O Canada; O No, Washington
Most Americans recognize that we are at war with people who use open societies as the sea in which to swim. Our neighbor Canada apparently does not; and we have serious questions about our State Department.
Most Americans recognize that we are at war with people who use open societies as the sea in which to swim. Our neighbor Canada apparently does not; and we have serious questions about our State Department.
U.S. immigration law requires the fingerprinting and photographing of people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria (the State Department’s list of terror supporting countries) when they arrive here. It seems the least we could do. Last week, it was announced that Canadian citizens born in those five countries would be subjected to the same measures. Ottawa called it “discriminatory” and “unfriendly,” and issued an advisory for its citizens to reconsider travel to the U.S. Our Ambassador in Canada immediately backed off.
Why Canada? For starters, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has a long and detailed dossier on the operations of Hizbullah in that country. The (Canadian) National Post reports that CSIS has documents detailing how Hizbullah laundered money through Canadian banks while drawing on the accounts to purchase military equipment – including blasting devices, night-vision goggles, powerful computers and camera equipment. According to the (Montreal) Gazette, in reports dated April 2002, CSIS showed that in 1999 and 2000, Hizbullah sent lists of required items to agents in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. The equipment was shipped to Lebanon by courier.
The Post writes that Canadian police and intelligence reports show the group has been using Canada to forge travel documents, raise money and steal luxury vehicles. But, “Even as they lived in Canada with their families as immigrants the Hizbullah operatives apparently remained disdainful of their new surroundings, denouncing ‘the Canadians and the Zionists’ in a wiretapped conversation.” According to CSIS, Hizbullah has been using Canada for more than a decade.
CSIS made its information available to U.S. attorneys prosecuting Hizbullah operatives involved in a cigarette smuggling ring that raised huge sums of money. We took the information seriously; hence the concern about nasty people crossing what remains the longest undefended border in the world.
The Canadian PM still defends Hizbullah as a political organization and even after the CSIS report, the Foreign Minister said of Hizbullah fund-raising, “We don’t believe it would be appropriate to label as terrorists innocent doctors, teachers and other people who are seeking to do charitable and other good works in their communities.”
The Canadian government is naive in the extreme. But worse, the State Department responded to the huffy criticism of American caution by revoking the order. Has OUR government decided that phony cries of “discrimination” are a greater threat to American security than the possibility that people who used Canada’s open society to plot and finance terrorism might come south? If monitoring bothers Canada, then let them issue their travel warning, and let those who are afraid of being photographed stay home.