People may not agree with this, but here is my reasoning for why I believe Khadr deserves his settlement, even if he is guilty of all the allegations, he went to trial and thus far our government has upheld his conviction and even had him serve a portion of it here. He broke the law, he paid the legal price. What the government did was no different, they broke the law, they need to also be held accountable.
It doesn't matter what either side's motives were, or how they got into the situations at the time they committed their alleged crimes. The rule of law in our country must be upheld, when the law is broken there needs to be accountability. No matter what he did, I can't in good conscience take the position that we must hold an individual responsible for their crimes while not holding those who enforce the law(government) just as responsible when they commit a crime.
That becomes a very slippery slope which puts our democracy at risk. People fought and died for the laws we have, when we start to ignore those laws whenever we feel it is convenient, and remove accountability from our government to obey those laws the same as we are expected to, we slowly erode the make up of our society. In doing so we move away from a free democracy and closer towards an authoritarian state. All things being equal if I had to choose between which scenario is more damaging and dangerous overall, Khadr being given a free pass on his crimes or the government being given a free pass on theirs, I would choose the government being given a free pass and frankly I don't even consider it debatable.
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