May 17, 2006
The Geneva Convention Posted by John Steele Gordon at 09:30 AM EST Joshua Zeitz wrote on May 10 that “in addition to Padilla and Hamdi, the administration has held hundreds of foreign nationals as enemy combatants, summarily ruling them beyond the reach of the Geneva Convention accords.” Yes, the administration has done exactly that, and I hope they continue to do so. The safety of American citizens might crucially depend on it. The Geneva Convention, like any treaty, binds only its signatories, in this case to act in certain ways when they capture the soldiers of another signatory in wartime. We are at war with no signatory of the Convention. So the Convention does not apply to these men. Period. Further the Convention requires that those captured fulfill certain requirements, such as being in uniform, in order to enjoy prisoner-of-war status. Spies and saboteurs, for instance, are not protected by the Geneva Convention. They can be, and have been in the past, aggressively interrogated and even summarily shot. If we were to grant these men prisoner-of-war status, as defined by the Geneva Convention, we could not interrogate them—prisoners of war need give nothing more than name, rank, and serial number. Why on earth would the United States tie one hand behind its back in this way? Why would we voluntarily give these men a status they do not deserve and thereby gravely compromise our ability to learn what the enemy is planning? Does anyone think that Al Qaeda and its ilk would treat a captured American soldier according to the Geneva Convention? Before I am accused of doing so, let me make it plain that I do not think the United States should treat its prisoners in this war the way our enemies most certainly would treat theirs. We have seen how they treat them on television, cutting off heads in ways that must be beyond torture for their hapless victims. These men should be and, as far as I know, have been treated decently, provided with adequate food and shelter, clothing, exercise, etc. They should not be granted habeas corpus and all the other protections of American law as though they had stolen a car in order to take a joy ride. They are not criminals. They are bent on the destruction of the United States. Joshua Zeitz writes that, “Though he [me] would like to write off liberals as dim-witted and soft on national defense, Mr. Gordon has glossed over a legitimate and important source of disagreement. He believes that we should compromise civil liberties in a time of war.” No, I believe we must compromise civil liberties in certain instances in order to serve a greater good. If given a choice between curtailing, to the minimum extent necessary, the civil liberties of people who wish our country harm, and making such a fetish of civil liberties that one of them is able to carry a suitcase full of explosives into Grand Central Terminal at six o’ clock on a Thursday evening and detonate it, I have no trouble choosing the former. Anyone who chooses the latter is, indeed, in my opinion, dimwitted and soft on national defense. Let me reiterate one more time, the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact.
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