Do you think the Geneva Convention Treaty needs to be revised to include today's war against terror?

Question

When the treaty was initiated, independent terror organizations with no particular country nor alliegence were involved. The treaty applied to conventional warfare. Should it be revised, and to include or exclude what?

Answer 1

No things should remain as is because if they are given to much rights next step is the ACLU protecting them,judges cannot handle these people to many crazy decisions made by the US judges see how they are soft on pervs the judges would be to soft on these murdering  terrorists.

Answer 2

No.

Don't think so.

It was created for war, internal conflicts and public order.

For the good of mankind.

To make this world a better place to live in time.

In the creation of peace on earth goodwill to men in time.

Which does not change with time but stay in time.

Luke 5.36-39

What went wrong out there.

Were just blunders and slip-ups with human errors created back in the past with self lack of knowledge without being aware of it being expose in time.

Luke 8.5-8,10-17

In kicking the butts of own children with "Reincarnation" of the dead Mummy with whiff of rotten stench of empty skeleton of skull and bones with two empty eye sockets of failures and horrors of the past from the graveyards of different ghostly ancestor's culture and custom in kicking the butts of God in not worshiping God.

Luke 6.39-40,41-45,46-49

When living human kind do not even know how to create living human kind to be a "Better man" as the Son of God without our creator's universal gifts of life that was lost with time without being aware of it being expose in time.

Luke 9.25,55-56,60

What do you think?

Answer 3

No.  Is there any one out there who actually believes that our captured soldiers in any war are treated right?  Then you are idiots.  It doesn't matter how we treat their prisoners they will always torture ours.

Answer 4

Well, even Hitler observed the Geneva Convention.  

By abandoning it, we are inviting any well-equipped nation that we oppose to use the same tactics against our soldiers that we have used against the former soldiers of the Iraqi and Taliban armies.  

In the case of Afghanistan, we fought the Taliban soldiers which we just classified as UECs despite the fact that the Taliban was the ruling government of Afghanistan when we invaded that country.  

In Iraq, after Hussein was defeated, our justice department decided that the soldiers in his army could be reclassified as UECs.  That's the reason why we are allowed to incarcerate them without charges, rape and torture them, and even kill them any time we desire. But the question we have to ask ourselves is:  just because we could take over Hussein's torture rooms, does that mean that we should treat our prisoners even worse than he did?  Aren't we supposed to be better people than the terrorists?  It shouldn't be a contest to see whether we are better at torturing our fellow man than they are.

One problem with the current system is that several prisoners have been released after enduring years of torture and abuse because we finally figured out that they weren't even the people that we thought they were; they just happened to share the same name as the suspect we were looking for.  Sort of like if somebody had come over here and kept locking up and torturing everybody named John Smith because they were looking for a  terrorist by that name.

If people from another country had invaded the US, then imprisoned people and tortured them for years without charging them with a crime, then said that they were doing so in order to win our hearts and minds, we would react about as well as the Iraqis have.  Every time that we accidentally arrest, torture and sometimes kill the wrong man, we make dozens of new enemies.  Even when we torture the right person, we make the situation worse.

For that matter, we're not even in the right country to fight against the people responsible for the trade center; Bin Laden & Co. are holed up in Pakistan, and President Bush won't cross the border into Pakistan to get him.  He's been sitting there and laughing at us fools for 6 years now.  If we're going to torture somebody, we at least should torture the right people.

Bin Laden succeeded beyond his wildest dreams when he bombed the trade center: we forgot that we are a nation of laws, took away our own rights and freedoms, showed that we can be just as cruel and vicious as Hussein or Stalin, we abandoned the Geneva Convention, spied on our own citizens, tortured enemy combatants, and basically showed that we're not any better than the terrorists.  It's a sad statement about a country that a large portion of the world had always looked to for inspiration and tried to imitate.  Now, they think of us as a mad dog, not to be trusted, and feared rather than respected.  We have lost all credibility in the eyes of the world.

You would think that abandoning all sense of morality and descending to the level of the worst, most vicious maniac in the world today would have at least hurt the terrorists, right?  Not quite.

As a result of our tactics, Al Quada has grown from a few dozen crazy fanatics when they bombed the trade center to a huge organization with at least 35,000 members and between 2 to 4 million sympathizers who provide support for them in Iraq alone.

Answer 5

There has been a long history of civilians without uniforms fighting regular soldiers, dating back well before the treaty. As an example:

' Minutemen were members of  the American colonial militia during the American Revolutionary War. They vowed to be ready for battle against the British within one minute of receiving notice.'

"Most Colonial militia units were provided neither arms nor uniforms and had to equip themselves. Many simply wore their own farmers' or workmans' clothes, while others had buckskin hunting outfits. Some added Indian-style touches to intimidate the enemy, even including war-paint"

Were these the eighteenth century version of the Iraqi insurgents?

Answer 6

No need to revise it....the same rules should still apply. It all boils down to 'treat others as you would have them treat you'...if we refuse to treat them equally...give them charges, give them access to a lawyer, not abuse or torture them, and give them speedy trials, then we are asking them to treat our soldiers in the same awful manner.

Answer 7

As our people learned in Vietnam, there are those who will fight like cowards with guerilla warfare by shedding official identifying uniforms to disguise themselves as common villagers.

In order to protect our men and women in combat they must be free from prosecution in any court for how they must fight such an enemy.

With regards to collateral damage, we must remember that the enemy put them in harms way, not us.

Answer 8

Enemy combatants need to stay in Cuba. No President in history, EVER IN HISTORY, even entertained the possibility of granting Civilian/Citizen rights to enemies. This is insane. Activist judges are to blame. The same types of judges that made their own law recently in California. They are enemies that deserve to be there. It was the Dems that wrongfully imprisoned Japanese-Americans just cause we were at war with Japan, but we cant keep terrorist foreign nationals over in Cuba. Wtf? Just like they want plants and animals to have rights, but its OK to kill babies. This makes no sense.

Answer 9

No it should not. terrorists that wantonly murder innocent civilians should not be given the protections of real soldiers.

Answer 10

The terrorists the US military are fighting in Afghanistan and in Iraq are classified under the Geneva Convention as "Unlawful Enemy Combatants."

An Unlawful Enemy Combatant is a civilian who directly engages in an armed conflict under the International Humanitarian Law.

So when the US went to war in Iraq, we started out fighting a uniformed military under the command of Saddam Hussien. With uniformed soldiers there are guidelines spelled out for how to treat enemy soldiers.

On the other hand, once the US defeaeted the Iraqi military and Muslim Extremist Terrorist thugs started showing up to fight the US military, those terrorist became the Unlawful Enemy Comabatants we are fighting today in Iraq. They are considered the dirties of dirt, since they dress lik and hide among the civilian population and use them as shields.

Unlawful Enemy Combatants (UEC) do not have to be taking prisoner like uniformed military personel. UEC's can within International law be shot on sight and killed even after surrendering.

In Afghanistan, there was no state controled military. Everyone enemy incountered in Afghanistan was an UEC.

When the Geneva Convention Treaty was signed of course there were no indepenent terrorist organization there. The Geneva Convention was an attempt to set ground rules for the uglyness of war. To help minimize civilian death tolls and give order to how POWs were to be treated.

Terrorist that practice terrorism do not play be the rules. Your question make you seem sympathetic to terrorists that they haven't had a chance to agree to the Geneva Convention. But terroristic figting tactics are exactly what the Geneva Convention is trying to prevent. Terrorist wouldn't sign it.

The Geneva Convention Treaty includes terrorism. It basically allows warring parties to shoot to kill with no questions asked when confronted with Unlawful Enemy Comabatants. This is to deter terrorist tactics.

Today, in the US's Global War on Terror, I feel we have mad a grave blunder. We are extending POW writes and even US citizan rights to Unlawful Enemy Combatants. Being a humain people the US military did not shoot captive UEC on sight and instead housed them in prison camps.

Within the international law - the US has every right to line up all of the detainees in GITMO and shoot them. But do not and will not.

However, it is a grave mistake to allow them access to the same rights given to US citizens under the US Constitution. Or Constitutional rights do not apply to citizens of France, Germany or Japan and its was not applied to POW during WWII.

Bottom Line - The Geneva Convention is just fine when it comes to terrorism.

Answer 11

Yes, it should be eliminated! I think we should be able to saw off the heads of terrorists with a butter knife just like they do us.