John Hawkins at RightWingNews looks at the Geneva Conventions and reciprocity in order to protect our troops:
Exactly what protections are our troops being provided by the Geneva Convention? No enemy we’ve ever fought or are fighting has abided by it. So, in real world terms, the Geneva Convention provides no protection for our troops whatsoever. If we completely withdrew from the Geneva Convention tomorrow, it would have no impact at all on how our troops are treated.
Granted, the Geneva Convention could be of use in the unlikely event that we were to get into a war with Belgium, Italy, Spain or some other Western European nation. However, isn’t the argument we’re hearing from Europeans and American liberals that we should treat the terrorists we’ve captured by the rules of the Geneva Convention (as a matter of fact, better than the rules require) despite the fact that they haven’t signed onto the treaty? Since that’s the case, why wouldn’t the same rules apply to any signatories of the treaty that we fought with? Even if, theoretically, we were doing something as evil as kicking their captured soldiers into industrial paper shredders for fun, shouldn’t they give our soldiers every benefit the Geneva Convention requires?
What’s that, you say? If we don’t do it for their soldiers, why should we expect them to treat our troops with respect? Great! Now why doesn’t that apply to our troops and Al-Qaeda? If Al-Qaeda is torturing and murdering our troops, why should we treat their captured prisoners as well as, say, American soldiers that are thrown into the brig? Why should we treat some terrorist from Saudi Arabia who wants to kill American citizens like he’s a uniformed soldier who follows the rules of war or worse yet, like he has the same constitutional rights as an American citizen?
As a Combat Medic in the US Army, I was trained to look first at the wounds and not the uniform in deciding who to treat first.
In other words, if I were to simultaneously encounter a US Soldier on one side of the road who had non-life-threatening wounds and his jihadist attacker on the other side of the road who had life-threatening injuries — my job and training would dictate that I would treat the jihadist first. In fact, the Geneva Conventions required that I treat and administer medical aid to my enemy (Convention I, Art. 3, Sec. 2 and Art. 7)
Thankfully, I was never faced with this dilemma. Because if I were still a Combat Medic today, and I was faced with that same situation — knowing now what I know about our enemy — I would not afford that jihadist the Geneva Conventions right to medical aid, and I’d treat the US Soldier first while my enemy died on the side of the road.
I’d shoot a jihadist before I would treat him. Geneva Conventions be damned.
To advocate mistreatment of an enemy, no matter how horrible he may be, is a statement that implies mistreatment is neither good nor bad as a stand alone issue, but becomes good or bad, depending on who is being mistreated. That reduces you to level of the depraved enemy in order to keep a hideous level playing field.
Left by Jack Souci on September 3rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm