At the moment, we in this world lack a way for governments to decide
whom to imprison for attacks against us and whom to release.
We need a new category, that of enemy suspect, who does not wear a
uniform, but does fight.
Hitherto, Westerners and their governments have placed people who do
them harm into one of three categories:
1. civilians, who are individuals to be tried in court;
2. soldiers, who are members of an enemy army who wear uniforms; and,
3. enemy combatants who do not wear uniforms, such as spies and
saboteurs. These people are specifically excluded from the Geneva
conventions.
The last grouping is a catchall for those not in the first two groups.
For European countries over the past few centuries, enemy combatants
who do not wear uniforms have been politically insignificant.
But the category of enemy combatants who do not wear uniforms is no
longer insignificant.
We need to invent the criteria for including people in a another
group, and procedures for handling them. The procedures must presume
some are innocent and some are not. Let us classify these people as
`enemy suspects'.
As with captured enemy soldiers, the government would make it legal to
imprison those who fall into the new classification. But at the same
time, the new Resolution should specify how to determine when to
release a prisoner.
The new classification has four categories:
1. civilians, who are individuals to be tried in court;
2. soldiers, who are members of an enemy army who wear uniforms;
3. enemy suspects, who do not wear uniforms; and,
4. enemy combatants, who do not wear uniforms, such as spies and saboteurs.
In the older, three part classification, civilians defined as
criminals are released from prison at or before the end of their
sentence. Captured soldiers who wear uniforms are released from their
prisoner of war camps when a prisoner exchange is negotiated or a
peace treaty signed.
But people in the current catchall group do not fit either category
and may be imprisoned indefinitely. This should not be.
(The classification for spies and saboteurs should continue. If the
people in the new category of `enemy suspects' are removed from the
old group, few will be left. Because so few will be involved, a
sufficiently senior authority in government, such as a
U. S. President, can set aside normal legal procedures and either
pardon those who are convicted of acting illegally or else release
them before any trial takes place. During the Cold War, much
U.S./Soviet spying was handled this way.)
The dividing lines among various groups comes from the power of a
government to classify actions. The kind of classification that
occurs depends on how much knowledge can be obtained.
For an ordinary criminal action, a court is the social mechanism used
to decide whether a defendant should be imprisoned. A court is,
essentially, an institution for gaining knowledge and making
judgements.
Ordinary people, guards, are given the legal authority to coerce those
who are supposed to be in prison - and to kill them under certain
circumstances.
However, in the case of a war, it is often not possible for a court to
decide into which category a defendant belongs, since the person
involved may not be local and may not be individually identified.
In this instance, another governmental mechanism is used, a
declaration of war, or some equivalent. As a result of this action,
all people who possess a certain fairly readily defined
characteristic, such as citizenship in a particular nation, are
defined as the `enemy'. This is a crude classification mechanism, but
it is the one used.
In a civil war, as in the United States between 1861 and 1865, or in a
traditional war, such as World War II, a government will declare a
state of rebellion or war. These actions will give it the legal
authority to categorize people and to define the circumstances under
which certain people may legally be restrained or killed.
Ordinary people, now called `soldiers', are given the legal authority
to coerce those who are categorized as the `enemy' - indeed, to kill
them under certain circumstances.
Note that when individuals can be identified, a court is becoming the
preferred social mechanism. We see, for example, the trials in the
Hague of those who have been arrested and accused of war crimes in the
former Yugoslavia.
However, in many circumstances, it either is not possible to identify
individuals or it is not possible to bring those identified to trial
without a war.
The idea behind the `laws of war' is to minimize harm to people
crudely categorized as `the enemy', but who are not doing much, or
any, damage. For example, surrendered enemy should not be killed;
`collateral damage' should be minimized; and only military targets
attacked.
The laws or `guidelines' for war are based, at least in part, on what
is considered reasonably possible.
If I remember rightly, during World War II the average bomb dropped by
an American airplane missed its target by 1500 meters (5000 feet).
Axis bombs also tended to miss. Hence, both sides decided that
bombing cities and killing civilians was acceptable, because that was
all that was possible.
Early hydrogen bombs would destroy such large areas that their use
also implied that it was acceptable to kill many civilians.
(Incidentally since those bombs were developed, the U.S. and the
U.S.S.R. worked on making smaller and smaller nuclear weapons.)
Modern precision guided weapons are a new technology. They enable the
United States military to destroy targets with much less `collateral
damage' than before. According to what I have read, only 800 or 900
out of every 1000 bombs dropped will miss their targets. (Some claim
that as few as half or one-quarter miss, or even fewer. This rate
compares to miss rates in the past of 990 out of 1000, or more.)
Regardless of the actual miss rate, fewer modern bombs will miss their
targets. A consequence of this change in technology is that people
are able to be more concerned about `collateral damage' and dead
civilians.
Military weakness means that a fighting group uses different
techniques. For example, the Palestinians do not have a navy of their
own. So they have not been able to blockade the Israeli port on the
Gulf of Aqaba the way the Egyptians did.
Instead, the Palestinians have employed suicide bombers. ...
I wrote that some time ago in
http://www.rattlesnake.com/notions/Choice-and-Constraint.html
--
Robert J. Chassell GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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