rgr22j

I think the underlying agreement as originally posted was less lucid than his explanation below. So it's not a semantic error, merely that we were unclear what his argument was. The argument is that the people being held at Guantanamo Bay are being mistreated or inhumanely, well, this is false and I think we cleared that up.

The real question, which I believe Nitro was making, is whether the people at Gitmo should be declared as POWs. Legally, under "international law," these are the four conditions set forth by the Geneva Convention in order for POW status to apply :

1) There must be an organized command structure with leaders that can be held responsible.
2) Soldiers must distinguish themselves from civilians by wearing fixed distinctive emblems that can be identified from afar.
3) Soldiers must carry weapons openly.
4) The other side must respect the "laws of war."

These are the essential questions. If you captured a foreign national on your terroritory attempting to assassinate the president, would he classify as a POW? Most nations probably would not award him POW status. How about a group that doesn't wear uniforms, hides weapons, and hijacks planes?

I don't know the answer. I'm open to interpretation, but I lean towards differentiating between the Taliban and say, the national army of Belgium. Thus the declaration of "unlawful combatants," as the language of the Geneva Convention applies only to "lawful combatants," which does not require membership in a state army. To be a non-state belligerent you have to register with the Swiss, which al-Qaeda has not done. However, as the Geneva Convention describes above, merely declaring oneself as a non-state belligerent upon capture is not sufficient to warrant POW status.

I had no idea that this was even open to question, so let me quote from the International Red Cross at Geneva. I chose an isolated incident, World War 2, because it had Western nations on both sides as well as pan-Asian and Asian superpowers. It was also the most recent war, and by isolating it we avoid the relative youth of the United States. In addition, the first Geneva Convention was in effect. The following is paraphrased by my encyclopedia from the Red Cross.

"With minor and inevitable exceptions on the lower levels, the United States and Great Britain generally honored the Geneva Convention throughout the conflict. Japan at first committed such atrocities as the “death march of Bataan,” but began to abide by the rules after a sufficient number of Japanese prisoners had fallen into Allied hands to make reprisals possible. Germany did not treat all its prisoners alike. Americans and British subjects received the best treatment, Polish prisoners the worst."

If we were to include the internment of Japanese Americans (which the United States has admitted culpability), why not include Jews in Germany? Anyone Stalin didn't like? Vichy France?

Just because we send lawyers to international courts doesn't mean that it has the same meaning as what we traditionally refer to as domestic law. We go along because we consider it a good thing, especially if other countries go along as well. We file lawsuits against other countries that voluntarily abide by the internaional courts because we can reasonably expect that both we and the defendant country will honor the ruling. International law and international courts are nothing more than gentleman's agreements. But if we or any other country decides to ignore a particular ruling, there is nothing anyone can do about it. There is no international enforcement power, which is part of the reason why the UN passes "resolutions" and not "laws."

It is absolutely not a broken down fallback; it's a fallacious argument to say that we are required to declare them POWs because of international law. Maybe we should, but we certainly are not bound by it.

-- Alvin