Amnesty International

Voice of the Oppressed, or Only Those Oppressed by America?

Guantánamo Bay has become a symbol of injustice and abuse in

the US administration’s “war on terror”. It must be closed down.

– taken from Amnesty International’s web site

June 29, 2006

As soon as the first foot soldier hit the ground in Afghanistan the question of what to do with captured enemy combatants became a problem. Obviously they would be detained and questioned – past wars have taught us that the best intelligence comes from Prisoners of War (POW’s). But these were not “POW’s”, not according to the historical definition. Even the precious and revered “Geneva Convention” has specific definitions of what a POW is. The following is taken from the Geneva Convention, Article 4, and Part 2:

A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:

1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict (Author’s Note: that’s the Iraqi national army) as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.

2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions:

(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;

(c) That of carrying arms openly;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

As it is written, the only condition the detainees at Gitmo have met is “C” - That of carrying arms openly. But that is not enough; they must meet all of the stated conditions in order to be considered true POW’s. Article 5 of the convention addresses the issue of what to do when the status of an enemy combatant is not clearly in congress with the conditions set forth in article 4.

The present Convention shall apply to the persons referred to in Article 4 from the time they fall into the power of the enemy and until their final release and repatriation.

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

I am happy to report that a competent tribunal has determined that the detainees at Gitmo are not POW’s; they are “detainees”, not afforded protections of the Geneva Convention. Even so, they are being treated a lot better than a lot of Americans. They are being fed three times a day; the food is kosher to the Islamic faith. They are given copies of the Koran – becoming less and less common in America’s prison system where the famed 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco has ruled that Bibles and Korans are not to be made available to inmates because it promotes a religion. The detainees at Gitmo are allowed to face Mecca and pray in accordance with Islamic law. They have clean clothes and are afforded better medical care than they would have received in their native lands. Yet the way Amnesty International (AI) tells it, these detainees are abused, tortured, and ridiculed on a daily basis. How do they know this? Certainly not from their own eyewitness accounts. No, they have it from a good source that these atrocities are taking place; they have interviewed detainees who have been repatriated. There’s some good news. They interviewed ex-inmates who, for all we know, have been told what to say. It is a fact that many repatriated detainees have rejoined their brothers-in-arms and have been captured a second time. The leaders of these terror cells are not dumb. They know the power of the American media. They know to instruct their subordinates to tell AI that they are being treated inhumanely, which will set off a firestorm of criticism of the American military and their policies towards enemy combatants, and indeed it has. All AI needed was a couple of “eyewitness” accounts to start their crusade against the United States of America, George Bush, and his Administration in particular. Gitmo dominates the organization’s web site. They will speak out against this Administration to anybody willing to put a camera and microphone in their face.

I’m not saying the Administration has not given AI reason to be suspect. Transparency is the best defense against allegations of wrongdoing. However, there has to be some areas of the government that are not transparent, especially those areas that deal with intelligence. I’m sorry, it just has to be that way. Frankly, I do not care what they are doing to the detainees. They are in Gitmo for a reason. They were caught with gun in hand screaming “Allah Akbar” while trying to cut American soldiers to pieces. I do not care, and I do not want to know, how they treat them. Unlike many Americans, I remember what happened on September 11, 2001. Some have become so tired of hearing that, that they have begun questioning the legitimacy of the events of that day. This is the same as Iran questioning the legitimacy of the holocaust; no, it’s worse because what happened in New York is still fresh in our minds. It didn’t happen sixty years ago, it happened five years ago. We saw it over and over again on CNN and Fox News. That is what this is all about.

Of course, one might say that AI is only following their charter. Fair enough. But who is it that decides what human rights abuses get investigated and which ones do not even get a glance? What is the criterion that must be met before AI will, if not investigate, then at least speak out against an incident? This is the meat of my argument, the angst of my frustration. AI has met every mistake made by American soldiers, be it blatant or simply questionable, with microscopic scrutiny at every turn. The Gitmo issue is just an example. A more recent example is the alleged murder of innocent civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha. Much was said and speculation ran rampant concerning these allegations. Key word here is “allegations”. It has since been reported that the Marines did nothing wrong in Haditha and they have surveillance footage from an UAV to back it up. Not to be outshined, the famed American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has decided to go outside of its charter and offer its own criticisms of the Bush Administration for the alleged mistreatment – not of Americans, but of foreign enemy combatants. But where are these organizations when it is the Americans who are being treated unfairly? For example, an American soldier threatens an Iraqi detainee with an attack dog and AI is all over it. An American gets decapitated on television and…..nothing, silence. No, “That sucks”, “Hate that happened”, or anything. I understand that the terrorists are not a government organization, subject to the rules and law of the people and are not subject to answer to any foreign entity for any of their actions. As a wise person told me recently, in such cases the worst thing the free world can do is to label them as “terrorists”. That is fine. Let me hear AI label them as terrorists and denounce their terror tactics. I just want them to say something, anything. Give some legitimacy to their organization by speaking out against both sides of the conflict where rights have been abused instead of waging a crusade against the “Evil American Empire”. Let me, and the rest of the world, know that they are aware and acknowledge that there are worse things going on than “alleged atrocities” at Gitmo. Let the world know that America is not nearly as evil as these organizations, along with the mass media, make us out to be.

The rules of war are only effective and fair when both sides abide by them. To say that because they break the rules does not give us the right to do the same is lame. It does not help the situation one iota. Maybe it is time somebody kidnapped one of those assholes in the black pajamas and cut his fucking head off on television. Would AI respond then? Of course they would. And that, my friends, is the problem.

Epilogue

There have been new developments since I wrote this opinion that I should address. The following was taken from Fox News web site on July 11, 2006:

"WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, called to account by Congress in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling blocking military tribunals, said Tuesday all detainees at Guantánamo Bay and in U.S. military custody everywhere are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions."

I must say I am more than a little disappointed at this new development. It is clear to me that they (detainees) are not protected under the GC as it is written. Once again the government has been steered in the wrong direction by the anti-American left and their so-called "Human Rights" cliques with more than a little help from their mass media comrades. I have no problem “extending” the protections of GC to the enemy combatants held by the United States, but it would have been better to say that we will "grant" the detainees the protections even though they do not qualify for them. As it stands, the government played right into the hands of the left. What is worse, a precedent has now been set that will influence all similar cases in the future.  In light of this new development, one has to wonder what anti-American cause Amnesty International will take up next. I fear we will all find out soon enough.

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Davey Barton

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