Glenn Greenwald wrote an article decrying what had become of his United States after a court dismissed Maher Arar’s suit against the U.S. government.
While Greenwald’s piece is written for an American audience, it’s important for Canadians as well, if for no other reason than to educate us about what can happen to a country when its leaders try to keep certain things away from the public because “state secrets” are supposedly involved.
To Harper’s credit the Canadian government compensated Arar for his nightmare, but Harper’s love of secrecy is well documented in Canada.
Greenwald writes:
In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation. That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded “categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada.” By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves “state secrets” and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved. What does that behavioral disparity between the two nations say about how “democratic,” ”accountable,” and “open” the United States is?
Read Greenwald’s entire piece here, as a cautionary tale of how a country can lose its soul and to what lengths it will stoop to cover up their wrongdoing.
