Should our military + intellegence agencys view the Genieva convention more as guidelines than actual rules?

Question

For the following reasons:
1. If it could save innocent lives, why not bend the rules
2. Whats gonna happen if you do, the UN is going to get mad at us, oh, im so scared
3. If its in our best intrest why not?
4. There won't be any real consequeces because there is no one world government to keep us inline, so if the rest of the world doesnt like it oh well.

I'm not saying throw it out the window, just as guidelines and not rules.

Answer 1

Forget it. Other countries have signed it and then crapped on it so it has little importance. Now if we could get the UN to come up with some rules, then we'd have something, not.

Answer 2

Because it will rebound on ordinary US servicemen when they get captured by anyone. We will have no right to complain if everybody just takes the geneva convention as guidlines, if a navy airmen goes down off Nth Korea whilst checking Taiwans defences and the Nth Koreans get there first, at the moment we can be pretty sure they won't stick tubes down the Airman's throat or otherwise torture them,but if we do it to suspects who may not have useful information, whats to stop the NKs, except prcedence and world opinion, and if we tell the rest of the world that we dont want t play by the rules that gives the same freedom to every nuclear power.. If we act like terrorists, the terrorists may not have already won, but what is worse, is that they have a new ally in the spreading of terror!


eg
Shock and Awe - what they needed was Hope and Help!

Answer 3

those previous conflict were all-out efforts with a obviously defined end that anybody understood. all the troops stayed deployed for years till it develop into complete. compared we've a conflict that such fairly some both do no longer, can not, or refuse to understand. even as the senior administration, the president and some generals, understand what they favor to finish, they don't seem talking it properly. as a outcome there's a lot inner dissent that weakens our nationwide will even as providing encouragement to our enemies to carry out longer. With fewer troops in the militia common doing 12-15 month rotations that's a cyclical psychological and emotional drain that stresses the militia. If we had the thousands of thousands in uniform and in simple terms all went in and wiped clean out the Jihadis then stayed till the recent authorities might want to operate on that's own, (Like submit WWII Europe) it might want to have already been over.

Answer 4

Any government employee or contractor should be required to treat people with the same dignity that is afforded by our constitution to our citizens. All the talk about 'bringing democracy' to the world doesn't mean anything if we can't respect the world. How can we convince the world of the importance of individuals in democracies if we only respect our own?

Answer 5

They already do.According to some, the prisoners held in Guantanomo Bay are prisoners of war.If that were the case they would have rights under the Geneva Convention.
These people have had their rights stripped from them.
They are being held illegally.
If the US govt has any proof that these people have done anything wrong,charge them,bring them before a court of law and prosecute.

Answer 6

No, they should abide by international law.

It doesn't save innocent lives. When people are tortured, they say anything -- what they are told to say by their torturers, or they make up lies -- to stop the torture. There are much more effective techniques for getting ACCURATE information.

Think about it: Is putting pages of the Koran in a Muslim's chamber pot (in effect saying "We sh*t on your god." -- to cite just one example of the kinds of stuff we've been doing -- prohibited by the "degrading" clause of the conventions) an effective way to get that person to give you information? The purpose isn't to get info, it's to say "We are heartless brutes who have no human decency; fear us." That's the purpose, and that's the effect, that and burning hatred.

In fact, it was FBI and Army interrogation experts who first complained about our policy of torture, as it's not only ineffective in getting info, but is counter-productive.

Besides, most of the people we have been torturing aren't terrorists -- we've just been rounding people up and torturing them. After torturing them for months, we've released them, saying, "they weren't terrorists and have no information on terrorists" -- but they were tortured. Many such have been killed, even though their killers knew they weren't terrorists, and didn't have info to give.

It is my most fervent hope that Bush Co will someday made to stand trial for crimes against humanity -- that's the legal consequences.

Also, we have no right to complain about anyone else's human rights violations -- we're the bad guys now.

We need cooperation from the rest of the world (information about terrorists, for example), if we're to protect innocents from terrorists. Other countries won't want to cooperate with us, because we're the bad guys now.

Every person we've tortured inspires more people to hate us and to become terrorists.

When all countries involved in a war follow the conventions, they have added incentive as protection against the other side torturing their people. We've lost that protection, and given enemies motive to torture any of our they capture, as revenge.

We can't say that we are fighting for human rights, now that we are blatant human rights abusers. People used to view us positively -- now they do not. They don't listen to our words; they look at our actions. Clearly, we're the bad guys, now, and so what we say has no moral weight.

For all of these reasons, and the fact that TORTURE IS WRONG, torture is NOT in our best interest.

Besides, the Geneva Conventions and other treaties prohibiting torture aren't just cute ideas. We signed off on them. Now that we ignore them, we have proven to the world that we can't be trusted to honor our agreements.

If others have reason to believe that it's our government that believes torture is a good thing to do, they might not hate American citizens. But when citizens themselves agree, we teach everyone in the world that Americans as a group have no conscience and no humanity.

Is that really what you want to say to the entire rest of the world?

Answer 7

It appears to be that way now.