“What would you have done?”
My parents confronted me with this question many times during political discussions over the years. They meant, “What would you have done prior to and during World War II when you discovered that the Nazis were exterminating the Jews?”
My mother, Marguerite de Monchy, lived in Rotterdam, Holland during WWII. She knew about the Holocaust and about the attempts of many Jews to flee Europe to North America where they were often turned back. Her father, then a director of the Holland America Cruise Lines, had offered free passage to the would-be refugees if countries were willing to take them. More often than not the answer was “No”. Later these delinquent countries, Canada included, would protest that they didn’t know what was going on, a disclaimer that history – including front page newspaper reports from 1942 - proves to be blatantly false. Both my mother and grandfather worked with the Resistance and harboured members of the Resistance in their home at great risk to themselves. Often they were searched. Had members of the Resistance been found then they all would likely have been executed. Many of my mother’s peers, in their early 20’s, disappeared during the Nazi occupation.
My father, Warren William Finlay, left his studies in engineering at Queen’s University for Officer Training Corps and volunteered in the Canadian Army. He was pretty honest about his motivations, telling me that as a young “whipper snapper” he wanted adventure, travel, and heroism. He said that at the time he hadn’t paid much heed to the news of the Holocaust. This would get my mother going: “But that is no excuse. Everyone knew! It was in the news in North America.”
Whether he knew about the Holocaust or not, my father gave the Italian campaign and then the liberation of Holland his all. He was awarded the Military Cross for swimming a communications line across a river during heavy fighting in Holland. Would I have had the courage to do such a feat? I fear not.
Often our discussions would become heated. I would argue against contemporary wars. “Violence begets more violence.” They would reply that WWII was a “just war that had to be fought”. Not to have fought it would have been to let Hitler conquer the world. I would reply that we needed to back track to the causes of this war, to the injustices of the settlements of WWI – “the war to end all wars” - to the difficulties of nation building. Still I was left with that niggling question: “What would I have done?” It has become a kind of ethical line in the sand that I pose to all moral dilemmas.
The question, “What would you have done?” raises its voice once more today when I think about the conflict in Afghanistan and the issue of Canada’s handing over of prisoners to detention where they potentially faced torture. “What would you have done?” quickly becomes: “What should I do now?”
Faced with the news that the Canadian government transferred Afghan prisoners to people who possibly tortured them, what should I do? I am not a politician, not in the armed forces, not an international lawyer, simply a self-employed citizen of Canada.
I can write. I can speak out. I can vote. I can let politicians know of my intentions, to vote. And I can ask you, fellow citizens and readers, to do the same.
I request the Parliament of Canada to establish a public inquiry into the allegations that Canadian soldiers, officers, diplomats and government ministers knew that they were transferring prisoners to situations of potential torture. If we are to be able to hold our heads high, take pride in our citizenship in this country which heretofore has enjoyed a well-earned reputation as a purveyor of justice nationally and internationally, then there must be no doubt concerning our country’s possible collusion in torture. The argument that some of these prisoners are, as General Hillier once phrased it, “scumbags”, is invalid. Two wrongs do not a right make. The argument that we didn’t know or didn’t know for sure is invalid according to the Geneva Convention. What is more, it rings hauntingly familiarly. Devastatingly so.
Whether one agrees or not with the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan, surely it cannot be said that we are defending anything right and good if we do not as a nation condemn and eschew torture unequivocally, and investigate any involvement we may have had in a regime of torture. Should it be found that, for however brief a time, the Government of Canada knowingly transferred prisoners to situations where they might be tortured, then those responsible must be brought to justice and apologies and remediation made by our government.
“For what did I fight?” was another of my father’s worrisome questions. As he aged he would increasingly pose this question both to himself and others. Having read the memoires of the generals in charge of WWII, he grew increasingly disgruntled to learn of the political jockeying that occurred at the expense of enlisted men and women. When human rights or national unity were threatened in this country he would restate his question. The conduct of Canadian soldiers in Somalia, disgusted him as did evidence of war crimes in Vietnam, Central America, and the former Yugoslavia.
Warren and Marguerite are now deceased, as are many Canadians who believed that WWII was the last great just war. Whether you believe that or not, and whatever one’s religious convictions, indisputably our immortality resides in our insistent questions: “What would you have done?” “What did we fight for?” “What should we do now?” Whether I agree or disagree with them I do know that Warren and Marguerite thought about what to do and then they did what they thought was right. So must we now in the face of this latest ethical challenge. One day our children or grandchildren may ask us: “What did you do when Canada was implicated in torture in Afghanistan?”
If Canada has been implicated in torture in Afghanistan and does not come clean about the record nor bring to justice those implicated then: “What are we fighting for?”
As a member of the post WWII generation, I might add to my parents’ questions: “How are we fighting?” Perhaps, in the light of history, Canada needs to change the way it fights for freedom and justice.
