Hi stockman_scott; I may as well collect some of my own comments on the Geneva Convention from before the war, and on our treatment of the detainees from before that was publicly acknowledged:
Bilow (to Tekboy), October 16, 2002
I agree with you that conquering Iraq should not be a problem, and that the military will unconditionally surrender fairly quickly. But the problem is the civilians, not the military.
Wars in which one side wins with "maneuver", followed by an occupation, tend to be the ones associated with high amounts of guerilla warfare. Examples of this would be the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and the German conquering of France in 1940. It takes about six months of occupation before guerilla warfare is organized. Both the above wars had this sort of delay, and we've seen it again with Israel's occupations.
...
Violations of the Geneva Convention toward civilians supporting guerilla activity is not some bizarre and rare accident of warfare, but is extremely common in these situations. The undeniable fact that we're already having trouble with this in Kuwait, our very close ally, surely indicates that in Iraq itself, with 10 years of sanctions and hostilities between us and them, it would be a monumental problem. #reply-18123176
Bilow, October 22, 2002
Technically, that's a minor violation of the Geneva Convention: [i.e. Israeli soldiers posing for photos over dead bodies of their enemy] ... It's punished in the US military, when caught, but it is a very common thing in wartime. I'd be surprised if police departments don't do the same thing now and again. ... #reply-18158704
Bilow, July 20, 2003
It's a fact that stuff against the Geneva Convention is fairly common in war. But it's not a fact that the US military routinely violates that convention as a matter of policy. (Okay, the "detainees" may be an exception, but that was a policy determined not by the US military, but instead by the civilian overseers.) #reply-19127959
-- Carl |
