Trashing the Geneva Conventions

The radical rightwing bedwetters are having a mass hissyfit because some Republican senators have found the balls to insist that the US live by the rules.

One such hysterical screech-monkey goes by the pseudonym “Oak Leaf”, over at StopTheACLU.com. He demands that…

Congress must clarify certain terms within Article 3

Why? Because, claims “Oak Leaf”...

If Congress does not define “cruel treatment, torture, outrages upon personal dignity, humiliating and degrading treatment” they will be defined by ACLU Lawyers in concert with liberal Judges.

Wait a minute. The Geneva Conventions didn’t just spring into being a week ago last Tuesday. They’ve been in effect for decades. Why, suddenly, do they need to be redefined right now? “Oak Leaf” doesn’t seem able to explain the sudden urgency.

Screech-monkey Number Two is our old pal Jay "rope + tree + ACLU lawyer = pinata" Stephenson. Jay gets it exactly backwards, and shows us just how amoral the bedwetters on the right can be:

McCain and company continue to pitch for terrorist to be afforded Geneva Convention rights. Now it looks like the pressure is being felt by the White House and they have proposed a compromise. I hope McCain realizes that he is destroying his chances if he ever runs for president. But even more, his argument against Bush’s proposal in the long run does the opposite of what he claims to want. It doesn’t protect those fighting this war, it ties their hands. Of course if we were following the Geneva Conventions properly they wouldn’t even apply to terrorist. We have our Supreme Court to thank for “interpreting” those rights to our current enemy. Nevertheless, with our hand forced on that, leaving this broad article of the Geneva Convention open for interpretation and not clarifying exactly what they can and can not do when interrogating terrorists leaves those fighting the war out their vulnerable. I can see the ACLU now sueing CIA officials for grabbing some terrorist’s shirt roughly. McCain and company’s “higher moral ground” argument is ridiculous.

Jay is laboring under a heavy burden of ignorance: he believes that the Geneva Conventions are “rights” that we have magnanimously granted our enemies in past conflicts, and that we are now justified in withdrawing said “rights” because we’re fighting the Terrifying Brown Hordes. As usual, he’s utterly wrong. The Geneva Conventions are rules that signatories to the treaty are obligated to uphold. Neither the US nor any other nation can discard or unilaterally alter the Conventions and still claim to be a civilized nation that lives up to the agreements in makes.

The problem, of course, is stark, naked terror. With Jay and his terrified brethren, its “AAIIIIGGGH! TERRORISTS! AAIIIIGGGH! TERRORISTS!” all day long. As pointed out previously, the radical right has by and large already surrendered to the terrorists. They have decided that the terrorists are the Greatest Threat Ever Faced By Western Civilization — which is exactly the reaction that terrorist acts are designed to elicit. The terrified screech-monkeys of the right are willing, nay eager, to abandon every single principle that this country has ever stood for, just so long as they can cling desperately to the illusion that the Bush administration is protecting them from the aforementioned Terrifying Brown Hordes.

Of course, this requires that the screech-monkeys divorce themselves entirely from any reality-based view of the world. For instance, they have to ignore the fact that in the five years since 9/11, the Bush administration has largely abandoned its attempts to capture Osama bin Laden. And its track record of prosecuting and convicting suspects in terrorism cases is less than impressive.

The US has faced numerous serious threats in the recent past: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, communist armies in Korea and Vietnam. No one suggested during those conflicts that the danger was so grave or so overwhelming that the Geneva Conventions had to be altered in order to get us the intelligence we needed. Of course, the US was not then ruled by an administration hellbent on asserting the right to do whatever the hell it wants, laws be damned.

The screech-monkeys need to turn off the cable news channels, get outside for some fresh air, and reflect upon the fact that the United States is a country founded on the principles of integrity and the rule of law. Deciding that the law can be ignored or discarded in the pursuit of the will’o’th’wisp of absolute safety is the mark of the coward. Jay Stephenson, “Oak Leaf”, and their ilk demonstrate both cowardice and moral incompetence when they call for the abrogation of the Geneva Conventions.