During wartime, when is killing rightly seen as murder as opposed to what constitutes normal warfare? One would think the lines between the two are quite distinct, but the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have muddied that difference.
The policies of the US administration and, more specifically, Bush’s decisions to opt out of the International Criminal Court and to make new rules governing the rights of “enemy combatants” in defiance of the Geneva Conventions has left soldiers on all sides in a legal no-man’s land.
Summary of the definition of murder under the Geneva Conventions:
Murder is forbidden by the Geneva Conventions, both in cases of internal conflicts (Convention I, Art. 3, Sec. 1A), wounded combatants (Convention I, Art. 12), civilians in occupied territories (Convention IV, Art. 32), civilians in international conflicts (Protocol I, Art. 75, Sec. 2Ai) and civilians in internal conflicts (Protocol II, Art. 4, Sec. 2A).
On Monday, a Canadian teen being held at Gitmo for 3 years was charged with murder for killing a US soldier when he allegedly threw a grenade at him at an Al Quaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002 during a gun battle in which he was shot three times. He was 15 at the time of the incident.
Via Common Dreams, June, 2005 (reprint of a Toronto Star article):
In February, his U.S. lawyer told reporters the teenager had been used as a human mop to clean urine on the floor and had been beaten, threatened with rape and tied up for hours in painful positions at Guantanamo Bay.
More from the Toronto Star article:
Khadr’s Canadian lawyer Dennis Edney said yesterday he has regularly raised concerns with Ottawa about the teen’s treatment at Guantanamo and use of his client’s medical records.
“This conduct is a blatant disregard by both Canada and the U.S. to recognize the special status international treaties and human rights law accords children and youths,” Edney said yesterday.
Obviously, there are many disturbing questions in this case. Fundamentally though, should a person in a gun battle with an army not be allowed to defend himself by any means necessary?
Just as the Bush administration’s latest push for allowing the CIA to use torture ignores the fact that such an exemption calls for retribution by others to torture US soldiers and citizens, the twisting of the definition of murder during wartime would seem to allow US troops to be charged with that crime as well in circumstances such as Khadr’s. That type of policy defies logic.
Canada will keep pushing to ensure that Khadr is treated humanely and that he has proper legal representation but it is fighting an uphill battle with a US government that has no regard for anyone’s rights.
If Omar Khadr is found guilty, he faces the death penalty.
Read more about Khadr’s family background here and here.
Hey catnip, thanks for bringing this up. I was going to blog about it today (just finished reading the Star actually), but now I don’t have to! 🙂
What I want to know is wtf is a “unprivileged belligerent,”?? That is the newspeak from the Bush admin. Seriously though, what the hell does that actually MEAN? It means nothing. They are just making shit up now to skirt Geneva. This is disgusting.
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WASHINGTON (NYT) – The Pentagon has approved a new policy directive governing interrogations as part of an effort to tighten controls over the questioning of terror suspects and other prisoners by American soldiers.
The eight-page directive, which was signed without any public announcement last Thursday by Acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England, will allow the Army to issue a long-delayed field manual for interrogators that is supposed to incorporate the lessons gleaned from the prisoner-abuse scandals last year.
The Army intends, for example, to ensure that interrogation techniques are approved, up to the highest levels in the Pentagon, that interrogators are properly trained and that personnel in the field are required to report any abuses, Army officials said.
It also reaffirms that military dogs may not be used in interrogations and that military police may provide interrogators information about detainees’ behaviour, but may not take part in the interrogations themselves.
“Acts of physical or mental torture are prohibited,” said a copy of the directive obtained by the daily, which added that the document only elaborated that detainess must be treated humanely “in accordance with applicable law and policy.”
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
The problem is that I thought they already had such directives. (?)
And how do they define mental torture? Are they using Geneva Conventions guidelines or their own?
That story doesn’t give me much hope that anything’s changed.
Thanks for posting it, Oui.
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Cheney in the Bunker
By Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff – Newsweek
Bloodied but unbowed, the veep has a new number two. Game on.Nov. 14, 2005 issue – As usual, Dick Cheney insisted on doing business behind closed doors. Last Tuesday, Senate Republicans were winding up their weekly luncheon in the Capitol when the vice president rose to speak. Staffers were quickly ordered out of the room–what Cheney had to say was for senators only.
Normally taciturn, Cheney was uncharacteristically impassioned, according to two GOP senators who did not want to be on the record about a private meeting. He was very upset over the Senate’s overwhelming passage of an amendment that prohibits inhumane treatment of terrorist detainees.
Cheney said the law would tie the president’s hands and end up costing “thousands of lives.”
He dramatized the point, conjuring up a scenario in which a captured Qaeda operative, another Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, refuses to give his interrogators details about an imminent attack. “We have to be able to do what is necessary,” the vice president said, according to one of the senators who was present.
The lawmakers listened, but they weren’t moved to act. Sen. John McCain, who authored the anti-torture amendment, spoke up.
John McCain: “This is killing us around the world”.
The House, which will likely vote on the measure soon, is also expected to pass it by a large margin.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
that human mop stuff is not true. I really hope it is not true.
the past usage of testicle clamps, nothing would surprise me anymore.
Can anyone tell me why Bush didn’t accept Rumsfeld’s TWO resignations?!? The buck stops nowhere in this criminal government.
When it is not a last ditch attempt at self defense or by extension, the defense of others whose safety has been entrusted to you and who are not THEMSELVES murderers or dedicated and successful big time thieves and/or sadists.
Simple, huh?
AG
Any killing that is not in self-defense is murder. Any country that starts a war is committing mass murder. The only legitimate war is a defensive war against an aggressor. Even then, the defender should not be construed as having carte blanche to do whatever it likes against the aggressor’s civilians population.
War is too often — always, in fact — treated as if it represents a suspension of ethical obligations. The belligerents almost always allow their opponents to dictate the bottom limits of acceptability. And so, almost always, enemies come to resemble each other.
The concept of laws of war is an important one. War itself represents the final breakdown of the rule of law. To attempt to mitigate that by imposing law upon war is both pathetic and our only hope of building a world in which wars are few. The seeds of the next war are usually sown in the brutality of the current war.
There is a “pragmatic” school of thought that views war as inevitable, but it is those pragmatists who make war inevitable. What is inevitable is that, as technology advances, perpetuating the human habit of warfare guarantees our extinction as a species. We must, with real level-headed pragmatism, work towards the end of war. To do otherwise is to surrender to the end of the human race.