An El Pasoan’s personal reflections on the Ottawa attack

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Ottowa National War Memorial. Photo by Roberto Perezdiaz for Borderzine.

Ottowa National War Memorial. Photo by Roberto Perezdiaz for Borderzine.

By Roberto Perezdiaz

Canada’s governmental openness is at risk. Many comments I have read online under the different headlines on the internet indicate many Canadians do not want to see the implementation of the draconian security measures the US has put in place.

Although I’m reflecting on the “Attack on Ottawa” the day after (10/23/2014) the deadly events on Parliament Hill it would have been a forgettable day as I prepare to return to El Paso to vote and other “chores.” I write, reflecting it was three weeks ago Irasema and I were in Ottawa for a Border Conference at Carlton University and stayed at a hotel a short walking distance from the National War Memorial and from our café across the street watched a couple of changes of the memorial guards. I bet in the winter it is very hard duty for them to march out there, observed Irasema. I wonder if they wear those kilts in minus 20 plus weather, I said, as we have already experienced 36-degree days. This was before I knew the guard tour is from April 9 to November 10 this year.

We walked over from the hotel to the Hop-On-Hop-Off Tour buses. We later took that tour only 30 or 35 minutes in comparison to the Montreal Tour of almost two hours. Ottawa’s tourist center is also the government center including Byward Market, also walking distance from everything downtown.

All those sites were painfully familiar as I watched the CBC News. It was one of those cliché moments when I caught myself actually thinking: We were just there! Another existential moment. I watched the news most of the day to see the details emerge and the plot evolve including all the hysterical and often contradictory statements by eye witnesses, including that someone had seen another “dark skinned Muslim-looking man” get up from behind a nearby barricade near, if not part of, the memorial shortly after seeing the shooter leave to highjack the car used to go to the Government Center Block. The implication was that he was a possible accomplice.

I thought if in fact a Muslim or “Muslim-looking” person happened to be near, he or she would not want to linger in the area either. They would run the risk of getting shot in the worst case to being at least arrested “while being Muslim.” Despite Canada’s vaunted diversity, it is much more frequent than outsiders suspect that the victims of police shootings are “colored” minorities. Recent changes to national immigration policies tend to reinforce intentions of keeping Canada white and as European as possible. Quebec is more of an exception by encouraging immigration from French speaking countries including Haiti and countries in Africa.

I enjoy our visits to Ottawa, although those visits were primarily for the duration of conferences or other official business of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), sometimes going and returning to Montreal on the same day on the train. A nice ride in first class with WiFi on a lolling, rocking, comfortable space where stretching out is welcome and enjoyable. Apart from watching the events unfold in a state of disbelief because the first photos on the newscasts were very static. It was so soon that the onslaught of police vehicle were nowhere to be seen and I thought it was a static photograph.

OttowaColumnFrontPageSome witnesses said they saw a shotgun, others said a rifle, a long gun. Until late in the afternoon when one of the networks briefly presented a photograph of the long-haired, bandana-masked man (Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32) holding the firearm I knew it could not have been a shotgun. A young man who at the moment of the shooting was working down in a manhole barely a few feet from where the gunman ran by in the direction, he said, of a woman pushing a baby carriage and thought about running to protect her a little late as the armed man had no intention of hurting her and ran past her. He said the weapon was a double barreled shotgun. The firearm the gunman held clearly had a visible hammer excluding any shotgun. The double barrel conclusion of the young city worker was made hastily because the tubular magazine extended out to the muzzle giving the impression it was an “over and under” shotgun also called a “superposed” shotgun. He probably did not see the hammer from his point of view and could have concluded logically exactly as he did, it was a double barrel shotgun.

Another eyewitness earlier, soon after the pointblank shooting of the memorial guard Nathan Cirillo, 24, made a gesture as he spoke about the weapon he saw in the hands of the assassin, familiar to many if not all who have seen western movies where the most common rifle is a 30-30 Lever Action. As this man spoke to the reporter and made a movement with his hand as if working a lever action weapon. Of course with practice a shooter can let off many shots very rapidly, if it is a model with a long tubular magazine, it can hold many cartridges. This is a legal hunting rifle throughout Canada where very strict firearms regulations are in place.

A single shot break open shotgun can have an exposed hammer but limited to one shot at a time to use such a weapon would have been intentional suicide. There are two guards marching at the memorial at all times. With a single shot weapon the second guard would have enough time, with quick reactions, to subdue or kill the shooter on the spot, instead that second guard went over to begin first aid to his fallen comrade. The shooter shot the guard and ran away to carry out a bigger mission, a statement as strong as possible. Therefore, the very center of Canada’s federal government was the object. Had this shooter had any formal military or police training he would have succeeded in killing many more in Commons where on Wednesdays many are present for sessions. This is an argument for depriving “radicalized” individuals from traveling to join ISIS-ilk groups where they can receive training to carry out more deadly attacks back in Canada and/or the US.

This incident brings to question the dilemma of the efficacy of seizing passports. The young man who ran down a soldier only 25 miles from Montreal on Oct. 20 was deprived of his passport last July attempting to leave Canada. Unable to join the ISIS in Syria he carried out an attack here in Quebec. He waited two hours until he was able to run down two uniformed Canadian soldiers, one, Patrice Vincent, 53, later died. The driver Martin Rouleau, 25, was later caught and shot dead.

My personal cynical analysis is to let them go to the battlefields where they can be killed with less legal fallout. Our U.S. government has done this thereby jeopardizing many of our constitutional protections. Upon seizure of a passport the “jihadist” committed to Holy War against the West must act here among us. The possible consequences such as the ones in Canada this week, or other unpredictable acts make it impossible to prevent future acts.

The other side of the preemptive act of seizure of passports is that it impedes “radicalized” Canadians easy travel to join ISIS ilk groups. This does deprive these “recruits” of possible sophisticated training that could result in their return to carry out even more deadly acts than the ones we have witnessed to date across Europe and North America. That have been rather crude random acts.

What I resent the most is that this “perpetual war” will jeopardize our constitutional protection as our country strives to deal with the complexities of the present world political situation. We would make more friends and less enemies by putting more resources into saving lives fighting ebola than death and destruction in the Middle East.

 

 

 

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