[quote]lucasa wrote:
orion wrote:
You are obsessed with the term civilian. I am only using the term civilian in the context of the Convention.
How can you write this and then act like there is no ambiguity?
Seriously, you make quasi-legitimate arguments and then punch yourself in the face with the simplest comments. I can see some of what you’re asserting, and I don’t know how much I like it.
Your assertions either destroy the idea of national sovereignty (domestic US law following soldiers around wherever they go), are tautological (“civilian criminals” redefining the battlefield wherever they go), or both.
Makes me nostalgic for the Cold War when intelligence agencies would just make people disappear without declaring war at all and we both know what a human rights nightmare that is.
Unlawful combatants have been recognized the world over for decades, they weren’t expressly called that, but they are held for the duration of the war (like POWs), denied repatriation (unlike POWs), convicted in domestic court (unlike POWs), and (often) executed (legally, unlike POWs). Even American combatants are/were subject to this.
[/quote]
See, this is how you handle them. That is a-ok under the Convention as far as I understand it.
If you have no uniform you get executed for shooting people.
If you classify some of them as something not mentioned in the GC, though they are, and no longer stick to the basic requirements of the GC for them, like not torturing them, no inhumane treatment etc, this is what I have a problem with.
They actually have a guaranteed right to be treated in a civilized manner, before they get, um, shot.
[quote]
Also, the idea of the ICRC dictating any international law that in any way overrides even the most trivial of federal legislation is funny.[/quote]
I do not know how that texactly works in the US but the GC is part of US law.
The ICRC was merely giving its legal opinion and argued it very well. Where`s teh problem? They have way better legal arguments than Bush.