Stopped at the border
Even as George W. Bush and his people struggle to save the murderin' mercenaries of Blackwater, and new allegations arise about regular Army snipers being pressed to raise their kill numbers like salesmen told to sell more aluminum siding, comes word that the Worst President in History (WPIH) hasn't forgotten his critics.
The Toronto Globe and Mail reports this morning that two U.S. peace activists, Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin, were barred from entering Canada because the FBI had placed their names in the National Crime Information Center database. Canadian border guards interviewed by the Globe and Mail say merely being listed in the database means you won't get into Canada. The conservative Harper government in Ottawa denies this, but I tend to believe the border guards.
The thing is, the two women had a couple of misdemeanors on their record relating to their antiwar activities. You know, the usual stuff: trespassing, disorderly conduct, maybe even pouring blood on missile nosecones. Both had been to Canada several times before at the invitation of peace groups there.
Let us say from the start, before the excuses begin, that this was hardball politics by the Bush Administration. It didn't happen by accident. Someone decided that if Wright and Benjamin were going to mess with the Great Leader, the Great Leader was really going to mess with them. In this, Bush is no doubt channeling Erich Honecker, the late, unlamented, and bureaucratically ruthless former leader of East Germany. Watch the great film, "The Lives of Others," if you want to know more about what the East German communist government did to keep folks in line.
And of course, the WPIH's people would say, it was all perfectly legal. And it may have been. But there are laws and there are understandings, and a just, liberal society cannot exist without both.
There is a sense of proportion, of not going too far even agaist people who don't like you and would like to see you thrown out of office. Putting their names in the NCIC was meant to hurt them, to hamper their anti-war activities, to deny their constitutional right to travel.
I don't excuse Canada from this: the current prime minister is no Pierre Trudeau, who opened the borders of Canada to U.S. war resisters during the Vietnam War. I hear that Canada now allows U.S. investigators into the country to search for U.S. soldiers who have fled to Canada to avoid service in Iraq.
Canada has been the Great Safety Zone in the U.S. imagination for nearly three decades. I can't tell you how many times I heard fellow Americans say things like, "well, if Reagan tries to draft my kid to invade Nicaragua, I'm taking him to Canada," or, "if they ban abortions, I'll take my daughter to Canada if she needs one."
Perhaps it's still true for abortions and other things, but not for fleeing unjust and immoral wars of choice.