Finally

The Montreal Gazette prints an editorial that is probably the most sane, balanced, insightful piece of writing on the detainee issue I have yet to see in the mainstream media. This passage particularly caught my eye, as it put in far more eloquent a form a line of thought I'd been trying to lay out for a correspondent on e-mail earlier today:

Canada is not a colonial power. If Canadian Forces do not turn suspects over to the Afghan government, what then should we do with them? What rules of war should apply to these ruthless fanatics who have no compunctions about hiding amid civilians? Should Canada open its own prison in Afghanistan? Who would staff it? Canadian courts, too? Or should we ship suspects to Canada, like Second World War prisoners of war? Are we in Afghanistan to aid the civil power, or to supplant it? Should there be a formal agreement on extraterritoriality? You can see the difficulties. A counter-insurgency is not a dinner party.

The editorial goes on to castigate the government roundly, finishing sensibly with this:

The ancient Romans argued that "inter arma silent leges" - the laws fall silent in wartime - but today that won't wash. Turning prisoners over to a serious possibility of torture might in theory constitute, by itself, a war crime. That would be all but impossible to prove, but the government will surely suffer some political damage over this.

As far back as 2006, we can now see clearly, the government should have grasped this nettle and worked out, with our U.S. and British and other allies, a sturdy protocol for dealing with enemy combatants and suspects, to minimize the risk of torture by the Afghan government. A forceful effort then, and persistence since, could have avoided this problem.

Yes, it's 'coulda-woulda-shoulda,' but since the revised detainee transfer agreement was signed in May of 2007 that's all we're really talking about anyhow.

Hear-the-four-horsemen-approaching Update: And in a sign that the end of times are nigh, I'm going to endorse at least some small portion of the scribblings of Susan Riley:

[MacKay's] tendency to bluff his way out of trouble with hysterical counter-attacks and bald-faced denials has helped turn what might have been a minor kerfuffle into a major embarrassment for government. All he (or someone) had to say was that, in the confusion and chaos of war, the treatment of Afghan detainees was only one of many pressing issues facing a government that was understaffed on the ground, and an army working in an unfamiliar and hostile environment.

In retrospect, we're sorry we didn't sort it out sooner. We should have followed the example of the British and the Dutch (who were far more scrupulous in tracking their detainees). Here's why we didn't. But the problem is fixed now. That wouldn't satisfy everyone, but many Canadians -- who have scant sympathy for Taliban suspects and abiding respect for the troops -- would have accepted it. Crisis defused.

The gist of that is dead on target.