The War on Terror and The Geneva Convention

Generally, I'm of the opinion that the United States, in dealing with people who are not citizens, should give them the same treatment as citizens with "God given rights." The right to a fair trial, freedom from cruel and unusual punishment, etc.

Up until recently, I was bothered by our treatment of captured "insurgents" in Iraq - I mean, shouldn't we give them some status, give them the same rights as Americans under arrest? I was under the impression that, if we weren't bound to do that by our government, at least we're bound by the Geneva Conventions.

But wait a sec... The Geneva Conventions are for the "civilized" conduct of war. I'll go to war with you, and as long as we both play by the rules, I can be sure that even if I lose or you get a lot of my people as prisoners, at least we're all still human and there are certain activities (torture) that you won't make my people suffer through.

The Supreme Court recently decided that the President could not order military trials for Guantánamo detainees without the protections of the Geneva convention and American law. Part of their ruling depends on Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which spells out who retains rights in a war situation.

So we've decided to extend protections of civilized warfare to people who's very methods are designed to explicitly cause pain and suffering to everyday people. We've decided that even though there is a covert organization at war with us, who takes civilian hostages, beheads them, tortures and mutilates soldiers, bombs mosques, blows up civilian buildings, and encourages murder in the streets, we should give them the same rights we'd give prisoners of a war with, say, the U.K. Now the terrorists have another way to whittle away at our resources - though our own court system. Great - like we needed another front.

I'm no longer bothered by our treatment of captured terrorists. I am bothered by the opaque way our government has detained them - we don't know who they are, and don't have any way to verify that they are actually terrorists.