al Qaeda as a role model
To follow up on the previous post about Abu Ghraib, there is a very scary editiorial in the Wall Street Journal by law professor John Yoo, who argues that: Terrorists Have No Geneva Rights
He takes on my viewpoint ( and Frank Rich’s view) that “that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war.” He writes:
Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Critics, no doubt, will soon demand that reforms include an extension of Geneva standards to interrogations at Guantanamo Bay.
... al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states that have signed them. Al Qaeda is not a nation-state, and its members--as they demonstrated so horrifically on Sept. 11, 2001--violate the very core principle of the laws of war by targeting innocent civilians for destruction.
While this may make sense on the face of it, in reality it is sometimes very difficult to tell who is actually al Qaeda and who are actually innocents who got caught up in an insurgency. And then we have the case of Brandon Mayfield the American who the FBI was “100%” sure that his fingerprints matched those responsible for the terrorism in Spain – he would thus be labeled a “terrorist” and according to Yoo, could be tortured.
Or as he puts it, “We obey the Geneva Conventions because our opponent does the same with American POWs. That is impossible with al Qaeda. It has never demonstrated any desire to provide humane treatment to captured Americans.”
So if al Qaeda does it, well then, that makes it okay for us to do it too, right. Ah, yes, al Qaeda as a role model.
He then writes, “It is also worth asking whether the strict limitations of Geneva make sense in a war against terrorists.”
Maybe he should direct that question to Brandon Mayfield, who was completely innocent.
He takes on my viewpoint ( and Frank Rich’s view) that “that abuses of Iraqi prisoners are being produced by a climate of disregard for the laws of war.” He writes:
Human-rights advocates, for example, claim that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners is of a piece with President Bush's 2002 decision to deny al Qaeda and Taliban fighters the legal status of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Critics, no doubt, will soon demand that reforms include an extension of Geneva standards to interrogations at Guantanamo Bay.
... al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states that have signed them. Al Qaeda is not a nation-state, and its members--as they demonstrated so horrifically on Sept. 11, 2001--violate the very core principle of the laws of war by targeting innocent civilians for destruction.
While this may make sense on the face of it, in reality it is sometimes very difficult to tell who is actually al Qaeda and who are actually innocents who got caught up in an insurgency. And then we have the case of Brandon Mayfield the American who the FBI was “100%” sure that his fingerprints matched those responsible for the terrorism in Spain – he would thus be labeled a “terrorist” and according to Yoo, could be tortured.
Or as he puts it, “We obey the Geneva Conventions because our opponent does the same with American POWs. That is impossible with al Qaeda. It has never demonstrated any desire to provide humane treatment to captured Americans.”
So if al Qaeda does it, well then, that makes it okay for us to do it too, right. Ah, yes, al Qaeda as a role model.
He then writes, “It is also worth asking whether the strict limitations of Geneva make sense in a war against terrorists.”
Maybe he should direct that question to Brandon Mayfield, who was completely innocent.
posted by Zack at 8:10 AM
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