Posted on 12/23/2009 7:37:58 AM PST by yoe
Five years ago, a particularly gruesome image made its way to our television screens from the war in Iraq. Four U.S. civilian contractors working in Fallujah were ambushed and killed by al Qaeda. Their bodies were burned, then dragged through the streets. Two of the charred bodies were hung from the Euphrates Bridge and left dangling.
This barbaric act left an impression that our military did not forget: In a special operation earlier this year, Navy SEALs captured the mastermind of that attack, Ahmed Hashim Abed. But after he was taken into custody in September, Abed claimed he was punched by his captors. He showed a fat lip to prove it. Three of the SEALS are now awaiting a courts-martial on charges ranging from assault to dereliction of duty and making false statements.
This incident and its twisted irony takes me back to an oddly serene setting many years ago. When I was in college, I joined my parents on a trip to retrace my father's wartime experience in Europe. We drove from France, through Holland and Belgium and on to Germanythe same route he had taken with the U.S. Army in 1944-45. At a field outside the Belgian town of Malmedy, we got out of our rented car where my father described something I had never heard before.
During the Battle of the Bulge, in the bleak December of 1944, the Germans had quickly overrun the American lines. They took thousands of prisoners as they pushed through in a last chance gamble to turn the war around. One unit, part of the First SS Panzer Division, had captured over a hundred GIs. They were moving fast, and they didn't care to be burdened by prisoners. So the SS troops
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“According to my very wise grandfather,The rules made by the Geneva Convention were for the lawyers and elites, not for those ACTUALLY fighting the war.”
Then, Please explain the 90%+ survival rate of Allied air crews shot down over Germany and German aircrews shot down over England.
Given the large number of civilians killed strategic bombing the either side could easily have justified not taking these air crews prisoner.
From what I have read, the Geneva convention was more or less followed on the Western Front in Europe and rarely followed on the Eastern Front or in the Pacific.
With large percentages of both allied and German POWs taken on the Western front,treated well and surviving the war.
What to do? The snipers were uniformed German soldiers, and sniping is not a violation of the rules of war, but killing disarmed prisoners is. The problem was kicked up the Chain of Command until it got to General Omar Bradley, commander (at the time) of all American ground forces in France. Bradley, who was, I think, about as mild mannered and decent a guy as ever commanded an American Army, ruled that there would be no Courts Martial convened over shooting snipers, with the comment:
If the Germans think that they can come behind our lines, shoot our guys down, then surrender when they get caught, or run out of ammo, and that were are going to send them to a POW camp and feed 'em hot chow, they got another thing coming. We are going to be just as rough with snipers as they are with us. (I quote from memory).
That was the US Military circa 1944. It is a travesty that in 2009 we can't a General Officer (or whatever the Navy calls a guy with stars) to stand up and say I'm not convening a Court Marital to see if the SEALS did or did not give the terrorist a bloody nose.
Include those captured alive in the body count, after interrogation, insure that the earlier report of their demise, is correct.
Lawyers and politicians like Murtha have urinated on the Geneva Convention where our troops are concerned.
Our Congress gives them rights.
1. Never humanize your enemy.
2. Kill your enemy until he stops killing you.
3. There are no rules in war.
The theory is called reprisal and it works pretty well. Tom Kratman explains it pretty well in a book called “a Desert called Peace”.
On 30th January, 1943, (Ernst Kaltenbrunnr)was appointed Chief of the Security Police and SD and Head of the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA)
During the period in which Kaltenbrunner was Head of the RSHA, it was engaged in a widespread programme of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These crimes included the mistreatment and murder of prisoners of war.
Kaltenbrunner's regime established the "Bullet Decree," under which certain escaped prisoners of war who were recaptured were taken to Mauthausen and shot. The order for the execution of commando troops was extended by the Gestapo to include parachutists
An order signed by Kaltenbrunner instructed the Police not to interfere with attacks on bailed out Allied fliers. In December, 1944, Kaltenbrunner participated in the murder of one of the French Generals held as a prisoner of war.
With the Red Army closing in on Germany, Kaltenbrunner gave orders for all prisoners in extermination camps to be killed and then fled south but was captured by Allied troops. Accused of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial he was found guilty and executed on 1st October, 1946.
When I was young,my grandfather took me to Europe several times and showed me many of the Battle of the Bulge sites and I got a first hand history lesson.
What I did not know till much later was that his wife, my grandmother, spent a couple of years in a concentration camp...she was in the French Resistance.
Their generation was rather quiet about the hell on earth that took place from 1939-1945.
Ping to some who participated on “Principles of the Just War”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2401504/posts?page=1
Rule #2 needs a minor revision. Sapping your enemy's will to fight can be done in many more ways than simply killing. (Heck, look at the incredibly good job the MSM does at sapping our will to fight, particularly by violating Rule #1.) Sun Tzu, and anyone who has actually fought in a battle, will tell you that it is FAR better to win without firing a shot.
(However, if clever diplomacy, sneaky tricks, ruthless espionage, and overt threats don't work, few methods are more reliable than quickly and efficiently taking out far more of them than they take from us.)
This is true when you are fighting regular troops, but it is just a tactic to be exploited by fanatics. The Japanese were not impressed and frequently did fight to the last round. Similarly, terrorists are not prone to such western concepts of self preservation because the entire point of their actions is to win or die as a martyr.
And I am sick of hearing about our enhanced interrogation techniques creating more terrorists. I am not aware of a single American POW since WWII who was not tortured or at least had the crap beat out of him after capture. Why? Because they know they can do it with impunity and there will be no similar response to their side.
Each conflict should be evaluated individually and our policies based on one thing and that is how they treat our troops. If you give our guys a break we will do the same. If you ignore international norms we will not bind ourselves to them unilaterally.
‘A full third of this nation seems intent on destroying itself.’
Worse, they’re absolutely intent on taking the rest of us with them.
And this SEAL thing is legalistic bunk.
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Anyone who says otherwise, actually subverts the Geneva Conventions. In that same way that an overbid at bridge produces subsequent underbidding. Accord the enemy rights which he does not reciprocate, and you will eventually lose.Nobody will enlist in your army under those conditions.
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