[Alas Babylon!]

You know Peach, as a retired military person, I'd actually agree to give the insurgents amnesty if they'd lay down their arms and surrender.

Our military has always graciously accepted the surrender of its enemies at hostilities end. War crimes trials and (pre-hostilities cease fire) calls for unconditional surrender, IMHO, just serve to harden the enemies resistance and prolong the fighting to no good end. Yes, some enemies need to be beat into the mud, but even then, once they surrender we can do that sort of thing as required.

All the finger pointing and such can be sorted out after the surrender. Part of the terms, when they approach with their white flag, is, of course, used to get those accused of the more heinous crimes into our hands for "processing" later. There's no need to show our hand in any case until we play it out.

[sgtyork]

Agreed.

Besides, how many of the insurgents meet Maliki's requirement that they not have killed Iraqi's?

Had our forces only been engaged in stand up combat with soldiers who met them 'in accordance with the customs and laws of war', this would not have been the mess it was. If anything, this offer would split a nationalist -us army focused resistance group from the mad dog groups that killed only their iraqi opponents (shia's vs. sunni's, sunni's vs. shias).

[chiller]

I'm on the side of recognizing their sovereignty. They'll eventually let the criminals out of jail anyway.

Dems like Levin and Schumer seem adamantly against it....apparently they think it will hurt the Iraqi government's attempt to bring everything together, which means Iraqi failure, which means Dem's success. These duplicitous bastards have constantly harped that Iraqis should be in charge of security, not US. Suddenly, that no longer applies. What gives Dems....can't keep track of your lies. Try honesty and integrity for a friggnn' change

[MNJohnnie]

The Amnesty being offered by the Iraqis does not extend to those who have engaged in Terrorist acts.

[Peach]

Okay, I'm back and I agree with you 100% about amnesty for insurgents if they lay down their arms and surrender. Especially for Iraqi insurgents. Iranian or other insurgents, I'd have to think about.

[Phsstpok]

Excellent post, AB! Warner, though not an effective spokesman IMHO, did try to push the distinction between combatants and war criminals.  It's clear that this is a big dim strategy for getting back the "patriotism" issue from the Republicans.  Harold Ford Jr. is already running ads on TV here this morning with this as the theme in his Senate bid.  He dropped several notches in my estimation for trying this tactic.  Makes me think he's both desperate and totally in the control of the MoveOn.ORG wing of the party now.

On a practical level I've always been really bothered by things like putting "evil dictators" on trial. For example, take the case of Chile's General Pinochet. I don't have sympathy for him because I just don't know enough to make a definitive judgment, but I've always felt that you have to offer even the worst enemies a way out where they survive unless your willing to destroy everyone and everything. If not what's their incentive not to fight on to the last meaningless death... on both sides? Pinochet stepped down because he was guaranteed that he wouldn't be prosecuted.  Now the leftists have gone back on their word and renounced that law (surprise, surprise). When the next "president for life" somewhere is confronted with a choice like that they'll think about him and decide they might as well go down killing their enemies. They have nothing to lose.

[maica]

You know Peach, as a retired military person, I'd actually agree to give the insurgents amnesty if they'd lay down their arms and surrender.


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Don't you find it "interesting" that the Dems are coming out so strongly against Maliki's suggestion. They do everything they can to tie the hands of anyone trying to help Iraq, and when a suggestion that may really be of serious benefit to the country is offered, these dems feign "support" for the troops by throwing mud in the eye of al-Maliki.

It seems to me that a whole lot of Confederate soldiers were given amnesty after April 9, 1865.