Distinct Disadvantage – Moon of Alabama

November 24, 2004

Distinct Disadvantage

How do you apply the concept of law to armed robbers who have no clear superiors to accept responsibility for their crimes?

If we battle the mafia, laws should apply. But when the criminals are just individuals united by one cause – armed robbery – doesn’t that put the police at a distinct disadvantage to obey the rules of law, when the criminals won’t? Police tactics are scrutinized and criticized by lawmakers and judges, while armed robbery is hardly even worth commenting on because
everyone knows armed robbers don’t care about how criminal they are.

Rather than quibble with lawmakers and judges about definitions and standards, as policemen maybe it’s time to just be straight and say laws do not envision armed robbery, period.

Do you think the above is moronic? Read on.

How do you apply the concept of prisoners of war to suicidal fighters who have no clear superiors to accept responsibility for any actions of their "soldiers?" If we battle a nation, the convention should apply.
…
But when the enemy is just individuals united by one cause— hatred of the U.S.— doesn’t that put us at a distinct disadvantage to obey the rules of armed conflict, when they won’t? Our tactics are scrutinized and criticized by the world, while their beheadings and mutilations are hardly even worth commenting on because everyone knows they don’t care about how inhumane they are.

Rather than quibble with the international community about definitions and standards, maybe it’s time to just be straight and say Geneva did not envision this type of warfare, period.

Who wrote and published this? Donald Rumsfeld? The Weekly Standard? John Ashcroft? The National Review? Charles Krauthammer?
The Free Republic? Alberto Gonzales? Little Green Footballs?

No – Dan Abrams, MSNBC Anchor & NBC News Chief Legal Correspondent and staunch liberal writer for a ban on assault weapons, at the MSNBC website.

Link:
Geneva did not envision urban warfare with terrorists

Posted by b on November 24, 2004 at 14:08 UTC | Permalink

Comments

“Our tactics are scrutinized and criticized by the world, while their beheadings and mutilations are hardly even worth commenting on because everyone knows they don’t care about how inhumane they are.”
Hmmm, the way I read it, it should also means that the US *cares* about how humane they are, which explains why they allegedly try not to be as barbarous as the jihadis.
Saying “Geneva doesn’t apply and we can torture and mutilate them as much as we like” is just admitting that the US don’t care anymore about how inhumane they are and how inhumane the others think they are. Of course, Abrams should also mention that if the US goes this way, it means that Geneva conventions, and basically all rules of war, don’t apply to the US. That would be the logical consequence, and it means that every US trooper, if not every US citizen, would then be fair game.
Beside, I’m still waiting for Bush to declare the Geneva is part of the Axis of Evil.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Nov 24 2004 14:20 utc | 1

It is a very short walk from declaring that some who oppose our govt. are undeserving of legal protection to declaring that any who oppose our govt. are undeserving. Find one exception to a rule and the principle for finding others is established. We are on a path which could easily lead our govt. to believe they can and should disappear people in this country. (Not that we wouldn’t deserve it for allowing Iraq to happen – those who refuse to learn will be made to feel.)
Who knows? Maybe by then many of those who favored the assault weapons ban will be glad it was lifted and those in power who lifted it will regret that action.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Nov 24 2004 15:06 utc | 2

Geneva, Hague, the Law of Land Warfare govern our behavior as adherents; once war is begun, they guide and limit our actions, not an enemy’s. This has the effect of leveling the playing field between mis-matched forces, most dramatically in the case of guerilla warfare. The advantage goes to the guerilla.
The laws of war allow much – far more than I think people realize – under the common doctrine of military necessity, but on the other hand their proscriptive nature owes everything to the belief that the end does not justify all means. We have forbidden ourselves victory at any price, though the price is still very high, isn’t it?
Guerilla fighters confront us with a very fundamental choice – to break our rules or abide by them. To stick to our moral and legal precepts or abandon them. But the responsibility for that choice, and all its consequences, are ours either way.
[That the police pursue criminals, who are criminals because they do not abide by the law, does not mean that the police are therefore granted the “right” to indulge in criminal behavior in the course of their work. There can be no such right.]

Posted by: Pat | Nov 24 2004 16:19 utc | 3

Pat
A subversive reading of war laws is to 1) delimit conduct of all parties in order to assure identification of the enemy as that party who cannot obey because to do so would 2) compel the party incapable of respecting the law into a permitted confrontation that vastly favors the enemy whose overwhelming force is seldom constrained by such laws.

Posted by: slothrop | Nov 24 2004 17:06 utc | 4

The basic problem is American’s leaders and people cannot put themselves in their enemy’s shoes. This is not warfare between states. This is warfare between religion and cultures. The most fundamentalist religion will always win unless it is wipe off the face of the world or if the culture is corroded or corrupted until it’s a pale imitation of the original.
Americans, the media, and its leaders are so tied up in the term “terrorism” or “War on Terrorism” (WOT), they are incapable of seeing that they are actually on a Children’s Crusade or are in a Holy War with Islam.

Posted by: Jim S | Nov 24 2004 17:24 utc | 5

It’s impossible to reason with someone who writes like this, but it’s not hard to see what bothers him–namely the suicide bombers. But let’s think of one thing: whether or not the mission of a suicide bomber succeeds or fails, it’s a sure thing the bomber himself won’t be taken prisoner, and so the Geneva Conventions covering POW’s don’t speak to him at all (they don’t speak, so far as I know, to or for the dead in any way: there are no rules, so far as I know, regarding the treatment of corpses).
Why, then, bring up the subject of the Geneva Conventions where suicide bombers are concerned? Certainly the Intifada is having an effect on Israel, which hasn’t been able to stop it. And in truth, the only way to stop it would be to destroy the whole Palestinian population. Genocide as a counter-attack on suicide bombers–is this what Abrams has in mind? If so, then he should bear in mind that genocide would fail just as surely as conventional warfare has failed. The Intifada’s resources, in this one respect, are effectively infinite.

Posted by: alabama | Nov 24 2004 19:50 utc | 6

What bothers me here is that this guy is no evangelical wingnut like Ashcroft, but a lawyer journalist for a mainstream media.
His piece is full of flaws in my view.

Posted by: b | Nov 24 2004 20:47 utc | 7

@Pat
Guerilla fighters confront us with a very fundamental choice – to break our rules or abide by them. To stick to our moral and legal precepts or abandon them. But the responsibility for that choice, and all its consequences, are ours either way.
Somehow agreed, but…
In legal struggle a look at “motiv” may be allowed.
If one invades another country to “spread democracy” is one allowed to abstain from basic laws that are, with others, the base of democracy or would this not be just a pure perversity?
If one thinks ones land has be invaded for an unnoble cause and with no regard to basic laws is one allowed to accomodate and disregard these laws just as one percieves the enemy does?
Legaly Iraq has a either an occupying authority, the United States which regognizes Geneva conventions and has a UCMJ, or it has a government with laws and process that may have “hired” foreign forces to help to inforce them. In any case ther are laws to be followed by the enforcing force. Disregarding them because the “other side” disregards them is giving up any fig leaf of legimaty.
But then – who cares for that anyhow.

Posted by: b | Nov 24 2004 21:03 utc | 8

I agree with Pat, and I think Alabama really has a handle on Abrams’ motivation. As Pat said, it is a matter of our responsibility, after all, all we really have control over is ourselves. It is moral weakness or the desire to justify power grabbing at home that is behind the abandonment of law in the face of pursuing the lawless. As b mentioned, many Americans and it seems our government is at the point where they don’t care about upholding law, international or domestic. But once we are beyond the point where all sides have abandoned restrictions on use of force against each other the situation does not moot the vitally importance of uphold those restrictions because the UCMJ and Geneva also protect civilians. If civilians are not protected than the invader has lost “hearts and minds” and the war, for as Alabama stated, even genocide cannot win the war for the invader since the guerillas resources become as infinite as the population itself. But it seems the Bush (mis)administration has already decided that civilians don’t matter, just as Israel before it. Galactic stupidity is in season.

Posted by: Stoy | Nov 24 2004 21:51 utc | 9

in a butchershop we should not be like grocers wondering over the quality of the meat

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 24 2004 22:14 utc | 10

True that.

Posted by: Stoy | Nov 24 2004 22:25 utc | 11

a)iraq is a sovereign nation
b) iraq as a soveign nation was invaded illegally by a group of nations who seek private profit from their invasion
c)illegal invading armies establish illegal governance
d) illegal governance uses methods of economic practice which are illegal
e) illegal economic practice dependant on numerous illegal ‘contracts’ – forced either by duress, blackmail or threat & menace
f) ilegal contracts then operate illegally even within the ‘illegal’ constructs of the illegal gouvernance
g) illegal economic practices including grand fraud, fraud, blackmail, kidnapping, threat or menace
h) illegal policing practice installed by illegal gouvernance
i) mass murder, common murder, summary executions without trials, assasinations with intent, assisinations without intent, accidental assassinations
j) kidnapping by illegal gouvernance, detention of people without recourse to trial, detention for cruel & unnnatural periods of time, indefinite detention, murder in detention, sodomy & other sexual violence committed during detention
k) illegal torture carried out illegally, illegal forms of punishment which result in death of person under detention
l) illegal detention
m) deaths caused in the illegal prosecution of war (100,000 people)
n) refusal to supply or initiate basic services – food, water, housing & education
o) expropriation of basic services for private profit
p) collective punishment
these & others in the endless caravanseraia of illegal practices should keep law schools in business for some time to come
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 24 2004 23:25 utc | 12

in brief, the iraqui people have the misfortune to be at a distinct disadvantage to be outside of whatever law there once was but no longer is
& on the substantive fact, the law would have been just another bill for them to pay
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 25 2004 0:40 utc | 13

“What bothers me here is that this guy is no evangelical wingnut like Ashcroft, but a lawyer journalist for a mainstream media.
His piece is full of flaws in my view.”
You miss the point B:
Abrams is a media whore par excellence. It’s all about ratings. If Abrams and his ilk thought they could increase their ratings by eating the Constitution, page by page, with a little catsup and mustard to moisten it a bit, they’d do it in a minute.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Nov 25 2004 4:03 utc | 14

rgiap
that’s right

Posted by: slothrop | Nov 25 2004 4:09 utc | 15

Back to Main