Posted on 06/06/2005 8:03:09 PM PDT by FreeKeys
We may look back on some eras as heroic -- that of the founding fathers or "the greatest generation" that fought World War II -- but some eras we look back on in disbelief at the utter stupidity with which people ruined their economies or blundered into wars in which every country involved ended up worse off than before.
How will people a century from now look back on our era?
Fortunately, most of us will be long gone by then, so we will be spared the embarrassment of seeing ourselves judged.
What will future generations say about how we behaved when confronted by international terrorist organizations that have repeatedly demonstrated their cut-throat ruthlessness and now had the prospect of getting nuclear weapons from rogue nations like Iran and North Korea?
What will future generations think when they see the front pages of our leading newspapers repeatedly preoccupied with whether we are treating captured cut-throats nicely enough? What will they think when they see the Geneva Convention invoked to protect people who are excluded from protection by the Geneva Convention?
During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops.
This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. We understood then that the Geneva Convention protected people who obeyed the Geneva Convention, not those who didn't -- as terrorists today certainly do not.
What will those who look back on these times think when they see that the American Civil Liberties Union, and others who have made excuses for all sorts of criminals, were pushing for the prosecution of our own troops for life-and-death decisions they had a split second to make in the heat of combat?
The frivolous demands made on our military -- that they protect museums while fighting for their lives, that they tiptoe around mosques from which people are shooting at them -- betray an irresponsibility made worse by ingratitude toward men who have put their lives on the line to protect us.
It is impossible to fight a war without heroism. Yet can you name a single American military hero acclaimed by the media for an act of courage in combat? Such courage is systematically ignored by most of the media.
If American troops kill a hundred terrorists in battle and lose ten of their own men doing it, the only headline will be: "Ten More Americans Killed in Iraq Today."
Those in the media who have carped at the military for years, and have repeatedly opposed military spending, are now claiming to be "honoring" our military by making a big production out of publishing the names of all those killed in Iraq. Will future generations see through this hypocrisy -- and wonder why we did not?
What will the generations of the future say if we allow Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear weapons, which are then turned over to terrorists who can begin to annihilate American cities?
Our descendants will wonder how we could have let this happen, when we had the power to destroy any nation posing such a threat. Knowing that we had the power, they would have to wonder why we did not have the will -- and why it was so obvious that we did not.
Nothing will more painfully reveal the irresponsible frivolity of our times than the many demands in the media and in politics that we act only with the approval of the United Nations and after winning over "world opinion."
How long this will take and what our enemies will be doing in the meantime while we are going through these futile exercises is something that gets very little attention.
Do you remember Osama bin Laden warning us, on the eve of last year's elections, that he would retaliate against those parts of the United States that voted for Bush? The United States is not Spain, so we disregarded his threats.
But what of future generations, after international terrorists get nuclear weapons? And what will our descendants think of us -- will they ever forgive us -- for leaving them in such a desperate situation because we were paralyzed by a desire to placate "world opinion"?
Is that true?
This is a direct quote from the article (above); Dr. Sowell did the research; I didn't.
Why do you doubt it?
I know, but I assume there's a more complete recounting than the author's vague references to the History Channel. I'm certainly not saying it's false (it's just a newspaper column, not a scholarly article), but I'd like more details if anyone knows them.
During World War II, German soldiers who were captured not wearing the uniform of their own army were simply lined up against a wall and shot dead by American troops.
This was not a scandal. Far from being covered up by the military, movies were taken of the executions and have since been shown on the History Channel. We understood then that the Geneva Convention protected people who obeyed the Geneva Convention, not those who didn't -- as terrorists today certainly do not.
This part needs to stop:
"The frivolous demands made on our military -- that they protect museums while fighting for their lives, that they tiptoe around mosques from which people are shooting at them -- betray(edit: portray?) an irresponsibility made worse by ingratitude toward men who have put their lives on the line to protect us."
Let them do their job: Kill Terrorists!
People of the future will not fail to notice that today's people willingly massacred 40,000,000+ unborn babies because 5 judges said it was OK with them to do that.
There seems to be a general misunderstanding about the purpose of the Geneva Accords.
These were not some flower-power feel good rules about how to conduct civilized war. They were hard-headed rules that applied between and among the signatories that were first and foremost designed to provide some limited protection to civilian populations in war zones.
To accomplish this, combatants needed to be distinguishable from civilian populations. Hence the requirements that combatants be clothed in distinguishing uniforms in order to be afforded the protections embodied in the treaty.
Conversely, soldiers fighting out of uniform NEEDED to be shot in order to give force and meaning to the provisions of the treaty. After all, if spies and saboturs, and others fighting out of uniform were afforded protections equivalent to those following the rules, the treaty is made a contempible and ineffective joke.
Good article!
We called 'em "Krauts", and no one screamed "Bigot!" either;)
It's absolutely true. Executed as "spies" was the term.
Hey, guess what . . . if a foreign country invaded my home town, you can be damn sure that I'd fight them off -- and I wouldn't have a uniform, either. I probably wouldn't even know how to put one on!
The basic premise of a "citizen militia" is that an armed citizenry makes a country extraordinarily difficult for an invading army to conquer. That works for Iraq as well as it did for 230 years of U.S. history.
Thomas Sowell is a great writer, but he ought to stick to economics.
The reference in the article was to the Geneva Convention, not gun control. Read much?
I understand exactly what the article said. My response addresses the point of the Geneva Convention in the context of armed citizens. There are tens of millions of people in the United States who own firearms, and almost every one of them would pick their guns up and shoot any foreign invading forces -- and they would all be considered in violation of the "rules of warfare" under the Geneva Convention, too.
If you were the subject of a dictatorship, liberators came to rescue you, and you decided to fight to defend the dictatorship, you'd deserve to get shot for any damned reason. What are you, some kind of moral relativist or something?
What are the "liberators" coming to rescue me from? And what are they going to replace it with?
Yes, it is true.
There was one very well documented case that occurred during or just after the Battle of the Budge. During the opening seconds of at doomed offensive, Germany parachuted several detachments of special troops behind American lines for the purpose of sabotage and what we would now be called terrorism. These men were clothed as Americans, carrying American equipment, and spoke English, colloquial American to be precise.
Not all were captured, but several were. They were captured wearing American uniforms behind American lines. Military justice was quick and final; death by firing squad. Not only were pictures, motion pictures and stills, taken but there is a well known painting by an Army Combat Artist of one of the executions - it appeared in a Life book on the history of World War II art printed in either the 1960s or 1970s.
What was not mentioned in the article was the post surrender combat operations by elements of the German Army; they went under the name of “Werewolves”. Working in occupied territory, wearing civilian clothing they stage ambushes of small American and British patrols and executed Germans who were cooperating with the occupation authorities. This went on for 5 to 8 years. When these people were captured military justice was just as quick and final; death by hanging.
Why the difference? The pre-surrender cases were at least some kind of military operation. Hence the military death. The post-surrender cases were treated as criminal cases by the military occupying authorities; hence the civilian death.
Yes. ...And the Geneva Conventions specifically excluded protections for such.
A major goal of the Geneva Conventions was to protect civilians from being directly subject to military actions, and as such a clear line between military and civilian was made. Those fighting out of uniform destroy that line and create a situation where there are no civilians. This was considered a bad thing, and so persons doing this were deliberately left unprotected.
A distinct and visible arm-band would do. Traditionally, Militias have had uniform markings as well. When you don't wear a uniform, you subject the civilian populace to military attacks. If someone invaded the U.S., it would probably be a moot point - most invaders I can think of probably wouldn't bother with the Conventions.
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