Business is a little slow. Rather than unpack my boxes from last week's show in San Francisco I decided to take it easy this weekend since I have the Del Mar Show coming up next week.
With all this free time on my hands I thought that it was a perfect time to revisit the good ol' Geneva Conventions. Rather than read all the darn Conventions, I decided to take a gander of Article III, the one that the Bush Administration (baby, not papa) said applied to the American military.
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed 'hors de combat' by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.
Now there's a bunch of stuff there - it's a real mouthful so let's solely concern ourselves with the part about being treated humanely and (a), the part that mentions cruel treatment and torture. You may want to argue that convincing someone that they are drowning by pouring water down their throat is not torture, but some of the guys at the CIA who actually performed the operation says that it definitely is, so you might get a little argument from them. * see Blue Heron Blast - Unholy Parsing
President Bush comes down on the side of exigency, that the process actually saved lives and that he has no qualms about the decision, in fact would make it again. I don't necessarily have a problem with that line of thinking, the old hypothetical about knowing that you could save New York if you could break a terrorist down and you only have 24 hours scenario.
The problem as I see it is that if it is not torture if we do it to them, it is probably not torture if they capture one of our guys and use the same methodology. Because the notion that in the great spirit of American Exceptionalism, it's only all right if we do it doesn't, pardon the expression, hold water.
If we truly believe in the need to engage in torturous practices like waterboarding and the other extracurricular stuff that went on at Guantanamo or Abu Graib, an intellectually honest position would be to withdraw as signatories from the Geneva Conventions and declare them no longer binding on the United States of America in this brave new era. The idea that all is fine if it is performed at some black ops secret prison by our own beloved spooks is disingenuous. If we are going to discard those quaint notions of proper conduct, we must be prepared when the tables are turned against us. And let's not feign some moral high ground.
Five myths about torture.
2 comments:
The good old days of civilized warfare have come and gone...
When your opponent cuts off heads and flies planes filled with passengers into buildings filled with civilians I personally think that the whole "book of rules" needs to be tossed.
I know... it gives them the right to do the same thing to us but they're gonna do it anyway. All we are left with is the moral high-ground and if you really take a look at what we have done as a country then you got to see that we lost that edge long ago.
Where the hell is Jack Bauer when you need him? He always knows what to do.
To quote one of my favorite songs... "Rules and regulations, who needs them. Throw 'em out the door"
WD
It was little more than a hundred years ago our great grandparents were lopping off heads over in Western Europe. And of course, it is so much more antiseptic to drop a bomb from 30,000 feet and reduce dozens of people to pink mist than to chop off their heads one at a time. Ah, yes,we are soooo much more civilized.
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