Posted on 11/06/2003 6:31:20 PM PST by Calpernia
You are not the only one.
The Army does not appreciate ANYONE--prosecutor or defendant--attempting to manipulate the military justice system via mass media.
Interesting point. You might be onto something.
Barbaric treament of prisoners is not acceptable. It is against the rules. What THEY do to us is not the point. It is how we conduct ourselves. That is what makes US better than them, in my opinion. And yes, sometimes that costs lives.
A well thought out and reasonable analysis. However, I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. I would trade tens of thousands of Iraqi lives for one of our boys...in a heartbeat.
(article 17): "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."
The key words there are "prisoners of war".
Those words do not simply mean "any Homo sapien captured during a war". The Rules of War are very specific on who qualifies as a having the legal status of "prisoner of war" which, in turn, determines who qualifies for the legal rights termed "prisoner of war rights".
An enemy combatant caught in a friendly uniform, as this individual was, is defined by the Rules of War as an "illegal combatant".
"Illegal combatants" do not legally qualify for the legal status of "prisoners of war" and they therefore do not qualify for the "prisoner of war rights" under the Geneva Convention.
As I noted in Post 218, the U.S. Government has been shipping off captured al Qaeda illegal combatants to Egypt in order to expedite the extraction of information out of them by less than savory means:
Now, the problem in this case was that there are now rules of engagement which ordered that such individuals be treated as POW's, West was aware of that order and West deliberately violated that order.
That, however, does not legally preclude the U.S. from changing the rules of engagement and treating illegal combatants captured in Iraq with all the severity in which the U.S. Government has used with the al Qaeda prisoners they have shipped off to Egypt.
The Rules of War afford legal protection those who play by the rules. During World War II, the Germans and the Western Allies mutually agreed to play by the rules and the Western Front was, for the most part, a pretty civilized war front. No such a rules were followed by either side on the Russian Front.
Now, in Iraq, Baathist thugs are bombing Red Cross facilities, murdering civilians and engaging in hostilities while wearing friendly uniforms. Up to now, the U.S. has voluntarily chosen to accord such illegal combatants POW treatment. The key word here is "voluntarily". The U.S. is under no legal obligation under the Rules of War to continue granting prisoner of war rights to illegal combatants.
One thing that I know about Freepers since I have been here is that they understand that the Military is not the same as civilian life, nor do we want it that way. There are countless threads discussing how Clinton and others have tried to use the services as social experiments, how they have lowered standards in the name of political correctness, and how they have weakened our National Security through a political prism of tolerance.
This is why it is shocking to me that so many here would excuse what (if true) is a blatant violation of U.S. Military law. As Conservatives, we know that the law is more important than any individual in our society. The actions of Col. West may have indeed saved lives. This is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. The UCMJ is what separates our services from the rest of the world. We have a standard that every person who serves swears to uphold. For officers it is most critical that they live up to the UCMJ, as examples of leadership.
In war, lives are lost. Each life is precious, and tragic if lost. However, when the UCMJ is violated, our nation stands to lose much more. It loses all that we claim to hold dear; our ideals, our values, our position of respect and leadership in the world. We cannot afford to bend, nudge or ignore our laws for even the slightest infractions. Once we do that, then the UCMJ is conditional, and for all intent and purposes, meaningless.
If laws are to be meaningful and respected, we cannot claim embarrassing exceptions because an officer stands to lose much through his infraction. Do we respect law? If we respect it conditionally, then we have no business expecting others not to create their own exceptions at their convenience. When other countries break laws and claim popular excuse, what is our argument? Col. West may become a symbol for what is right in this country by accepting his guilt (if found so) and using it to promote a higher purpose then his own interests.
We as Conservatives occasionally need to remember that the Military is not an environment for grey-area reasoning. The UCMJ is clear and concise in describing the responsibilities that servicemen swear to uphold. If someone can point me to the area where the UCMJ explains exceptions for law-breaking, I would be happy to reconsider my position. As a former career Navy officer, I was at no time unaware of my responsibility to uphold the UCMJ in all my official and unofficial actions while I wore the uniform.
If Col. West is guilty, he must pay the price for those crimes, or we will all pay the considerably larger price of losing the honor and respect of a nation based on laws.
That is the issue here. He seems to want to be exempted from judgement. Many on this list not only want that, they want him canonized.
He did the right thing. He made a bad guy crap his pants. Boo-hoo. BUT, it may not have been legal. We have a very good and fair system to reconcile that. And the Division Commander, not the SJA or those "evil" Pentagon pansies, makes the determination to go forward with legal proceedings. All the carping and huffing and puffing about the JAG shows total ignorance about the military. JAGs make recommendations. Commanders decide.
Furthermore, he punished his own soldiers for striking this same POW. This to me is probably the most bothersome aspect of the whole case.
It has been utterly surreal to listen to "conservatives" argue, with a straight face, that officers can pick and choose which orders to obey and which to disobey, without consequence.
We as Conservatives occasionally need to remember that the Military is not an environment for grey-area reasoning. The UCMJ is clear and concise in describing the responsibilities that servicemen swear to uphold.
"He who cannot command himself cannot command others."
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