Higher Standards

Sparkey over at Sgt. Stryker's site has commented on the legalities of some of our useful idiots heading over to Iraq to become human shields. I'll plead ignorance on the fine points of the law (although I do believe that everything he states is absolutely correct), but will take a little issue his complaint about the US being held to a higher standard than everyone else.

The Geneva Convention, I believe, represents a minimum level of conduct that should be expected of a nation or combatant. Nations or combatants that don't meet that minimum standard absolutely should have their leadership held accountable for war crimes. But, the US, as the world's remaining superpower should hold itself to a higher standard. Other nations have no right to expect anything more than require by the Geneva Conventions and have no standing to make those kind of demands on us. Only the citizens of the US can require our military to act more ethically than it's required to.

With the "human shields" that are over there, we need to make every effort to protect those folks and then to arrest them for a fair and just treason trial in the US (or their home country). No matter how repulsive their actions are (and they are extremely repulsive), they are still entitled to a fair trial with a punishment to be handed down by their peers. However, the only concession we should make in war planning is to redouble our intelligence efforts, locate these morons as accurately as possible and then attack in a manner that attempts as much as possible to spare them while still achieving our military objective. We want to make every effort to save them from themselves, but we do not want to risk the lives of our soldiers any more than absolutely necessary.

Just my thoughts on the matter.............