Dead Bodies
Aug. 4th, 2003 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI wondered how long it would take for some bit of political rhetoric to so piss me off that I decided to rant here, and it took less than a week.
Charles Krauthammer elected to declaim we needed to display the corpses of the Hussein Bros.
In and of itself such a view might not have inspired me to respond, anyone is, after all, entitled to opinions, no matter how stupid or counterproductive I think those opinions to be (seems only fair, as I have more than few opinions others feel stupid and/or counterproductive).
But Mr. Krauthammer went so far as to be both wrong, and to recommend public hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. Gov't.
He says that the reason we don't have, "perp walk[s]" for the capture of the, "six of spades," et al. and do for Martha Stewart is that such showings would be counter to the Geneva Conventions. So far so good.
But he goes on to say there is an exception, or as he puts it, "a loophole." "You are not allowed to parade a prisoner on television, but there is nothing in the Geneva Conventions about displaying dead bodies."
But there is such a prohibition, "Article 34.-Remains of deceased
1. The remains of persons who have died for reasons related to occupation or in detention resulting from occupation or hostilities and those of persons not nationals of the country in which they have died as a result of hostilities shall be respected, and the gravesites of all such persons shall be respected, maintained and marked as provided for in Article 130 of the Fourth Convention, where their remains or gravesites would not receive more favourable consideration under the Conventions and this Protocol."
Further, the U.S. and Britain asserted there was such a provision when the Iraqis sent a tape to Al Jazzera with footage of dead soldiers.
Krauthammer then goes on to preach that the killing of the sons was not only reasonable (a tenable position, and one that I am not willing to wade in on. I was not there and am not going to second guess the commander on the ground) but the ideal.
He compares the deaths of them with Richard III's killing of his nephews, and in such a way that the boys' deaths was a good thing, "We had no wish to take Uday and Qusay alive.... The moment we captured them we would have been responsible for their care and feeding forever.... It would have meant that for the next 50 years the Hussein dynasty would have been kept alive-- by us."
He goes on, "Which suggests a plan for when we finally find Saddam Hussein. We give him, oh, 30 seconds to contemplate his surrender-- after all he's had about five months to mull it over-- and then we kill the monster."
And Krauthammer admits that we were holding the bodies up to ridicule. "You want to show that the king is not only dead, but humiliated, desecrated...."
This is what he wants us to do? To take our enemies and display their heads on pikes? To offer pro-forma chances to surrender before we kill our opponents?
Perhaps I am odd, out of touch with my fellow citizens, maybe four months in a combat zone have made me oversensitive, but I don't want to serve in an Army which does that. Hell, I don't want to serve for a nation that does that.
Rumsfeld says he is glad he chose to show the bodies... Mind you he stands by his outrage that the Iraqis did the same. Somehow we are justified, and they are not. It seems to be, as I digress, to be part and parcel of the belief that the rules should not apply to us (see the position of both this, and the last, administration's contention that the World Court should not have jurisdiction over Americans who commit war crimes).
This from a nation which trumpets itself as being a great place, a beacon of hope to other nations because it uses a rule of law to see to it that fairness is extended to all its citizens (I might once have said residents but the PATRIOT Act seems to have made that a false statement).
It is ironic that we seem to be adopting a philosophy that being less than we hold ourselves out to be is the best way to make Iraq like us, so they may show the way for other nations in the region to become like us (and that is another topic altogether).
I wish I'd taken notes when I was venting to myself, because I feel I have lost the focus of my immediate anger, and so the power of my arguments seems diminished.
Charles Krauthammer elected to declaim we needed to display the corpses of the Hussein Bros.
In and of itself such a view might not have inspired me to respond, anyone is, after all, entitled to opinions, no matter how stupid or counterproductive I think those opinions to be (seems only fair, as I have more than few opinions others feel stupid and/or counterproductive).
But Mr. Krauthammer went so far as to be both wrong, and to recommend public hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. Gov't.
He says that the reason we don't have, "perp walk[s]" for the capture of the, "six of spades," et al. and do for Martha Stewart is that such showings would be counter to the Geneva Conventions. So far so good.
But he goes on to say there is an exception, or as he puts it, "a loophole." "You are not allowed to parade a prisoner on television, but there is nothing in the Geneva Conventions about displaying dead bodies."
But there is such a prohibition, "Article 34.-Remains of deceased
1. The remains of persons who have died for reasons related to occupation or in detention resulting from occupation or hostilities and those of persons not nationals of the country in which they have died as a result of hostilities shall be respected, and the gravesites of all such persons shall be respected, maintained and marked as provided for in Article 130 of the Fourth Convention, where their remains or gravesites would not receive more favourable consideration under the Conventions and this Protocol."
Further, the U.S. and Britain asserted there was such a provision when the Iraqis sent a tape to Al Jazzera with footage of dead soldiers.
Krauthammer then goes on to preach that the killing of the sons was not only reasonable (a tenable position, and one that I am not willing to wade in on. I was not there and am not going to second guess the commander on the ground) but the ideal.
He compares the deaths of them with Richard III's killing of his nephews, and in such a way that the boys' deaths was a good thing, "We had no wish to take Uday and Qusay alive.... The moment we captured them we would have been responsible for their care and feeding forever.... It would have meant that for the next 50 years the Hussein dynasty would have been kept alive-- by us."
He goes on, "Which suggests a plan for when we finally find Saddam Hussein. We give him, oh, 30 seconds to contemplate his surrender-- after all he's had about five months to mull it over-- and then we kill the monster."
And Krauthammer admits that we were holding the bodies up to ridicule. "You want to show that the king is not only dead, but humiliated, desecrated...."
This is what he wants us to do? To take our enemies and display their heads on pikes? To offer pro-forma chances to surrender before we kill our opponents?
Perhaps I am odd, out of touch with my fellow citizens, maybe four months in a combat zone have made me oversensitive, but I don't want to serve in an Army which does that. Hell, I don't want to serve for a nation that does that.
Rumsfeld says he is glad he chose to show the bodies... Mind you he stands by his outrage that the Iraqis did the same. Somehow we are justified, and they are not. It seems to be, as I digress, to be part and parcel of the belief that the rules should not apply to us (see the position of both this, and the last, administration's contention that the World Court should not have jurisdiction over Americans who commit war crimes).
This from a nation which trumpets itself as being a great place, a beacon of hope to other nations because it uses a rule of law to see to it that fairness is extended to all its citizens (I might once have said residents but the PATRIOT Act seems to have made that a false statement).
It is ironic that we seem to be adopting a philosophy that being less than we hold ourselves out to be is the best way to make Iraq like us, so they may show the way for other nations in the region to become like us (and that is another topic altogether).
I wish I'd taken notes when I was venting to myself, because I feel I have lost the focus of my immediate anger, and so the power of my arguments seems diminished.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-04 08:54 pm (UTC)"Dead men tell no tales."
In this instance, I really want to hear what the various parties have to say for themselves, because I suspect it'll be about as bad as, say, finding a smoking gun in the archives about Joe McCarthy being a KGB agent. :)