Vicegrip's Journal: Prisonner technicalities

Using a technicality to justify different treatment is exactly the kind of thing that makes countries scoff at the U.S. when after the fact the government takes the moral high-ground about human rights. This kind of hair splitting may be legal but most of America's friends are not fooled about whether or not it is right.

If America will not treat its prisoners by the same standards it expects American prisoners to be treated then there is no 'red line' anymore. Soon we will be witness to a litany of other countries using the words terrorist or noncombatant to justify egregious abuses. The saddest outcome then being that all the while the U.S. will be forced to sit quietly by because it can no longer criticize anyone's failure to respect the Geneva Conventions in their country's fight against 'terrorism'.

The U.S. declared itself to be at war against terrorism. The President has himself said that America is at war with terrorists who are the 'enemy of freedom'. How can the very people America is supposed to be fighting against -- who America is bringing the full might of its military to bear against -- not be combatants? The use of disingenuous distinctions to create convenient excuses and circumvent international conventions that regulate the treatment of prisoners in a war brings only discredit to the very morality of the fight.

This President has in my opinion done irreparable harm to the prestige of the United States in the matter of human rights. The ends do not justify the means if you are a moral person; the same is true for a country.

Edited -- May 26th 2004