Why the Geneva Conventions are important

In case we needed a reminder of why the Geneva Conventions (which are part of the “laws of war”) are important, the most recent (of many now emerging) revelations about the misdeeds of US soldiers in Iraq can provide one.
On June 16, two US servicemen were captured during what looked like a fairly well-planned ambush of their patrol. Three days later, their mutilated bodies were found.
The Bushites pointed to the treatment of those two as revealing the inhumane nature of the insurgents in Iraq…
Now, AP’s Ryan Lenz has revealed that the two captured GIs belonged to the very same army platoon as five other soldiers who are now accused of having deliberately plotted and then committed the rape of an Iraqi woman and the subsequent murder of her along with three members of her family, back in March.
This is a grisly, tragic sequence of events all round. In no way do I argue that the gruesome earlier behavior of their platoon-mates in any way “justified” the way the two captured GIs were treated. All these abuses of the laws of war are quite unjustifiable.
I do, however, hold that it is quite likely that if members of this platoon had behaved all along towards the Iraqis whom they encountered in a way consistent with the Geneva Conventions, then those two murdered and mutilated GIs might now still be alive… That’s the thing about the Geneva Conventions: they provide a single unified code of conduct for how everyone should behave in a war zone.
Yes, of course if the soldiers in the US occupation forces all kept impeccably to the standards of the Gevena Conventions, it is quite possible that the insurgents would still commit some atrocities– though in far, far smaller numbers than the ones they’ve committed to date.
But the many messages the Bush administration’s high officials have put out about the idea that the Geneva Conventions are somehow “outdated” and don’t apply to Americans have certainly trickled down to the troops and affected the judgment of many of them regarding what they think is acceptable and what unacceptable in a war zone.
The piece by Lenz, by the way, is interesting in a number of ways. It seems he has been able to “break” the story about the March rape and murders in the US MSM in good part because, as the tagline at the end of the story informs us, he was previously embedded with the 502nd Infantry Regiment, the same regiment of which the accused delinquents were part. So I assume he must have had some fairly good sources at the regimental level there who helped give him some of the background to the story.
He writes:

Up to five soldiers are being investigated in the March killings, the fifth pending case involving alleged slayings of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops.
The Americans entered the Sunni Arab’s family home, separated three males from the woman, raped her and burned her body using a flammable liquid in a cover-up attempt, a military official close to the investigation said. The three males were also slain.
The soldiers had studied their victims for about a week and the attack was “totally premeditated,” the [US military] official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
… The official said the rape and killings appeared to have been a “crime of opportunity,” noting that the soldiers had not been attacked by insurgents but had noticed the woman on previous patrols.
One of the family members they allegedly killed was a child, said a senior Army official who also requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

But here is another interesting aspect of the case: Lenz writes that “Mahmoudiya police Capt. Ihsan Abdul-Rahman said Iraqi officials received a report on March 13 alleging that American soldiers had killed the family in the Khasir Abyad area, about 6 miles north of Mahmoudiya.” He doesn’t say whether Abdul-Rahman informed the US military of this allegation at the time. He does write that, “U.S. officials said they knew of the deaths but thought the victims were killed in sectarian violence.”
Oh, what a handy explanation, eh?
But the way the details of the crime started to emerge up at the officer level wasapparently through the participation of soldiers from the platoon in question in what are described as “counseling sessions” that were– according to an earlier filing from Lenz– organized among platoon members after the deaths of their two comrades, in an attempt to help them deal with their feelings, etc etc.
From what Lenz writes, the rape-and-murder action undertaken by the five had been known of prior to that by a number of their comrades. He writes, “A second soldier, who also was not involved, said he overhead soldiers conspiring to commit the crimes and then later saw bloodstains on their clothes, the official said.”
But it wasn’t till the “counseling sessions” that any of these other, non-involved platoon members shared their suspicions or concerns with their superiors. Omerta ruled…
Anyway, all branches of the US military that have members on active duty inside Iraq are now becoming stained by the revelation of earlier acts of atrocity and mistreatment of Iraqi civilians. Military discipline seems to be coming under exactly the same kinds of pressure there that it came under in Vietnam.
Yes, to a large degree I do hold these individual sodliers responsible for their misdeeds. Burt I hold their commanders even more responsible for their training and discipline… and the higher up the chain of command you go, the more responsible these commanders should be held.
So let’s see, that goes up through the level of their regimental commanders up to the all-Iraq command to Centcom to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to– Donald Rumsfeld, to President Bush. We US citizens should demand that the nation’s higherst commanders of all be held directly responsible for upholding the rule of law– whether in the midst of combat (the circumstance that is addressed directly by the internationally agreed “laws of war”) or in any other circumstance. They also need also to take robust action to ensure compliance with the laws of war by soldiers and officers at all levels.
If they don’t do that, then as citizens of a nation built upon the rule of law we need to do the “holding responsible” for them– at the ballot box!
Meanwhile, until the US reverts to being a nation that abides by and upholds laws, the risks to individual US soldiers (and civilians) will continue to mount.
Note, too, that a call that the US military start complying with the laws of war in no way contradicts my equally strong call that the US military be withdrawn from Iraq at the earliest possible time, and the US military as a whole be radically downsized. Of course, if there were no US occupation of Iraq back in March, then that poor Iraqi woman and her family would never have met the grisly fate that was inflicted on them. (And nor would the two slain soldiers or the other 500 or so US soldiers killed this year in Iraq have been sent home in body bags, either.)
But whether the troops are in Iraq or not, they need to uphold the laws of war. It’s as simple as that.