In recent months there has been a lot of talk and discussion about the Geneva Convention of 1949 and whether or not the United States is in compliance or in violation of it in our detention of POWs and interrogation practices. The bulk of this discussion centers around article three of the document. There are 159 articles in this very long document. Article three deals with the specifics of acceptable prisoner of war treatment. To allow readers to understand what all the discussion is about and make their own decisions about our country's compliance or non-compliance, I am including the exact text of the first three articles of this document here for your review. My personal comments follow the document.

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THE GENEVA CONVENTION
Preamble:

The undersigned Plenipotentiaries of the Governments represented at the Diplomatic Conference held at Geneva from April 21 to August 12, 1949, for the purpose of establishing a Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, have agreed as follows:

Part I: General Provisions

Article 1-
The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.

Article 2-
In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace-time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.
The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.
Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.

Article 3-
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
o violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
o taking of hostages;
o outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
o the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

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Michael's Comments:

We (America) stand for fundamental ideals that the rest of the world admires. At least we strive to do so. Incidents like Abu Grabe and the rape and murder of that young Iraqi girl and her family have done incredible damage to those ideals. Our credibility is eroding away, bit by bit, with each such incident and if they continue, we run the risk of eventually finding ourselves in the position of having nothing significant to fight for that separates us from those we are fighting. Our only salvation when such incidents occur is to strike the culprits (of such incidents) with a big hammer immediately. In this way, we may be able to turn these incidents to our advantage by using them to show the world that Americans as a whole do indeed deplore such actions. In the end, the message has to be that no country is perfect but we must all continually be on guard and deal severely with anyone who violates basic standards of acceptable human behavior. We have to be very open and very clear and consistent about this. The problem is there will always be those members of the radical extreme who will chose to ignore our efforts to respond appropriately to such incidents and focus on the incidents themselves as examples of how America is a truly godless society that deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth. But that is just the nature of things and we will never fix that.

I agree that POWs should be allowed to face their accusers in court (if possible and reasonable) and be sentenced according to a perhaps more limited version of the rule of law such as a tribunal. However, I do not believe such proceedings should require that our nation reveal intelligence gathering operations that could be detrimental to our country's security. I also believe that our internal process of civil and criminal law is too liberal and cumbersome to work effectively for POW trials in time of war. (We found that in the events leading up to 9-11.) These individuals are not criminals, they are enemy combatants... Prisoners of War. This is (or should be) a significant difference and if that difference has not thus far been defined clearly enough, we need to do so now. Also: they are NOT American citizens. They are in fact, fighting to create a world where American values do not exist at all. We therefore owe them nothing in terms of providing them with the protections that American citizens have. To assume otherwise is to presume that America has a right to shove our values down the throats of the rest of the world, thereby ignoring THEIR right to exist in any form they choose (as long as their choices do not threaten surrounding cultures and/or countries). This kind of presumptive and elitist attitude amounts to a sort of cultural and philosophical global domination and this is precisely what is angering much of the rest of the world. It is in fact I believe, the very root of the problem.

These are my opinions, for what they are worth. Do you agree or disagree?