Posted on 05/07/2007 4:08:05 AM PDT by Clive
When I'm wondering what kind of impact a major news story is having on the public, I rely on several barometers: What are the women at the gym saying? What are the customers talking about in the supermarket checkout line?
Utterly unscientific, I know, but strangely accurate in the past. When eight Canadian soldiers were killed in one week in Afghanistan, the women at the gym were horrified. It was a terrible thing, they agreed. They were glad their family members weren't soldiers.
When five people were killed in a car accident on Highway 7 east of Peterborough, Ont., last week, again they were horrified. They avoid Highway 7 because the accident count is so high.
Similarly, when the feds decided to ban incandescent lightbulbs, the people at the supermarket marvelled at how quickly those funny-looking fluorescent bulbs sold out even though they cost a lot more than the old ones.
But on the possibility of Taliban terrorists being tortured or otherwise abused after Canadian soldiers turn them over to Afghan authorities, nobody said a word. When I sneakily fished for reaction by suggesting there might be a scandal, I got blank stares.
Scandal? What scandal?
The Globe and Mail thinks there's one. Last Monday, it claimed Taliban prisoners were being held in medieval conditions and up to 30 had been tortured or otherwise abused. Worse, Canada wasn't keeping tabs on them.
But you can't have a scandal unless lots of people agree there is one and to date, that's largely limited to opposition MPs and the Globe and Mail.
Another reliable barometer of public opinion is the mail newspapers receive and the Sun Media's mail is running heavily in favour of, "Who cares?"
An awful lot of ordinary Canadians couldn't care less what happens to Taliban prisoners. I certainly don't. If they were all to die tomorrow, I'd cheer.
And why not? As Sun Media letter writers keep pointing out, these aren't soldiers. These are terrorists -- people who allowed a 12-year-old boy to behead a prisoner accused of spying and released a video of it. These are people who never heard of the Geneva Conventions and wouldn't care if they had.
These are people willing to do anything to kill our troops. What do you think they'd do to a Canadian soldier? Lock him up in a nice, clean cell? Make sure he gets a good night's sleep? I doubt it.
So why would anyone care what happens to them? As one reader pointed out, "Jack Layton seems to care more about the Taliban and the Taliban prisoners than he does about our own Canadian soldiers. How sad."
Liberal leader Stephane Dion's suggestion earlier this week that we should bundle up the detainees and bring them to prisons in Canada as we did with German and Italian prisoners of war during the Second World War was silly. Typically, those soldiers were ordinary working- and middle-class guys just like ours, not fanatics ready to slaughter anyone.
As reader Pierre Bouchard, of Whitby, put it, "Now maybe we could have a poll asking what is closer to your Canadian values -- the safety and security of a desperate Afghan people or the absolute guarantee of gentle treatment to Taliban prisoners who are responsible for all this mayhem. It would be interesting to see the results."
Amen to that.
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A bump for (UN)common sense!
Sounds like Canada was just trying to accommodate them with their (professed) preferred lifestyle.
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