He said
Gonzales says the “new paradigm” of the war on terrorism “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.”
What was he referring to exactly? Was this because this is an information war as opposed to a war against a state and as a result information is alot more important than it was in previous wars and since the Geneva convention was written with a different kind of war in mind that we should allow this kind of behavior?
I’m not sure what he meant, but on a war against terror the Geneva convention technically doens’t apply, because the fight is not against another nation, but terrorist groups.
I apologize for hitting on you twice in a row, but I think the point is dealing humanely with prisoners rather than the legality of who they are fighting for.
This is where definitions are everything. You could argue that there’s really no such thing as a War on Terror, but rather a situation in which the security arm of all involved nations is in a state of high anxiety in order to fend off any real or imagined terrorist attacks. Therefore Gonzales would argue that the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply, because these people are not prisoners of war but suspected criminals. Which is Doublethink. Either there is a War, in which case they are prisoners of war and the Convention applies, or they’re not and they should be innocent until proven guilty.
He seems to be implying that International Law is quaint. I.e., the rules that require that all other nations in the world behave legally and consistently towards the nation you inhabit, is, like, irrelevant. Good to know we’re making progress, hey?