Wait, going back 194 years is silly but going back 14 years is serious. I think I follow you now...
No. They are soldiers. Enemy combatants is the term for non-uniform irregulars...such as terrorists.
Wait, going back 194 years is silly but going back 14 years is serious. I think I follow you now...
Actually it goes back to Jimmy Carter who nearly had a chance to ratify it...which he would have in a flash. Reagan killed it in 1982, and with extreme prejudice. He fired its negotiators...but the Socialists aren't giving up.
It's revival started when Bush Sr. rehired one of the negotiators...a friend of Cheney... in 1990 to revisit some of the issues. This resulted in no treaty language changes whatsoever, just some worthless, unenforceable "understandings" that could easily be disavowed by the UN later. And the US negotiators long out of the picture... Clinton signed it in 1994. The Senate however could not give its vote...the two-thirds requirement...because it never went to the floor... Good old Jesse Helms bottled it up with hearings and no votes into eternity. But he finally had to retire. So now the vulnerable window of opportunity has re-opened. Lugar, an extreme and simpering globalist is the Foreign Relations Chair.
So, anyways, this is not just an 26 or 14 year old issue.
It is now. It is a present threat. Maybe you don't know what "present" means. It means today.
Just because a mortal national threat has a history longer than the attention span of the average two-year-old doesn't make it any less real or imminent.