Friday, May 15, 2015

The Best Advice Regarding the Importance of Education That You Will Ever Hear: Some Wise Words from Ex-child Soldier, Omar Khadr

On May 7, 2015, after his released from nearly 13 years of imprisonment and many years of torture, during his first press conference, Omar Khadr provides the best advice regarding the importance of education that you will ever hear (at 5:27):
Question from Reporter: “What would you say to someone kind of contemplating extremism and maybe looking to you? What would you say to them?”

Omar Khadr: “What I would tell anybody is to educate yourself, [so you won’t be easily controlled]. Education is a very important thing. I have noticed that a lot of people are manipulated by not being educated. So education is a very important thing.”
Omar Khadr speaks to media


There is no doubt that one of the most important reasons to become educated is so that you are not easily manipulated, but who is Omar Khadr?

As one of the most respected Canadians in history, and by all accounts the most respected contemporary Canadian of our time, Lieutenant-General Roméo Antonius Dallaire, in a press release on May, 8th, 2015, stated that “the story of Omar Khadr has been nothing if not infuriating.”

On June 29, 2012, Dallaire told Omar Khadr’s story to the Canadian Senate “to put on the record the case of the only child soldier prosecuted for war crimes.” It is a speech that in my humble opinion should be mandatory reading for every Canadian and added to every high school history curriculum in the country.

In his speech, Dallaire explained that what Khadr was forced to endure has been “a stain upon our society, and a fundamental reproach upon our respect for international law and conventions that we have signed.” He concluded by stating:
“There can be no doubt, and I conclude, that the case of Omar Khadr taints this government, this country and all of its citizens”.
I concur with Dallaire.

In the introduction to politics on this site I stated that “I feel that I don’t have anything direct to say without repeating myself”, so I’ll refrain from expanding on this topic further and redirect anyone that wants further information on Khadr to the following posts that I made on my previous site in 2008 (available from archive.org), as well as embedding the interrogation video of Khadr by CSIS agents at Guantanamo Bay:

  • The United States is torturing children and then falsifying evidence against them: Update on Omar Khadr and Afghanistan

  • Gitmo interrogation video! Is this some kind of sick joke? Release Omar Khadr’s Torture Tapes!

  • Supreme Court of Canada rules that Guantanamo Bay is illegal: update on Omar Khadr

  • Guantanamo Bay child soldier CSIS interrogation - Omar Khadr
    Extended video: Omar Khadr (Guantanamo Bay) Interrogation Tapes.