I’m as ready to meet you as I am James (that’s a hint to him btw, not a ‘no’ )!

Well I’ll rethink my argument with the info I gain.

on another note I’ll be in london the first week of June and I was wondering if you’d like to meet for a meal and drinks some day? I promise I’m much nicer in person than I seem to be on your blog and I would like to meet you. Though we might disagree sometimes I’m glad you are speaking and posting from your principals and I think that’s noble.

Oh and your issue of the Geneva Convention is wrong.

calling them something out of a television show does not change them or invalidate them, nor did you aver address the underlying issue of the geneva convention and it’s purpose. So I just have to ask, if you were in charge of investigating muslim militants how would you do it? You have some good ideas but I think fleshing them out would strengthen my understanding and your philosophy.

It’s a wonderful argument, but unfortunately straight out of ‘24′, and it’s a straightforward defence of Gitmo. In other words why not keep a whole body of ‘terristssss’ so that when an outrage is about to occur (which 10x out of 10 we’ve so far had opportunities to prevent without resorting to terrorism, but been too incompetent to actually do) we can just waterboard ‘terrisssst x’ and find out what we need to know and get a special forces contingent off at a moment’s notice.

Are you hearing your own argument? Do you remember how 9/11 actually happened? Are you aware that torture has so far not played any role in preventing terrorism outrages in the US?

2. Do Human rights apply to everyone, are their universal human rights at all and who enforces these said rights.

3. The difference between military battlefield justice and civilian justice.

Human rights, and who do they apply to, now bear in mind this is my opinion based on my perception of rights and ones ability to maintain said rights.
In the US our rights are laid out in the constitution, they are fairly broad, open for interpretation but fairly sacrosanct, The judicial branch makes sure that new laws do not tread on them and the executive branch tries to maintain protection of them, like voting and stuff like that. But these universal rights are tricky things. No one can enforce them, international courts like the Hague are toothless and beset by political whims, and they really don’t do anything for anyone. They sound pretty but not a single person at the UN, in my opinion gives a rats ass about them.
Now if you have a supposed right, but no way to claim it, or enforce it, does it really exist, or is it just as ephemeral as any other dream? Your rights only exists as far as your border, If you think I am lying look at Sudan, Rwanda, Chechnia, Cambodia, etc etc.
Rights without the protection and ability to enforce them do not exist. The UN is incapable of enforcing it’s universal rights because it is beholden to it’s fractured core. It just exists to exist. In Europe and Britain there is such a high regard for the UN something I have no understanding of, what has the UN ever done for you? Honestly I want to know cause I can’t think of anything it’s done for me.

3. Now once more, military justice versus civilian justice, lets say your in the army your marching across a city under declared hostilities, someone lobs a grenade at you, your buddy dies, a small kid bolts from behind a rock, the grenade came from that direction, the kid is carrying a rifle in his arms, what do you do?

A. call the police, let them come set up a police cordon and ask questions? Call your buddies family and tell him that the cops are on it and in one or two years they can expect a trial maybe if they catch him?
B. Raise your rifle and fire.

“The word of a soldier or any other individual shouldn’t be good enough for anyone – evidence to be tested by a jury, and presented by a lawyer is. I’m stunned I have to explain this.”
But you see it is, in a military situation the word of an officer is law, literally life and death. Than their superiors judge the aftermath and hand out medals or court marshals. It is not the same world it is one in which we normally live. In fact it is such a deadly and bizarre world that us white folk made rules to help decide what was a good war from a bad. They called it the Geneva convention, and in it stated very clearly is the principle that anyone bearing arms on a battle field should be in uniform or be executed for endangering the civilian population. We drew up these rules so that soldiers could maintain some sense of moral bearing. Breaking these rules is grounds for execution. Mixing up these two worlds only get more people killed, trying to fight a war with no death is an interesting fantasy world that some like to live in, however it is not the world we live in.
As for child soldiers, if the soldier in question is in uniform he is to be treated with the same respect and honor of anyone, however out of uniform the same rules apply regardless of age. It’s a hard rule, it’s kinda cold, but it’s there to discourage the very issue that you are concerned about.

Frankly I’m surprised I have to mention this.

This basically seems to be boiling down into three issues,

1. The belief that torture can never be condoned for any reason at any time. Because this, “drags us down to their level”, or is morally wrong.

2. Do Human rights apply to everyone, are their universal human rights at all and who enforces these said rights.

3. The difference between military battlefield justice and civilian justice.

Now let me both clarify my positions concerning these three issues and why I believe that torture has both a time and place in our history, and in our cultures, and sadly even to this day.

Torture has been used at some time and place by every nation and civilization that has ever lived on this planet. Because like it or not it’s effective, not because it necessarily always provides the truth, though many times it can. But more so because it creates a very real and palpable climate of fear against one’s enemies, foreign or domestic. No white washed history, or new age belief can wipe this from our shared human history. You say it doesn’t happen in your country, that it’s not allowed? Ask common prisoners about the tools that police have at their disposal that leave no marks, ask them how many people believe them when they claim it happened? It happens in my country it happens in your country it happens every where right beneath the thin veneer of civilization lives a hearty does of animal cruelty well versed it inflicting pain and extracting useful information. Does torture have to be drilling holes in peoples hands or breaking their feet? No it can be sleep deprivation, it can be solitary confinement, it can be a host of things but in the end it’s all the same, the application of power to break the mind and spirit of a prisoner.
Blindly willing or stating this doe not or should not happen doesn’t change anything.

I defend torture not because i am a sadist but because I am a realist, there are reasons one can find to justify it, (there is a bomb about to go off, they kidnapped my child and i have 3 hours to find them, they are holding a plane for ransom) But eventually you will find a compelling reason to justify it and that is not horrible, horrible is the person that created the situation, horrible is the person that holds peoples lives so cheaply that they would barter with them. Torturing someone does not bring you down to their level, torturing someone because you enjoy it would.

Okay I’m going to have to go for a bit but I’ll send this and get started on the next two points after I get back

> 1. The use of torture can never, under any circumstances, be justified by any ‘civilised’ state. No matter what an individual has done, by a state endorsing the use of torture (whether directly or indirectly) lowers that state to the same level as the captive and takes away any ‘moral authority’ that said state may feel it has to criticise other states for their use of cruel and inhuman forms of punishment / interrogation.

There is simply no justification, end of story. It is a disgusting and inhuman practice and frankly anyone who feels that they are able to argue in any way for such practices, even under ’special situations’ are a disturbing mystery to me.

> 2. To quote an earlier comment about the UN:

“it’s laws are routinely ignored (mostly with good reason) because they are typically passed by dictators who think the most important thing in the world is holding onto power and bashing Israel”

The only body at the United Nations with the ability to pass legally binding resolutions is the Security Council. Those resolutions cannot pass without support from the P5 members (USA, UK, France, China, Russia), none of which really fit with that statement.

And actually it’s worth noting that passing a resolution in the Security Council which criticises Israel too strongly is practically impossible as the USA always vetos such resolutions.

> 3. Human Rights. These do either apply to everyone or to no-one. You cannot pick-and-choose who has ‘universal’ human rights and who does not (and besides, who would have the right to make that distinction anyway? Certainly not any single state).

The moment we start making ‘exceptions’ to who does and doesn’t ‘qualify’ for human rights is the moment (sadly past) that we again, lose any sort of moral authority to lecture other states about their human rights records.

Either we believe in the universality of human rights and are willing to defend those rights in any situation or we don’t. You cannot have it both ways.

We’re even having this conversation, without him having been charged by anyone of anything, and proof shown in open court of his guilt for a judge and jury to deliberate on. The word of a soldier or any other individual shouldn’t be good enough for anyone – evidence to be tested by a jury, and presented by a lawyer is. I’m stunned I have to explain this. I’m also stunned that I’m having to explain the idea of a 15 year old choosing this of his own free will (were that the case) would have a totally different meaning to a 25 year old or a 50 year old. Remember that he did come from a family of extremists – what room did he have to even make a free choice? And if it were your country being invaded, what would you do? Just sit back and hope for the best when there wasn’t even a functioning country even before the invasion? These are all vital considerations.

I’m skeptical that anything along these lines wouldn’t amount to torture to half the world either.

I’m not sure what that means. I can look for cited references if you like, but child protection conventions, most likely developed in war zones like Sierra Leone and the DR Congo, accept that child soldiers are the result of abuse and should at the very least not be treated as adults. Sort of goes without saying that you don’t hold a child who commits crimes because of abuse, accountable for them in the same way that you would an adult. There’s a free will thing going on.

While I agree that the erosion of rights can be a dangerous road, the converse which you are both cheering and bemoaning, of giving citizen rights to captured militants is not the answer.

Who is the United States to even take them away? The arrogance of the logic of that philosophy is remarkable. Who can we safely identify as a captured militant if they aren’t tried fairly in a court of law? If the US can already arbitrarily do this to any individual on earth, what’s to stop them doing the same with anyone else? The story here is alarmingly one sided – we barely even know what goes on in Afghanistan or Iraq for starters, although we do know that the abuse which accompanied the destruction of Fallujah was unspeakable. If you were an Iraqi say, and knew what happened, would you then be wrong to fight back and become a ‘captured militant’? Oh right, only the US side in this ‘war’ on terror, which completely recasts people in roles that don’t even make sense to any of them, is ‘right’.

The UN is not a government, it does not have an army and it’s laws are routinely ignored (mostly with good reason) because they are typically passed by dictators who think the most important thing in the world is holding onto power and bashing Israel.

They’re routinely ignored for good reason? Which UN resolutions have been ignored for good reason? Do you mean Security Council resolutions, which are normally passed on the grounds of human rights protection by permanent members who believe in human rights, and vetoed by those who don’t. I’m not sure who these dictators are who set up ‘UN laws’. That there are dictatorships which are perversely allowed onto the Human Rights Council proves the urgency for reform (and it is mostly the US which is holding that up). There is no way the whole of us can possibly find a way forwards together, without being under at least the attempt of a joint umbrella, and in many ways the UN’s biggest failing is not finding a way yet of instituting a ‘world government’, however tentative. But remember the UN, despite having a bureaucracy around the world, is only as good as the sum of its parts, which is us. Subdivide that in any way and you crash its potential effectiveness.