To serve evil with honor? The warrior in a wrongful war

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

by Carl Hitchens

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_66.shtml

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The Geneva Convention established a code of conduct governing war (August 12, 1949), which implicitly set down torture as unacceptable. The Convention's articles frame prisoner treatment this way:

Article 13

Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.

Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.

Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited.

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Why doesn't Dem leadership start talking about war crimes and quoting from the Geneva Convention and the Nuremberg trials? BushCo is clearly guilty of war crimes. It's high time Dems started making an issue out of it. The WH press corps should also.

[Gildor Inglorion]

1. "He's the universal soldier and he really is to blame..."

We used to sing this in Vietnam with no hint of irony. It's still true.

UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
Buffy Sainte-Marie
© Caleb Music-ASCAP

I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you

And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls

But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

2. Powerful. Thank you for posting it. nt.