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September 20, 2006
The Geneva Convention Doesn't Apply to When its Not Followed by the Other Side
This post is yet another arguement for why the Geneva Conventions do not apply to terrorists or to any prisoners of a country which is not abiding by the conventions. The conventions are a pure example of "tit for tat". They only apply if both sides follow them. As soon as one side breaks them in its treatment of POWs, the other side can break them also. Period.
- Exactly what protections are our troops being provided by the Geneva Convention? No enemy we've ever fought or are fighting has abided by it. So, in real world terms, the Geneva Convention provides no protection for our troops whatsoever. If we completely withdrew from the Geneva Convention tomorrow, it would have no impact at all on how our troops are treated.
Granted, the Geneva Convention could be of use in the unlikely event that we were to get into a war with Belgium, Italy, Spain or some other Western European nation. However, isn't the argument we're hearing from Europeans and American liberals that we should treat the terrorists we've captured by the rules of the Geneva Convention (as a matter of fact, better than the rules require) despite the fact that they haven't signed onto the treaty? Since that's the case, why wouldn't the same rules apply to any signatories of the treaty that we fought with? Even if, theoretically, we were doing something as evil as kicking their captured soldiers into industrial paper shredders for fun, shouldn't they give our soldiers every benefit the Geneva Convention requires?
What's that, you say? If we don't do it for their soldiers, why should we expect them to treat our troops with respect? Great! Now why doesn't that apply to our troops and Al-Qaeda? If Al-Qaeda is torturing and murdering our troops, why should we treat their captured prisoners as well as, say, American soldiers that are thrown into the brig? Why should we treat some terrorist from Saudi Arabia who wants to kill American citizens like he's a uniformed soldier who follows the rules of war or worse yet, like he has the same constitutional rights as an American citizen?
We shouldn't!
If the Geneva Convention were actually being properly applied, it wouldn't apply to terrorists. If people, including irresponsible Supreme Court Justices, want to pretend that it actually does apply to terrorists, then the Geneva Convention has outlived its usefulness and should be abandoned.
Found at Right Wing News.com.
The example by President Lincoln is instructive. When he learned that the Confederacy announced they would execute any former slave found in a Union Army uniform, he announced that for every member of the Union Army that was a POW and then killed, he would order the execution of a like number of Confederate soldiers. Period. No "oh we are better than they"; no "Oh those poor black soldiers, too bad we have to abide by the rules of war in dealing with their soldiers". Nope, Lincoln said if they kill one of ours, then we will kill one of theirs.
Faced with this threat, the Confederacy did not "officially" execute any black soldiers in the Union army.
This is how we should deal with the people we capture. Pure "tit for tat" behavior. You saw off the head of one of our POWs, we hang one of the POWs we have captured. Very simple, easy to understand logic. You torture our POWs, we torture yours. This applies across the board. None of this "we will treat them better than they treat us". Such a policy is stupid and counter productive. What incentive do our enemies have for treating our POWs better? At the moment, none at all. This needs to change.
Posted by rakhier at September 20, 2006 10:12 AM