AT LEAST THEIR IDIOTS ARE CONVENIENTLY LABELED.

One rule for them (George Monbiot, The Guardian)

A friend living in England sent me this article and asked what I think.

Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that "it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them". . . .

This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life.

His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26), canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72). . . .

It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the international criminal court, and then to ensure that its own citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras yesterday should thank their lucky stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.

Here is my response:

First, this is not "an illegal war against a sovereign state." Security Council resolution 687 explicitly authorizes action by member states to enforce all current and future resolutions concerning Iraq. As no one seriously claims that Iraq is not in breach of these resolutions, the action is justified under the UN charter. As far as picking and choosing is concerned, every permanent member of the Security Council has waged an external war without UN approval. Most recently, the US did so in Kosovo, along with France and others, to protect the Muslim population against the Serbs.

Nor is the United States "seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world." What bugs the left is three particular treaties, two of which the US never ratified. Kyoto, in its current form, was rejected while being negotiated by the Senate during the Clinton Administration without a dissenting vote. Nonetheless, the other nations refused to amend it to make it acceptable. The ABM treaty specifically allowed the signatories to cancel it on six months' notice. The Russians seem to care about this a lot less than the Europeans. The ICC is plainly unconstitutional as applied to US nationals and the other signatories refused to address this concern. Interestingly, France sought -- and was granted -- some of the same concessions the US was not given.

As for the Geneva Conventions, he's just smoking dope. He starts off by ignoring the possibility, raised by the tv pictures, that some of the captured US soldiers were executed after they surrendered. Next, the distinction between legal and illegal combatants is not as ambiguous as he implies and, sensibly, it does not turn on whether the war is "legal" under international law. There is a specific test. Among other things, illegal combatants don't wear uniforms and don't answer to a command structure. There is no question but that the captured al Queda fighters are not legal combatants. Nor is there any requirement that the "competent authority" be either judicial or civilian. Military tribunals, answerable to the President, are perfectly appropriate under both international law and the Constitution. More to the point, photographs of unidentified AQ fighters were released to show how they were being treated. They were not humiliated. The other rights he mentions are not applicable, though some are being respected. The food they are given is kosher, you should excuse the expression. They have access to US Army Imams. They are given some exercise, though not a lot. Finally, I have no idea why he thinks hostilities have ended. We're still actively engaged fighting AQ in Afghanistan and throughout the world.

As for Doran's documentary [alleging American complicity in Afghan atrocities], it has been vastly oversold. Here is a snippet from an interview with Doran by the World Socialist Web Site (found via Travelling Shoes):

WSWS: Is there any other evidence, apart from the testimony of these witnesses, on the involvement of the American military in the deaths of these 3,000 prisoners?

JD: Absolutely not. The reason the story has been released early is that I received a warning from Mazar-i-Sharif that the graves in the desert were being tampered with. All the evidence is in the graves, and it is essential that those graves are not touched! [....]

WSWS: Is there any evidence to point to the participation of American soldiers in shooting victims in the desert?

JD: I have absolutely no evidence that American troops were involved in the shooting that took place in the desert. . . .

Dostum is an evil guy, but the evidence that he acted with the help of Americans is almost nonexistent. I am, however, perfectly willing to offer Monbiot a deal. He can choose whether to spend some time as a prisoner of the US Army, or he can go wandering through Iraq ahead of the US Army.

MORE: The article, found via Instapundit, gives what seems like a pretty good overview of conditions at Guantanamo, even if the headline does oversell the evidence of beatings.

Posted by David Cohen at March 27, 2003 9:04 AM