You can defend rights of those you oppose

..and not seem hypocritical.
Omar Khadr and the federal government concluded their legal battle last week with a $10.5 million payment and an official apology from the Liberal government for his treatment and the failure of said government to uphold his rights as a citizen.
Short version of the story..
Omar was taken by his father at age 12 to fight against 'foreign' invaders to Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11. At age 15, Omar Khadr was part of a close combat where an American soldier was killed. This soldier was killed by a hand grenade that at first was allegedly thrown by a middle aged looking 'insurgent'. For some reason, that account got changed to match the 15 year old youth we know as Omar Khadr. He was the only survivor of the insurgent side.
He was quickly shipped off to Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.
From there, it gets murkey. The teenage soldier was tried under a military court without adequate representation by legal counsel. It's alleged that his 'confession' was coerced by torture. 
All the while, there was an attempt to repatriate Khadr back to Canada where his fate would be subject to domestic rules. 
In the intervening time, our own supreme court weighed in and said things. Three times, they declared that Khadr's Constitutional rights were violated. 
At this point, I have to remind folks that no one is asking you to support the actual causes that triggered Khadr's father to take him as a boy to fight in a war. No one is asking you to side with Khadr over the American soldier who was killed. This isn't a popularity contest. 
But you cannot be a liberal on human rights or a constitutional conservative if you qualify that position based on the viewpoint of a legitimate plaintiff. 
Politics are a funny thing sometimes. What is popular today was demonized only a few short years ago. This is the generation of Pride Parades attended by world leaders and Alt-right luminaries being normalized into mainstream opinion making. But absolute things like due-process-of-law and the notion of equal protection under the law should never be seen as a passing fad; they're a bedrock of a democratic society. 
You can be as upset as you want about Khadr and his settlement, but he's entitled to the same rights and obligations that every other citizen has. And for our government to guage his treatment against what is popular at the time vs what is right is what lead to this fiasco. 
I'm not at all a federal liberal supporter and I'm no fan of Trudeau, but in this case, they're correct. 
Case closed.

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