Rusted Sky

KILL, DON'T CAPTURE By RALPH PETERS - New York Post Online Edition: Postopinion

July 10, 2006 -- THE British military defines experience as the ability to recognize a mistake the second time you make it. By that standard, we should be very experienced in dealing with captured terrorists, since we've made the same mistake again and again.

Violent Islamist extremists must be killed on the battlefield. Only in the rarest cases should they be taken prisoner. Few have serious intelligence value. And, once captured, there's no way to dispose of them.

Killing terrorists during a conflict isn't barbaric or immoral - or even illegal. We've imposed rules upon ourselves that have no historical or judicial precedent. We haven't been stymied by others, but by ourselves.

He's not too wrong on this. There's no Geneva protections for un-uniformed partisans, insurgents, 'freedom fighters' or whatever you want to call them. The act of intentionally targeting civilians strips otherwise 'honorable' combatants of Geneva protections, as does using hospitals or schools or religious buildings as arms depots or firing points.

Also, honorable combatants aren't supposed to kill members of the opposing forces if taken prisoner.

The oft-cited, seldom-read Geneva and Hague Conventions define legal combatants as those who visibly identify themselves by wearing uniforms or distinguishing insignia (the latter provision covers honorable partisans - but no badges or armbands, no protection). Those who wear civilian clothes to ambush soldiers or collect intelligence are assassins and spies - beyond the pale of law.

Traditionally, those who masquerade as civilians in order to kill legal combatants have been executed promptly, without trial. Severity, not sloppy leftist pandering, kept warfare within some decent bounds at least part of the time. But we have reached a point at which the rules apply only to us, while our enemies are permitted unrestricted freedom.

The present situation encourages our enemies to behave wantonly, while crippling our attempts to deal with terror.

Consider today's norm: A terrorist in civilian clothes can explode an IED, killing and maiming American troops or innocent civilians, then demand humane treatment if captured - and the media will step in as his champion. A disguised insurgent can shoot his rockets, throw his grenades, empty his magazines, kill and wound our troops, then, out of ammo, raise his hands and demand three hots and a cot while he invents tales of abuse.

And then after a time in jail, he gets released. Then he does it again.

The solution is simple.

Take no prisoners.

No - it doesn't drag us down to their level. Their level would be around the 'Behead one of our soldiers, we round up 1000 Iraqi and kill them.' level. Or the "Implant an IED and blow one of our soldiers up, and we'll kill everyone in every building for 250 yards around" level.

We have been zealous in our efforts to NOT target civilians. To avoid at all costs accidental deaths. To behave honorably BY OUR STANDARDS when dealing with the Iraqi people. To the point where, after three+ years you've got a mere handful of incidents like Abu Grabass, and Haditha. Damn. Panties on the heads of our prisoners! Egads!

And each and every one of them is blown up to be MUCH worse than THIS. (Warning - not for the squeamish. Decapitation of American soldiers - yeah, the two that got taken by Michael Moore's 'Freedom Fighters'.)

So you know something? I'm not at all against summary execution at this point. We fight and behave by the rules and well beyond. Al Quaeda's taken advantage of that, while enjoying a peculiar freedom from the rules themselves. So - it's time to drop back and JUST abide by the rules.

To the letter - and not one bit more. Yeah, we'll abide by the Geneva protocols... but you probably won't like the result one damn bit.

Oddly enough - after reviewing the above I'm reminded of the initial bombing campaigns over Germany in WW2. Great care (at least for the time) was taken to avoid hitting civilians and to target industrial infrastructure only. But as the war went on, less and less care was taken and eventually civilian targets were considered fair game. After the Blitz, when Germany targeted London (which could by no stretch of the imagination be considered fair game under the Geneva protocols, being packed with civilians and all) then it was considered rather foolish to abide by rules that the other side had already discarded and after a while the prohibition against targeting civilians was set aside by Spaatz, with Doolittle objecting. The precedent's been established.

But I'm pretty sure we won't act on it.

J.