RW viewpoint defending Gonzales) Rewriting the Laws of War for a New Enemy

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-yoo1feb01.story

RW viewpoint) Rewriting the Laws of War for a New Enemy
The Geneva Convention isn't the last word.
By Robert J. Delahunty and John C. Yoo
Robert J. Delahunty is a law professor at St. Thomas University Law School in Minnesota. John C. Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. They w

February 1, 2005

When the Senate considers Alberto R. Gonzales' nomination for attorney general this week, his critics will repeat the accusation that he opened the door to the abuse of Al Qaeda, Afghan and Iraqi prisoners. As Justice Department attorneys in January 2002, we wrote the memos advising that the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war did not apply to the war against Al Qaeda, and that the Taliban lost POW privileges by violating the laws of war. Later that month, Gonzales similarly advised (and President Bush ordered) that terrorists and fighters captured in Afghanistan receive humane treatment, but not legal status as POWs.

"Human rights" advocates have resorted to hyperbole and distortion to attack the administration's policy. One writer on this page even went so far as to compare it to Nazi atrocities. Such absurd claims betray the real weaknesses in the position taken by Gonzales' critics. They obscure a basic and immediate question facing the United States: how to adapt to the decline of nation-states as the primary enemy in war.

The Geneva Convention is not obsolete — nor, despite his critics, did Gonzales say it was. It protects innocent civilians by restricting the use of violence to combatants, and in turn give soldiers protections for obeying the rules of war. Although enemy combatants may have killed soldiers or destroyed property, they are not treated as accused criminals. Instead, nations may detain POWs until the end of hostilities to prevent them from returning to combat.

The Geneva Convention provisions make sense when war involves nation-states — if, say, hostilities broke out between India and Pakistan, or China and Taiwan. But to pretend that the Geneva Convention applies to Al Qaeda, a non-state actor that targets civilians and disregards other laws of war, denies the reality of dramatic changes in the international system. <snip>