Just Why Would Young Canadians Go Off to Fight in Syria?

Not Difficult to Figure Out Why Young People Join ISIS

by Sandra Finley - The Battles

Please forward this to anyone you know who is an RCMP or police officer, or who works in security forces. Thanks!

It is not difficult to put forward a likely reason why some young Canadians are going to Syria to join the “terrorists”.

In 2010 I was contacted through social media by a young sister of Omar Khadr’s who had read a posting of mine. She was desperate, using facebook to raise awareness, getting help to bring her brother home.

My posting contained reports from the pre-trial hearing in 2010 of the depraved and highly illegal torture of 15-year-old Omar Khadr at offshore American prisons. (If my son had been treated the same I would hate the perpetrators.)

So figure it out. Lots of young Canadians KNOW what happened to Omar Khadr at the hands of we ourselves – “Westerners”. It was truly gross, unimaginable that humans can do these things to any living creature, let alone a 15-year-old boy.

I don’t know the number of young people who are “in the know”; a large number joined the support groups for Omar Khadr. People became well-informed through the sharing of information. There is lots in the public domain about the failure of the Canadian Government to get Khadr out of Guatanamo, a known place of torture – all of the Western nations, except Canada, arranged for their citizens to be removed. We joined the evil-doers.

Injustice is not forgotten

I can see young people, altruistic and idealistic, going off to help fight “the demons” (depraved Westerners).
 

. . . Something else, let’s see how much media coverage this gets: it is now known that the leader of ISIS was imprisoned by the Americans in 2004 and later released. See 2015-02-19 One year in US custody as ‘civilian detainee’: Declassified files shed light on mysterious ISIS leader

Who knows what he was subjected to? He was not in Bagram or Abu Ghraib. Even IF (best case scenario) he did not receive the torture inflicted on others, he would have known about the torture being done to his countrymen.

If you, a young man, had done to your manhood what was done to prisoners, my understanding of human behaviour leads me to believe that you would be so full of hatred, you would be out for revenge, big time. 

 

What goes around comes around.

As Pogo said, “I have seen the enemy and he is us.” Sad but true.

Kids going off to Syria are as likely to be idealists as they are to be “terrorists”.