Today’s Uproar

Today's big tempest in the blogosphere appears to be over this article in the LA Times.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.

The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged.

Now there's already an enormous amount of hyperventilation going on over this article, but there's a serious issue that deserves to be addressed. The Geneva Conventions were designed to cover traditional wars of nation against nation. Article 3 (the one under discussion right now) was specifically designed to cover combatants in a civil war type situation.

The Conventions simply were not designed to cover terrorists.

For decades, it had been the official policy of the U.S. military to follow the minimum standards for treating all detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention. But, in 2002, Bush suspended portions of the Geneva Convention for captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Bush's order superseded military policy at the time, touching off a wide debate over U.S. obligations under the Geneva accord, a debate that intensified after reports of detainee abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Among the directives being rewritten following Bush's 2002 order is one governing U.S. detention operations. Military lawyers and other defense officials wanted the redrawn version of the document known as DoD Directive 2310, to again embrace Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

That provision — known as a "common" article because it is part of each of the four Geneva pacts approved in 1949 — bans torture and cruel treatment. Unlike other Geneva provisions, Article 3 covers all detainees — whether they are held as unlawful combatants or traditional prisoners of war. The protections for detainees in Article 3 go beyond the McCain amendment by specifically prohibiting humiliation, treatment that falls short of cruelty or torture.

So, how can these protections be reconciled with the fact that the terrorists do not, and never will, follow the Conventions themselves? I think that question needs to be discussed, but for now there's a bit too much uproar to have a lucid discussion.

UPDATE: James Joyner thinks we may not be living up to our standards. He also found a stunning quote from Zarqawi on the whole uproar. Kind of.

UPDATE: Really good discussion of this over at Winds of Change as well. Read the whole thing because it is asking what I have been wondering myself.

Other Links to this Post

1. Polimom Says » Torture, humiliation, and American Values — Monday, 5 June , 2006 @ 2:32 pm