For Whom The Bin Tolls
By Mark Steyn
National Review Online
May 7th 2011

The upshot of my weekend bin-off column is that we won a tree but we’re losing the surrounding forest. Andy has one example of that. I would like to cite a further three, from a trio of G7 economies and principal American allies, all of whom have contributed troops to the increasingly purposeless Afghan campaign and two of whom are Washington’s principal comrades-in-arms there.

First from Canada:

Zaynab Khadr is disconsolate at the death of Osama, and has adopted his mugshot as the photo for her Facebook page. She and her Facebook friends are taking it bad:

The Muslim Ummah will be in Mourning for 3 days, may Ilah give us the saber and strength to keep up the fight.

Miss Khadr is the daughter of Ahmed Khadr, known as “al-Kanadi”, the highest-ranking Canadian in al-Qaeda until his death in a firefight in Pakistan. Her first husband was one of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s accomplices in an embassy bombing. One of her brothers is at Gitmo, another was paralyzed in the same battle in which his father died and, rather than entrust his medical needs to a Pakistani prison hospital, came “home” to Toronto to avail himself of free Ontario health care. I wrote about the Khadr family here, and quoted what is perhaps the ripest distillation of the delusions of multiculturalism – Jean Chrétien’s words to a third of Miss Khadr’s siblings:

Once I was a son of a farmer, and I became Prime Minister. Maybe one day you will become one.

Abdullah Khadr isn’t there yet, but a couple of years back he was released by the Mounties after the Supreme Court of Canada denied a US extradition request. So he is available.

Whether or not he becomes Prime Minister, he will never be Canadian. Under a sane immigration system, the Khadr family would never have been admitted to Canada. Treason is an unfashionable word these days, but the Khadrs aren’t merely “giving aid and comfort to the Queen’s enemies”, they are the Queen’s enemies, a significant proportion of them having been captured and killed while fighting for the other side. Yet, instead of being reviled or even mildly disapproved of, they became Canadian liberals’ cause celèbre, poster boys to all the usual campaigners for “justice”.

Second example, from Londonistan:

HUNDREDS of Osama bin Laden supporters clashed with English Defence League extremists today as a “funeral service” for the assassinated terror leader sparked fury outside London’s US Embassy.

That’s an interesting way of putting it. Hundreds of people cheer a mass murderer on the streets of London, but they’re merely “supporters”. Those who oppose them are the “extremists”. It’s true that, if you regard M Chrétien’s words above as the norm, the English Defence League has by comparison a somewhat, um, reductive view of the modern multicultural society. But, when even a Fleet Street tabloid covering a pro-terrorist-vs-English-nationalist protest reflexively labels the latter as the “extremists”, you know we’re losing the very language in which we can even discuss the issues.

Third example, from Germany:

A Hamburg judge has filed a criminal complaint against Chancellor Angela Merkel for “endorsing a crime” after she stated she was “glad” that Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces. Meanwhile a new poll reveals that a majority of Germans do not see the terrorist’s death as a reason to celebrate…

But Hamburg judge Heinz Uthmann went even further. He alleges that the chancellor’s statement was nothing short of illegal, and filed a criminal complaint against Merkel midweek, the daily Hamburger Morgenpost reported Friday.

“I am a law-abiding citizen and as a judge, sworn to justice and law,” the 54-year-old told the paper, adding that Merkel’s words were “tacky and undignified.”

In his two-page document, Uthmann, a judge for 21 years, cites section 140 of the German Criminal Code, which forbids the “rewarding and approving” of crimes. In this case, Merkel endorsed a “homicide,” Uthmann claimed. The violation is punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment or a fine.

Ah, it’s such a short step from tacky and undignified to criminal and imprisonable, isn’t it? In the bigger picture, the above three items may be more relevant than a spectacular one-off by a handful of brave SEALs: The western world imports, nurtures and celebrates its enemies; its dominant institutions render that fact undiscussable; and they’re prepared to demolish their own justice systems and prosecute the most absurd thought-crimes against those who decline to get with the program.