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Read other letters about this article
I will respect your desire not to be bothered over this issue any longer, but I did want to clarify a couple of things just so that you don't have the wrong impression about what I was saying.
The argument I was making was completely and solely a legal one. I was not making a moral argument as to what is right or wrong. I also was not saying that these captives are not deserving of human rights.
I was only saying that I don't see how the GCs possibly govern our fight with al-Qaida legally. They can only come into play indirectly when we are in direct armed conflict with another HCP, such as we were in Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2002-2004. CA3 may also apply now when we are helping Iraq and Afghanistan with internal conflict.
You have interesting ideas as to what constitutes a war zone, a battlefield, and an armed conflict.
I do? I honestly asked the question of what defines a war zone and a battlefield today simply because I do not know how such things are legally defined.
As far as "armed conflict" goes, I do think we are in armed conflict with al-Qaida. I just don't think that al-Qaida is a HCP and so the GCs can only get applied to them tangentally while we are in armed conflict with an actual HCP or helping an HCP with internal strife.
It would appear that only you, and possibly the Bush administration, believe otherwise.
The only thing I'm basing my opinion on is a straight forward reading of the Conventions themselves. It could very well be that there is commentary from when the GCs were established that further clarify the text and fill in some of the gaps that I pointed out.
It is extremely interesting that you assert a "new kind of war" in defining a battlefield to use the Geneva Conventions, then assert that "there are no new kinds of war" to dismiss one of the parties of the conflict as ineligible.
You seem to ascribing words and ideas to me that I've never posted here. My primary claim was only that the GCs cannot directly govern our conflict with al-Qaida simply because they are not a HCP nor eligible to be a HCP, as you yourself pointed out.
By the way, it was the U.S. that asserted to the Committee Against Torture (2006) both that the fight with al Qaeda was an "armed conflict" and that the Geneva Conventions applied ...
I guess they thought that if the GCs applied but then illegal combatants somehow fell through its cracks, then no other law could govern. I look at it differently. I say the GCs do not apply and so instead other international law does govern.
... attempting to squeeze inhumanity through the spaces in the words of the common articles in order to argue for a space where humanitarian law does not exist ...
I was just showing you how/why I don't think the GCs apply. Implicitly, I was challenging you and others to figure out what international laws should actually govern these prisoners.
I don't think there is a resolution to this debate, you don't want to believe the Geneva Conventions apply to all armed conflict
Correct. I think the GCs only apply to armed conflict between HCPs (or a non-HCP nation that implements and upholds it tenets) and CA3 applies to civil war within a HCP. This is clear simply by reading CA2 and CA3 alone.
So I'd like, with your kind permission, to be relieved of further debating it.
No further need to respond. I just wanted one last shot at making myself clear as it seemed you had some wrong ideas about what I said and/or was arguing.
Cheers!
