Former (?) liberal hawk Michael Ignatieff “reviews”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/books/review/17IGNATIE.html Sy Hersh’s _Chain of Command_ in the New York Times:
bq. The war on terror began as a defense of international law, giving America allies and friends. It soon became a war in defiance of law. In a secret order dated Feb. 7, 2002, President Bush declared, as Hersh puts it, that ”when it came to Al Qaeda the Geneva Conventions were applicable only at his discretion.” Based on memorandums from the Defense and Justice Departments and the White House legal office that, in Anthony Lewis’s apt words, ”read like the advice of a mob lawyer to a mafia don on how to . . . stay out of prison,” Bush unilaterally withdrew the war on terror from the international legal regime that sets the standards for treatment and interrogation of prisoners. Abu Ghraib was not the work of a few bad apples, but the direct consequence, Hersh says, of ”the reliance of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld on secret operations and the use of coercion — and eye-for-an-eye retribution — in fighting terrorism.”
{ 10 comments }
Tim 10.18.04 at 12:13 pm
Can you have liberal hawk?
jet 10.18.04 at 1:26 pm
The Geneva conventions are clear that combatants (especially un-uniformed) who target civilians for political goals are not protected in any matter what so ever. Explosive or unjacketed bullets, poison gas, torture, killing after surrender. Those are all at the descretion of those fighting the terrorists.
So if the Pentagon, the world’s largest knowledge base on the geneva conventions, says it is technically internationally legal, it just might be so.
But I understand everyone’s dilemma. How do we know the military is properly seperating the sheep from the goats? Any civilian interaction would lead to leaks and a press nightmare, and end their ability to treat terrorists differently. Any internal method is no more legitimate than their current set up. So you think the obvious answer is to make it public and treat the terrorist the same. But when the Geneva conventions were being made, terrorist were handed a pile of dirt on purpose. There should be consequences for breaking the rules of war. Using the death of civilians as a tool should strip you of any right to any amount of fair treatment.
Ever since I saw the footage of the assasination attempt on Karzai, I was sure lots of innocents were getting hurt. In the assasination attempt, a gunman threw away his cloak and started to machine gun Karzai’s car. A random civilian, moments before cheering his new leader, tackled the guy knocking his gun away. A US Spec Ops rushed forward and sprayed them both. Total suckage.
jdsm 10.18.04 at 2:04 pm
If they are not breaking the letter of the geneva conventions they are breaking the spirit. The spirit being that no matter how dangerous and deplorable your actions, you still have certain rights. This is of course particularly the case when many of the detainees were not actually taken in combat and whose guilt is therefore not at all immediately obvious.
jet 10.18.04 at 4:40 pm
jdsm, I think you are mis-interpreting the conventions. They were written in a much harsher time when much harsher behavior was acceptable. The “spirit” of the conventions was to make terrorism as dangerous as possible and not bar any country from doing whatever it pleased to the terrorists.
There have probably been treaties afterwords that contradict this, but the original intent of the conventions was to leave no legal protections for terrorists.
And anyone who targets school buses of children because he doesn’t like his political reality or the religion he’s forced to bare deserves hollow point rifle rounds laced with pig blood, and summary execution upon capture. And the signers of the geneva convetions held that exact same world view.
And it isn’t like the Taliban regulars, or Iraqi insurgents have been following the conventions. So besides making us at home feel warm and fuzzy and morally superior, we have only taken a (what used to be thought of as valueable) tool away from our soldiers.
But maybe that’s all for the better and the Afghanistan and Iraqi insurgents are growing to respect our restraint and value of human life and dignity. Maybe our much more humane treatment of their captured is sowing a seed of mutual understand in their hearts. Maybe after enough of our captured soldiers are exectured, and enough of their captured are detained in prisons safer than most US state pens, they’ll come around to our way of thinking. Yeah, and maybe aliens will land and enlighten us with technology and social science enough to solve all our problems.
Dominic Murphy 10.18.04 at 4:48 pm
“The Geneva conventions are clear that combatants (especially un-uniformed) who target civilians for political goals are not protected in any matter what so ever.”
I think that’s incorrect. As far as I can see, violations of the laws of war do not forfeit the violator’s normal rights as a prisoner of war (or its equivalent) even though they can cause the “prisoner of war” status to be lost. Here’s the text, from Article 44 of the Additional Protocols:
2. While all combatants are obliged to comply with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, violations of these rules shall not deprive a combatant of his right to be a combatant or, if he falls into the power of an adverse Party, of his right to be a prisoner of war, except as provided in paragraphs 3 and 4.
3. In order to promote the protection of the civilian population from the effects of hostilities, combatants are obliged to distinguish themselves from the civilian population while they are engaged in an attack or in a military operation preparatory to an attack. Recognizing, however, that there are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly:
(a) during each military engagement, and (b) during such time as he is visible to the adversary while he is engaged in a military deployment preceding the launching of an attack in which he is to participate.
Acts which comply with the requirements of this paragraph shall not be considered as perfidious within the meaning of Article 37, paragraph 1 (c).
4. A combatant who falls into the power of an adverse Party while failing to meet the requirements set forth in the second sentence of paragraph 3 shall forfeit his right to be a prisoner of war, but he shall, nevertheless, be given protections equivalent in all respects to those accorded to prisoners of war by the Third Convention and by this Protocol. This protection includes protections equivalent to those accorded to prisoners of war by the Third Convention in the case where such a person is tried and punished for any offences he has committed.
jet 10.18.04 at 6:17 pm
Dominic, you’ve certainly shut me up until I can do more research. Thanks for the info.
Matt 10.18.04 at 7:43 pm
Jet said,
“Using the death of civilians as a tool should strip you of any right to any amount of fair treatment”
Of course, that would strip a pretty much everyone who’s ever been involved in a serious bombing campaign of fair treatment under the geneva convention, but since it seems unlikely that this was what the parties were agreeing to, it seems unlikely that this is a correct interpritation of the convention.
Leo Casey 10.18.04 at 9:00 pm
There should be consequences for breaking the rules of war. Using the death of civilians as a tool should strip you of any right to any amount of fair treatment.
Nonsense. It is the civilized treatment of prisoners which, among other things, separates decent human beings from terrorists. Certainly, there is justification for using lethal means to capture them or put them out of operation — the protection of innocent human life. But once you have captured a terrorist, and they no longer pose an immediate threat and danger, there is no justification for stepping outside the bounds of decency which are well-established in international law. Once you reduce the matter to a level of a blood feud, in which the acts of perpetrator justify some corresponding violations of human dignity, you are completely outside the rule of law, and well on the road to becoming the very thing you say you are fighting.
Troy 10.19.04 at 3:56 am
do unto others as you would have done unto you. the rest is commentary.
jet 10.19.04 at 1:59 pm
So this “do unto others as you would have done unto you” only works one way? Why is that the best solution? Shouldn’t we be placing consequences on undesireable actions?
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