Dick Cheney and Republicans have been quite critical of the Obama Administration and its treatment of terrorists since the attempted Christmas Day bombing (1). Their criticism focuses on the president's "soft" treatment of terror suspects, which considers them basically common criminals instead of unlawful enemy combatants, the path the Bush Administration chose to follow in this regard.
Which path is the right path? The Obama Administration's proposals are definitely in line with the rules created by the Third Geneva Convention — which defines detained enemy combatants as prisoners of war, guaranteed certain rights in their treatment as detainees, if they follow certain guidelines for their conduct in war — and the Fourth Geneva Convention — which defines detained civilians and their rights as detainees.
Additionally, the Commentary to the Fourth Geneva Convention says:
"every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, or again, a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. ' There is no ' intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law." (2-last ¶)
But, it does not seem that the type of person detained after trying to blow himself up on Christmas falls into either category provided by the Conventions. The Commentary attempts to close the gap created by the Conventions, but it does so in a rather obtuse, overbroad fashion — labeling all detainees as either/or. It is clearly outdated, given the new challenges governments face in protecting their homelands against a terrorist menace.
While it might seem that the result of following the Commentary's suggestion — that is, doling out constitutional liberties to terrorists — is reasonable because it supposedly errs on the side of "human rights," is it really? Is it really reasonable to afford constitutional protections to non-citizens who are clearly perpetrating (or attempting to perpetrate) acts of war on innocent Americans?
I think the Obama Administration unnecessarily gives constitutional protections to people who have not played by the rules in international warfare. If the Geneva Convention was designed to guarantee the rights of U.S. citizens to those who intend to destroy our free, democratic republic, then that intention is completely unclear in its construction. If that is the case, though, then perhaps U.S. lawmakers should reconsider our commitment to a document that would therefore be more interested in protecting the rights of terrorists than the lives of law-abiding, freedom-loving Americans. Is that really a "humanitarian" approach to international law?
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How should they be treated? Harshly. In the words of The Great Teacher Ra's Al Ghul, "Compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share."
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