The Redhunter

One, they do not and should not qualify as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.

Yes I said "should not", and for very good reasons that will become clear very shortly.

First, let's revisit the Geneva Convention. I wrote about this some time ago, but here goes again.

The full title is "Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War". It was adopted in 1949 and entered into force in 1950. Some lefties have tried to amend it in a blatant attempt to tie the hands of the United States, but thankfully they didn't succeed.

Anyway, the convention very specifically details exactly who may be considered a prisoner of war. Let's take a minute and go through Article 4, which is the section that defines who is a prisoner of war:

A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

3. Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power.

4. Persons who accompany the armed forces without actually being members thereof, such as civilian members of military aircraft crews, war correspondents, supply contractors, members of labour units or of services responsible for the welfare of the armed forces, provided that they have received authorization from the armed forces which they accompany, who shall provide them for that purpose with an identity card similar to the annexed model.

5. Members of crews, including masters, pilots and apprentices, of the merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law.

6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.

B. The following shall likewise be treated as prisoners of war under the present Convention:

1. Persons belonging, or having belonged, to the armed forces of the occupied country, if the occupying Power considers it necessary by reason of such allegiance to intern them, even though it has originally liberated them while hostilities were going on outside the territory it occupies, in particular where such persons have made an unsuccessful attempt to rejoin the armed forces to which they belong and which are engaged in combat, or where they fail to comply with a summons made to them with a view to internment.

2. The persons belonging to one of the categories enumerated in the present Article, who have been received by neutral or non-belligerent Powers on their territory and whom these Powers are required to intern under international law, without prejudice to any more favourable treatment which these Powers may choose to give and with the exception of Articles 8, 10, 15, 30, fifth paragraph, 58-67, 92, 126 and, where diplomatic relations exist between the Parties to the conflict and the neutral or non-belligerent Power concerned, those Articles concerning the Protecting Power. Where such diplomatic relations exist, the Parties to a conflict on whom these persons depend shall be allowed to perform towards them the functions of a Protecting Power as provided in the present Convention, without prejudice to the functions which these Parties normally exercise in conformity with diplomatic and consular usage and treaties.

C. This Article shall in no way affect the status of medical personnel and chaplains as provided for in Article 33 of the present Convention.

Now, anyone should be able to clearly see that the terrorists that we have captured do not fall into any of the above categories. Regarding section 2, a person must meet all four requirements, not one or two. Thus while a terrorist may be part of a heirarchy, they do not wear a uniform or " fixed distinctive sign"(our soldiers wear the US flag on their shoulder which the lawyers say counts), they do not carry arms openly and certainly are not part of an army from any recognized government. Heaven knows that hiding behind women and children, using Mosques as forts and ammunition depots, and sending forth human suicide bombers violate just about every law of war their is.

Want more? Here goes; in past wars, people caught out of uniform but armed were shot as spies on the spot.

They were lined up against the nearest wall and shot. This was done as a matter of course by all armies, including ours. I have read where German soldiers attempted to hide from our advancing troops by taking off their uniforms. When caught they were shot. You can be sure that the British and Russians did the same, as, for that matter, did the Germans sometimes when they caught partisans.

We would have been perfectly within our rights to have just lined them up on the nearest wall in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever and shot them right then and there.

But Why Does It Matter?

It matters because the purpose of the Geneva Convention was to protect the civilians. That's right, the civilians, and to protect them from the ravages of guerilla war fought by irregular forces. Rich Lowry explains:

The convention was designed to disadvantage combatants who don't obey the laws of war by fighting out of uniform, lacking a discernable chain of command or targeting civilians. The distinction is meant to encourage combatants to honor relatively civilized standards of conduct in combat and foreswear such dangerous tactics as hiding among civilians.

Gore's absurd reinterpretation of the Geneva Convention to protect terrorists makes a huge intellectual concession to al Qaeda, former Baathist fighters, and other criminal groups — that their men are indistinguishable under international law from American GIs.

Lowry was in part responding to one of Al Gore's famous outbursts. Howard Dean fills the role of ranting lunatic these days, but that's for another post.

But again, the point of the Geneva Conventions was to provide a reward for combatants who obeyed the rules; good treatment if captured. And we don't just mean 3 squares a day, we mean good treatment. Very concerned about German treatment of our boys during WWII, our government went to great lengths to provide German POWs with a nice standard of living that was usually greater than that of American civilians, who scraped by on ration books (I saw a whole Discovery or History program on this once. It was amazing). We gave the Germans so much food they couldn't eat it all. We captured very few Japanese, as they prefered to fight to the death.

So in case someone needs it spelled out, if we were to give these terrorists Geneva Convention protections it would be reckless endangerment of civilians. Rather, they are propertly classified as "illegal combatants". So the next time some leftie demands that we give them Geneva Convention protection, ask them why they want to endanger civilians.

But Some of Them Are Not Guilty!

This is one that we hear almost every day; that x number of people that we are keeping in Guantanamo Bay have not been charged with anything and have (gasp) not even had a hearing! Oh horrors.

The response is simple: We are in a war, fool, not a police action. In a war you take prisoners, you do not arrest suspects. Just because they are illegal combatants does not change anything, either. There is no contradiction here. Illegal combatants can be detained throughout the course of the war and need not be charged with a crime. How long will the war last? How should I know?

You Are Abusing Them!

First, they're lucky that when we captured them we didn't line them up against the nearest wall and shoot them.

But that said, we shouldn't abuse them either. And we don't, not as a matter of policy. The people who perpetrated Abu Ghraib have or will be tried and punished. Others who abuse prisoners will face charges as well.

On one level, the left is just unhappy that they weren't able to get their Watergate; they wanted to "prove" that Rumsfeld and Bush personally ordered the abuses of Abu Ghraib.

But on another, there is a fundamenal disagreement over just what constitutes "abuse." It is good to have such debate and discussion, as long as it stays within certain bounds. One has to wonder, however, when we read about the lengths to which our military goes to "respect the dignity of the Koran". Perhaps such things are just to be expected in our modern age.

I said at the start of this war that it was really about willpower, and so it is. We must have the strength to do what we have to do in the face of pressure from the usual suspects. But whatever we do, let's not take our policy advice from Jimmy Carter.