To win this war on terror will we execute Terrorists ?
Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who fight out of uniform or commit
atrocities such as, murder prisoners or target and kill non combatants may be shot by
firing squads.
Are members of al-Qaida entitled to Geneva Convention protections for POWs? Are Taliban
fighters and Iraqi insurgents entitled to those protections, by which soldiers are to give
name, rank and serial number, but never to be abused to force them to reveal military
secrets?
As Alberto Gonzales is discovering, these are not just legal issues. The Geneva
Conventions are international law. They are rules for the conduct of war, agreed to by
civilized nations, that assumed wars would be fought between armies whose soldiers would
respect these rules.
Under the Geneva Conventions, however, soldiers who fight out of uniform or commit
atrocities – i.e., murder prisoners or target and kill noncombatants – may be
sent before firing squads.
Wehrmacht soldiers who penetrated American lines in the Battle of the Bulge by wearing
U.S. Army uniforms hastily shed them to fight in German uniforms – or else they could
have been shot when captured. OSS agents, dropped behind enemy lines to kill German pilots
and Nazi collaborators, knew they were not entitled to the same protections as 82nd
Airborne troops dropped behind German lines on D-Day.
Here we come to America's dilemma. While the Afghan and Iraqi soldiers who fought the U.S.
invasions are surely entitled to Geneva Convention protections for POWs, what of al-Qaida?
What of the jihadis and foreign fighters who kidnap and behead aid workers?
What of Iraqis who plant roadside explosives or enlist in security forces to plant bombs
in U.S. Army mess halls? Are they also entitled to the Geneva Convention protections of
wartime soldiers?
In America, serial murderers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy were accorded constitutional
protections, not only against abuse, but against self-incrimination. Both received trial
by jury. Both were guaranteed a taxpayer-subsidized legal defense.
Should we – because it is the American way of justice – extend such
constitutional protections to al-Qaida terrorists caught on U.S. soil?
Should we extend Geneva Convention protections to all captured insurgents? Can we win a
war on terror if we fight by Geneva rules, while our enemy fights by the Maoist rules of
people's war, which condone terror and murder, and encourage guerrillas to fight out of
uniform and kill the enemy anywhere, any time, any way?
In World War II, FDR did not hesitate to execute, after secret trials, six German
saboteurs caught on U.S. soil, though they had not killed a single American or exploded a
single bomb. They were saboteurs, out of uniform behind American lines, and under the
rules of warfare, we had every right to execute them. And we did.
Have we the same right to execute terrorists who come here to massacre civilians as we did
those Nazi saboteurs?
Apparently, while the Geneva Conventions permit us to execute captured al-Qaida, we may
not inflict pain on them to force them to reveal secrets that might prevent another 9-11?
Because we find torture abhorrent and degrading, and do not want it used on our soldiers,
we adhere to proscriptions against it in international law. But if we are to win this war
on terror, we must at least tell al-Qaida this: If you are caught on U.S. soil, bent on
slaughtering innocent Americans, you have no more rights than those German saboteurs, and
we will execute you, speedily, after military trials.
With Iraqi insurgents, we face the problem the British Army faced in Ireland from 1919 to
1921 and the French faced in Algeria from 1954 to 1962. In Ireland's war of independence,
IRA "flying squads" of gunmen attacked British troops, then melted away into a
supportive population. British veterans of the Western Front, not knowing how to find and
fight such an enemy, engaged in reprisals against Irish civilians. Thus, Britain lost the
Irish people, and Ireland, forever.
In Algeria, terror attacks on French soldiers and civilians brought in Gen. Massu's
"paras," who tortured terror suspects for information to eradicate the FLN. Thus
was the Battle of Algiers won – and Algeria lost.
Whatever we may think of their tactics, the IRA of yesteryear, the FLN, the Afghan
mujahideen of the 1980s and Hezbollah in the 1990s succeeded in expelling those they saw
as occupiers. The Iraqi insurgents are using these same tactics, plus the now-familiar car
bomb and suicide bomber made famous by Hamas.
It may be that Americans, revolted as we are by the methods and means necessary to crush
such an insurgency, are incapable of winning a long war against an enemy who rejects
Geneva rules. Is it possible that our Western standards for fighting a just and moral war,
dating to St. Augustine, have so tied our hands in this war in Iraq that we cannot finally
defeat the enemy?
If so, let us find out soon.
Article by Pat Buchanan
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