Arrest That Man!

Could it happen? Picture this if you will: Today, George W. Bush makes his first trip across an international border as a private citizen, the plane touches down, he disembarks, but wait, what's this? There waiting for him are representatives of the International Criminal Court to arrest him for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And then we woke up. Not gonna happen, why? Cause he doesn't deserve it? No. Because he's landing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada - proof that he still has people around him doing his thinking for him as he couldn't pick a more conservative, oil loving, cowboy mentality, business friendly place on Earth. A place where instead of arrest, he'll find people lining up to pay $4,000 a table to hear him speak.

Here's the thing: it should happen. The evidence is there. The precedent is there. Now we just need someone with the balls to do it. My bet is that it won't be the Canadians. Legal experts have said that with the issue of a warrant for the arrest of present Sudanese President al-Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, the same principles of law could be extended to officials from the Bush Administration for the coercive interrogation techniques used on terror suspects. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) leaked a report claiming these techniques "constituted torture". Or perhaps they could get him for the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If that weren't enough, there is also the argument that Bush is inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Section 35(1) (a) states that a foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights or for committing an act outside Canada that constitutes an offence referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Also inadmissible (s.35 (1)(b)) are persons who are, or were, senior officials “in the service of a government that, in the opinion of the Minister, engages or has engaged in gross human rights violations…”. Of particular interest are articles 5, 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

"The test isn't whether the person's been convicted, but whether there's reasonable grounds to think that they have been involved," says Gail Davidson, who's with Lawyers Against the War (LAW), a group that has been pressuring the Canadian government to act. "...It's now a matter of public record that Bush was in charge of setting up a regime of torture that spanned several parts of the globe and resulted in horrendous injuries and even death. Canada has a duty."

Today being St. Patrick's Day, we'll see green beer, green rivers and green outfits. Unfortunately, it's the green of US wealth that flows into Alberta's oil rich province that will most likely prevent the Canadian authorities from acting on their moral and possibly legal obligations to arrest Dubya as he enters Canadian soil. I'm sure we'll see plenty of protesters but no arrest. At least I'll have my beer to drown my sorrow tonight.