Red (Double) Crossed

IBD Editorials ^ | August 7, 2008

[Kaslin]

NGOs: Europe once urged Colombia to pay any price to free hostages. Now it pitches a fit when its own bill comes due. The International Red Cross' fury at Colombia for improper use of its emblem to save 15 lives is out of line.

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The argument goes that Colombia shouldn't have let an undercover soldier use a Red Cross bib over his Palestinian keffiyeh (a get-up that FARC found perfectly credible) to rescue 15 hostages on July 2, because it might make the FARC and groups like it distrustful of future Red Cross efforts.

"If authenticated, these images could clearly establish an improper use of the Red Cross emblem, which we deplore," the agency's deputy director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, said in a statement.

Now, we can understand concern from the international agency at the unauthorized use of its insignia. But in the context of war crimes, it's outrageous to equate this rescue with a crime.

Terrorists often do use Red Cross-marked vehicles to transport weapons and gain military advantage and that is rightly to be condemned. Red Cross says its prized neutrality means it should never give one side or another a military advantage.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

Neither side should abuse the neutrality of the Red Cross, and the terrorists who do should be executed in a particularly brutal fashion as a warning of others and as a sign of contempt for transgressing against such a basic law of war....

[hsalaw]

It’s worrisome that the Red Cross is more worried about its own credibility in the eyes of terrorists than it is about the rescue of those abused hostages. I’m sure the Red Cross does wonderful humanitarian work among terrorists and their hostages, but, really, isn’t the point to rescue the hostages?

[hsalaw]

I agree. But the fact that the terrorists are known to abuse the Red Cross symbol in order to further their violence suggests that the Red Cross symbol may not be as “neutral” as they’d like to think.

[xcamel]

I think we need a brigade of journalists videographers whose cameras are really rocket launchers....Talk about “making a difference”...

[SkyDancer]

Didn’t know this was a military operation. Seems the rebels are just that, uniformed civilian gangsters, not a military.

[weegee]

Terrorists often do use Red Cross-marked vehicles to transport weapons and gain military advantage and that is rightly to be condemned. Red Cross says its prized neutrality means it should never give one side or another a military advantage.

Red Cross doesn't say much about it though.

And Axis Sally posed as a Red Cross worker to interview US soldiers (POWs in Germany) under false pretense to take their comments out of context (much as Michael Moore did in F911).

[Rembrandt]

“Neither side should abuse the neutrality of the Red Cross, and the terrorists who do should be executed in a particularly brutal fashion as a warning of others and as a sign of contempt for transgressing against such a basic law of war....”
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Perhaps you’re uninformed.

There are two Red Cross organizations. There is an American Red Cross which is neutral and risks the lives of its workers to assist the wounded of any and all nationalities, friend or foe.

There is also the International Red Cross which willingly assists terrorist organizations while claiming to be strictly an aid organization.

[CyberSpartacus]

In my opinion the red cross has been acting as an agent of the terrorists. It is obvious to me that the reason they were so easily taken is because they thought that they were working with friends. The red cross is now a useless organization unless you believe that being RED is usefull.

[American in Israel]

If authenticated, these images could clearly establish an improper use of the Red Cross emblem, which we deplore," the agency's deputy director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, said in a statement.

But Palestinians use red cross and red cresent vehicles to transport combatants for years. Never a peep when the forces of Darkness use their symbol, only when the good guys do.

Must mean that they are the forces of darkness.