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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (225810)	3/31/2007 1:07:34 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The above quote of mine that you copied was a remark aimed at the supreme illogic of saying that Al Qaeda taking out a city (Al Qaeda operatives being non-state actors who disguise themselves) has anything to do with GC treatment of prisoners. It wasn't supposed to have anything to do with Iran. The argument you are making is that we should always follow the GC "because it makes us feel civilized" - without expecting reciprocity, and regardless of the behavior of the other side, whom we can't expect civilized behavior out of anyway. How this argument could apply only to Iran but not to Al Qaeda as well, you'll have to explain. It applies equally to both as far as I can see, since you already don't expect the other side to follow any rules at all. Certainly the crowd yelling about US flouting the Geneva Conventions in Gitmo has not drawn any distinctions between Al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners.

To: epicure who wrote (225810)	3/31/2007 1:53:09 PM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I didn't advocate silence, if you recall. But don't let it trouble you that you didn't actually pay attention to what I wrote. I get the feeling this is just an exercise in futility. I paid attention to what you wrote. It was that we should uphold the GC so that we can feel good about holding ourselves to standards. You had little to say about the Iranians failure to uphold the Geneva Conventions, other than to say something along the lines of "of course a country like THAT doesn't uphold the GConventions." Well the purpose of the GC in this area is not to make us feel good about ourselves, it is to establish acceptable behviour in regard to treatment of foreign nationals. A country which signs them, then disregards them, should suffer some penalty. What penalty did you recommend - war crimes trials! Uhmmmm, that's sorta silly, but if that's the best penalty you can come up with you can expect the Geneva Conventions to have less and less importance going forward. My idea (tit for tat with the Iranian military) makes a lot more real time sense than your ex-post facto after the war (if there is going to be a war) is over proposal. I continue to feel the upholding the GC are as much about the country that upholds them, as they are about some "trade" in favors with other countries. That's your own silly personal view. In this case they are about how to treat foreign national's military, not how to grab high moral ground. When you capture someone with a gun pointed down their throat the high moral groung isn't very important. I would not want to think my country wanted to trade in the suffering of captives in that particular way, not even as a tit for tat. As I said, the British should treat captured Iranians however they choose, well or not, but the Iranians should have zero GC-related recourse since they have obvioulsy abandoned them themselves. Don't you understand the difference between separating the moral and the legal ground?