There may not be much debate here, but I guess this is one of those questions about whether the end justifies the means.
Reported today, one of the rescuers in Colombia who freed Ingrid Betancourt and 14 others wore the Red Cross symbol during the rescue. President Uribe has apologized to the International Red Cross, but there is some question about how much damage has been done for Red Cross work in the future, not to mention the violation of international law. The person wearing the symbol was not authorized by his government to do so, but why did he even have such a thing with him?
So, a good outcome on this occasion. Has the integrity and future neutrality of the Red Cross symbol been compromised in your view, and how badly? Just how serious is this?
Roddy
I’m really torn on this issue. On the one hand, several hostages were freed. Yay. Tickertape and confetti all around. On the other, people dressed as relief workers. Very bad. I wish a solution not involving pretending to be Red Cross had been found and I worry that future relief workers will face greater danger because of this. Then again, it’s really easy for me to sit at my computer safe and sound and make tsking noises at others.
[plaintive whine]Why can’t we all just get along?[/pw]
While this resulted in a good short term outcome, I fear that it will prove an absolutely dumb and horrible thing to do. Red Cross workers have only one source of protection, and that is that they are not directly involved in the conflict. That they do not further any military action; they just help the wounded, etc. I feel sorry for all RC workers that have to go about there jobs now in with the added stress of thinking that the bad guys in the area aren’t going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are there purely for medical and humanitarian reasons.
Net-net: very bad idea. But I really, really hope I’m wrong.
It was wrong, but terrorist groups don’t follow the rules of war and we generally don’t get as upset over it as we are with this guy. Terrorist groups routinely use ambulances to ferry arms, for example.
It only takes one side violating the rules for the rules to become useless.
Whoever came up with this needs to be lined up in front of a fake war crimes tribunal and promply shot along with anyone else who knew about it and those who put on the disguise. It wouldn’t take much for me to say start executing all of thier families as a warning to others that this is epic scale bad mojo.
Undoubtably more than a few covert intel types have operated as aid workers. That said openly making such an organization a target could easily destroy them as a relief organization. Plenty of forces involved in revolutions or other grey area conflicts are already famous for paranoia and summary executions of uninvolved parties to the conflict (see Somalia, Columbia).
Using this cover calls the sign into question, for many war torn areas the rule is if in doubt, shoot it.
At the very least damn near every scrap of aid to them in any form should be cut off, pulled out, and if they bitch about it proceed to bomb them into the stone age until they understand just how precious that help is.
Which is an argument often used to defend selective outrage or singling people out.
I’m not accusing you in particular of only being outraged by this case, but I am pointing out that if I posted a thread about Palestinians using ambulances to carry arms or even to mount raids, the collective shrug would be noticeable. I’ll try it a few weeks from now to prove it to you.
People have condemned a specific instance that’s current news, and is worthy of condemnation. You responded that other instances, in the past, are also bad. And that, somehow, people are showing ‘selective outrage’.
What do you base your claim on?
It’s wrong when we do it, it’s wrong when they do it, because it’s wrong.
Okay, but why does this instance get mainstream media treatment but other instances do not? And why is this instance going to damage the Red Cross’s neutrality more than all the previous instances of misuse?
As a side issue, is it okay to break the rules in response to the enemy breaking the rules? Hostage taking is also a Geneva violation, a far more serious one. I would think breaking a relatively less significant rule to correct a huge violation is justified.
Unfortunately, lawless belligerents tend to force the good guys into breaking the rules too. Sometimes there’s just no other way. Colombia tried to free these hostages the right way for years.
That’s a tu quoque fallacy which, in its use as a rhetorical rather than a logical fallacy, is a subset of red herring fallacies. Why the media behaves as it does is immaterial to the discussion presented by the OP.
Perhaps the biggest difference between this case and the other cases noted by **francois60 ** is who is doing it, and what we can do about it.
Terrorist groups do all kinds of things that are “against the rules” such as blowing up innocent civilians. In the scheme of things that such organizations do, running arms in ambulances seems like pretty low grade evil. Plus there isn’t much we can do about that specific practice, above what we are already doing to fight the terrorist organization.
But this operation was run by a legitimately-elected and more-or-less respectable national government. National governments are expected to honor such rules precisely because they are legitimately elected and are bound by such agreements as the Geneva Convention. And in these cases there are things that can be done - the citizens can turn out the leaders responsible, other nations can impose sanctions, and so on, and all of those actions can serve as a warning to others not to do the same. Finally, if such actions do go unpunished and other governments are tempted to do likewise, it will have a much worse impact on the future of the Red Cross.
I think of it as a matter of trust: we already know we can’t trust terrorist organizations to “play fair” but we don’t punish the Red Cross for that, we are obliged to give people claiming to belong to that organization the benefit of the doubt. Terrorist organizations may have felt, up to now, that they could trust the Red Cross and therefore would be less likely to kill Red Cross workers. Now that trust has been betrayed, and very publicly. It remains to be seen the impact that will have on the safety of Red Cross workers, and on their ability to do their work.
Just be to clear, the OP was only about the specific (and unauthorized) use of the Red Cross symbol, not about the overall idea of having the rescuers disguise themselves as a fake generic humanitarian organization. That also might have been a questionable idea, with a possibly negative impact on the future safety of other international humanitarian workers, but it’s not the topic of this thread.
Roddy
It’s also worth pointing out the obvious (evidently). Namely, that if the ‘badguys’ didn’t respect the protections and immunities of dedicated medics, then there would have been no purpose, and no utility, to dressing one of the team members up as one.
Mostly. Usually. There are exceptional cases, such as the Israeli extraction of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina. There was a protest over that which seems (to me) to have amounted to a wink and a nod, then Eichmann was tried in Israel without formal extradition procedures.
I wouldn’t say, FinnAgain, that the “bad guys” actually respect the immunities and neutralities of medics. They know that we do. Therefore, they exploit it — I’m sure they’re more than willing to accept aid from them, or to travel under a Red Cross banner so they can move in secret, but I’d bet they’d shoot a medic if they figured he was helping us. Self-interest is not respect. Mostly they do this to gain an advantage, and I’d judge they are looking for any advantage they can get; after all, small groups of rebels or terrorists (choose any word you like) by definition are out-manned and out-gunned.
The question is, can we live with ourselves if we adhere to the rules of war but lose anyway? Can we live with ourselves if we break the rules of war but win?
The idea is shooting aid workers is bad. Complaining about how seriously a terrorist group takes signs of international aid groups is kinda like complaining that a criminal doesen’t take gun safety seriously. Members of terrorist groups are individuals that pretty much much accept gunfire and/or explosions as an occupational hazard.
As said above, the point is, we don’t expect criminals to follow the rules, but the government needs to for fear of becoming the criminals they claim to be protecting us from.
Making comments along the lines “but the bad guys do it too” doesn’t make sense in this case. Maybe people making such statements would have a point if it was said bad guys who had to suffer the consequences of an allegedly illegal action. For instance, if the Colombian government had used some kind of weapon forbidden by an international treaty.
But here, it’s a third party, the Red Cross , and the people the Red Cross is trying to help that will face the harmful consequences. Wearing Red Cross symbols during military action is essentially the same concept as insurgents hiding amongst a civilian crowd or a military installing AA weapons on the roof of an hospital.
The poster who mentioned, for instance, the use of ambulances by terrorists in the West Bank should understand that. The first time it’s done, it gives a small, temporary edge to the side willing to ignore the “rules”. After that, it’s the civilians who need urgent medical attention who are paying the price for years.
This misuse of the Red Cross wasn’t a clever trick pulled at the expense of bad guys, it was a vile trick pulled at the expense of everybody else who needs or might need someday the help of the Red Cross, including other hostages, POW, members of the military, etc…
Yet one more way that we as a country have lowered ourselves. I guess I should no longer be surprised but it hurts when I see us doing what we should know better than to do.
This increases the dangers to aid workers world wide. That is a bad thing and it does not matter than other have abused it before, we should not!