CNN: Terrorist or Confused Kid?
Me: What's the Difference?
Today’s coverstory on CNN.com is of Omar Khadr, who, at 22 years old, is the youngest detained person at Gitmo. He is a controversial figure because of his age, which, in american culture, appear to make him straddle that line between culpability and inculpability.
For CNN, Ashley Fantz writes:
“Khadr has already served more time than he ever would under Canadian law, his lawyers say. They paint him as a victim, a kid trying to please his father, an al Qaeda financier who raised Omar and his siblings in bin Laden’s training camps”
So what is it about age anyway that gets youger people “off the hook” for things like theft or murder. Better yet, what is it about age that gets older people “on the hook” for things like theft or murder? Equating childhood with inculpability and equating adulthood with responsibility doesn’t exactly transcend across cultures. No one even knows the exact age of my grandmother, who was born into a Jewish community in Lybia…sometime before Mussolini came to power. In her community, age was inconsequential, at least in comparison to Western Ameri-pean culture where age decides everything, from what you study to who you socialize with to whether or not you get drafted in war and possibly die. Today, I say "I am 21," in order to identity myself and people usually respond, "you're so mature for 21" and I usually respond "what are you implying about 21 year olds?" I'm sure you can image whither that convo leads. My grandma quiet literally never had to identify herself as an image. She had the opportunity to just be mature without having society attach mental qualities to her identity, that is, at least in regards to "age."
Back to the CNN piece, What I would like to ask is: what is it about age that enables us, as Americans, to hold responsible and then even punishable, older men who take part in terrorism? How does Khadr fit into this neat system we have that enables us to do so?
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