology. There’s no heirarchy to disrupt, no leadership to take out, no representatives to negotiate with. Therefore, the War on Terror as such is nonsense on its face.
Wars are faught between opposing armies representing opposing entities, be they nations, armies, clans, or gangs, but al-Qaeda is none of these things. It is a shared devotion to the idea that Western civilization is hypocritical, immoral, destructive, and imperialistic, and that violence is justified if it undermines that civilization.
2) Policing works, eh? An entity like al-Qaeda demands an intelligence and police response, not wars against illegitimate proxies like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Ba-athists in Iraq.
By a) the opportunity costs of those wars and b) the squandered goodwill and cooperation among countries, the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, ostensibly related to the War on Terror, have hindered efforts to address terrorist plots even as they further alienate other countries, radicalize victims and bystanders, and incite more plots.
June 5th, 2006 at 9:26 am
It will be interesting to read the media treatments today. I will have more to say later in the week.
The fact that these individuals were coordinated and funded leads me to think that there was a certain degree of organization underpinning their efforts. Perhaps not a distinct affiliation to a known terrorist group, but still a support network of sorts.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:33 am
Hi alevo,
I’m not saying these terrorists weren’t organized, didn’t plan, or weren’t funded. I’m saying that al-Qaeda as a global organization doesn’t exist. What we call “al-Qaeda” is a blanket term to describe various terrorist organizations in various different countries that share similar ideologies. Al-Qaeda as a global organization is no more coherent that Communism was during, say, the 1970s.
June 6th, 2006 at 8:55 am
This morning I was thinking about the court trial. What kind of sentencing would be handed down from a successful prosecution, and what the courts would do at that point with the five accussed who are considered juvenilles. Canada does not have a history of hard justice, particularly with young adults.
June 6th, 2006 at 10:31 am
I have thinking about the same thing and briefly chatted with Ade about it last night. I imagine given the hysteria that the media has created; these young men will receive harsher sentences then many other young men that commit crimes.
June 6th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
I imagine they’re going to be charged with conspiracy and possibly treason, which carries a mandatory life sentence (sections 46.2.c, 47 of the Criminal Code). How such a charge would present in a juvenile case is beyond me. I suppose they will likely be charged as adults.
June 7th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
I have been investigating a “homegrown” Islamist group that has a presence in both the US and Canada. They’ve been operating here for 25 years. They have both trained and launched attacks right here in North America. Most of these attacks were also dismissed as just criminal acts, but they represent a pattern of something deeper. They even hatched a failed, but chilling plot on Toronto back in the early 90s.
I’ve posted a detailed timeline of their activities going back to 1979 at my blog with some commentery. You may find it interesting. I hope to post more on their presence in Canada very soon.
http://politicsofcp.blogspot.com/2006/06/jamaat-ul-fuqra-homegrown-islamic.html