War criminals.
Interesting piece on the Geneva convention over at HotAir. It's talking about how little the Geneva convention applied to TWOT.In it she makes the point that the Geneva convention applies to countries fighting and that Al Queda has not signed up to the Geneva convention anyway. Similar to what I've been saying for a while. But then of course we differ. She wants to remove all rights for terrorists because they are war criminals. But they are only war criminals in the eyes of the Geneva convention which we have agreed does not apply to them.
This unfortunately is the shape of what is to come. The bad guys know they can't face us according to rules we have made up to fit our advantage. Their advantage is the sneak attack, ability to hide, the fear and the response of our population to what is seen as us not following the rules we set up. Plus we can't really stop them. Anyone going against a modern army is going to get chopped into little bits. How stupid do we think these guys are? We have decided that you need to wear a uniform and stand up to be shot at. Whooosh. Maverick lands on top of you. No risk to us. This is how we like our wars. This war is going well. These guys know that doesn't work, after Vietnam, everyone, except our leaders, knows what works against us. How can you think they won't use it because of rules they have not signed up to nor were party to drafting?
I think that we need to go the other way from what is proposed. If they are not a country they are not at war as per our definition, let's ignore our War on Drugs etc. for this argument. If they are not at war they are simple criminals and should be subject to our existing laws. If they are not sufficient then we need to make new ones via our legal process. Proper ones not our knee jerk ones. They should not be treated any differently than any common murderer or given any extra privileges due to the Geneva convention. After all no matter how inhumane some of our murderers are we don't torture them or deny them basic rights.
Perhaps we need a Geneva II for this situation. A definition of what countries can and can't do. That way everyone is clear and this could, if necessary, define exactly what can be used on these guys and what can't. What rules we can follow and what criteria is needed to define them as terrorists. After all, in the UK, it looks like having car filler and photos of the Tower make you one here. Although, to be honest, that is a bit of overkill.
Isn't it funny though that the IRA acted in the UK for decades and we didn't treat them any differently. They were funded by the US as well which gives an interesting twist. Yet, we still had rights, trampled now, and they were treated as common criminals. What is wrong with that?
I think it boils down to one thing. We can't punish them. They die in the attacks. We can't bring them to justice so we don't get closure. Crime, punishment. It's as simple as that. They are beyond our justice system and we can't do anything about it. In our frustration we lash out irrationally.
They are no different from common criminals. They need to be treated as such. We still need to treat them as human even when they don't act like it to retain our own humanity.
posted by Bag @ 12:00 pm
1 Comments:
When the IRA were active the situation in Northern Ireland was a lot different from the mainland- to approach the airport for instance meant driving through a military roadblock, complete with machine gun emplacements with random and very thorough searches of vehicles. That's before you even start to go through the airport's own security. Oh, and they had some roads around it permanently blocked off due to the threat. Same with some roads in various towns.
Then there were the raids of entire streets of houses searching for weapons, ammo and explosives; the random police and army roadblocks and patrols on the streets; the prevention of terrorism act allowed the police to arrest and hold anyone they suspected might be engaged in terrorist activities, and also to ban them from entering or leaving the country. We also had internment.
I can remember going to the mainland on holiday as a kid and seeing police walking around without guns and bullet-proof vests- and it amazed me. Then there were my first sights of a police station- without high anti-mortar walls and fences. That was a shock to my system too.
Can you imagine the outrage if internment was suggested now for members of banned Muslim organisations in the UK?
And none of it worked- the IRA and co. kept on killing, crippling and bombing the whole time.
The IRA even fired mortars at No. 10 during the Gulf War- and where are they now? Not in prison because Blair completely capitulated to them. All the terrorists are back out on the streets over here and his policy of appeasement hangs over politics here like a shadow. If they don't get their way, they may return to violence- and so they usually get exactly what they want.
That policy worked for Blair because N. Ireland is far away from London and he no longer has to deal with the problem in his own backyard. That kind of thinking won't work with Islamists who want to see Sharia installed as our system of government. The only way to appease them is to surrender our entire way of life.
You're absolutely right- they can't fight a regular army. Look at how quickly Afghanistan fell. But to treat terrorism as a law and order issue is incredibly dangerous. And just how is that supposed to work? Are you proposing we replace the troops fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere with police? How are they going to root out an enemy armed with RPGs, autromatic weapons, etc?
The simple fact of the matter is that we are at war- not with a country but a violent, bloodthirsty ideology. Do we then treat enemy combants captured on the battlefield as mere criminals- I can see it now, Omar Al-Qaeda complains that he wasn't read his rights when picked up by the army and he was illegally transferred from one country to another for questioning and trial. Or he didn't get his phone call to warn Osama he'd been captured. Or the army brutally cuffed him and threw him in the back of a personnel carrier for six hours while the battle fought on- he had his rights infringed because he wasn't given coffee and a toilet break. What about evidence trails- did anyone tamper with his AK-47 between the time it was seized on the battlefield and transported to the Old Bailey? Are we to have the soldiers take photos of his foxhole, carefully document and bag all of the explosives, etc, etc? In the middle of a firefight? Perhaps he claims that he was just an innocent farmer framed by the vicious soldiers- he just happened to be walking past the battlefield when he was caught. Are the soldiers who apprehended him to be flown back and forth to appear as witnesses at the trial? "Can you positively identify this man?" "Well, I'm not a 100%- it was dark when we found him in the cave and I was distracted by the battle going on around me."
Does he have his case dismissed?
Fighting a war like we're going after burglars or muggers makes no sense to me at all. For starters, soldiers aren't cops. The standard practice in previous wars is to hold captured enemy until fighting is over in order to prevent them rejoining the fight- why should we try to prosecute enemy fighters in civlian courts? I just can't see the reasoning behind it- does taking up arms against British troops in the mountains of Afghanistan break a British civil law? Are we maybe breaking his civil rights as laid out by the EU? Are we to only be permitted to hold men at war with us for so many days before bringing charges? Isn't the fact that someone was captured on the battlefield trying to kill our troops enough of a reason to hold them until a cessation of hostilities has been attained?
I'm all for the role of courts in prosecuting terrorists caught here in the UK in the act of planning or committing a terrorist attack. But to apply criminal proceedings to men captured on the battlefield makes no sense. We get them, we throw them in a big prison somewhere and keep them there until the fight is over- questioning them if it's thought necessary to prevent other terrorists killing civilians or our troops. No legal proceedings necessary.
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