by Bill Levinson

The recent torture and murder of two American soldiers, along with a long litany of beheadings and other murders by Iraqi insurgents, makes it necessary to discuss a supposedly-unthinkable proposition: does the United States Army have any legal or moral responsibility to capture insurgents alive?

Booby-Trapped Bodies of 2 GIs Recovered:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — The U.S. military recovered the booby-trapped bodies of two missing soldiers Tuesday, and Iraqi officials said the Americans were tortured and killed in a “barbaric” way. An insurgent group claimed the new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq executed the men personally.

An enemy combatant who is wearing a uniform (or other distinguishing badge “identifiable at a distance”) and conducting his operations in accordance with the laws of war has the right to surrender and be treated as a prisoner of war. As such, he is obliged to give us only his name, rank, and serial number. It is illegal to coerce or even bribe him in an attempt to get more.

As shown above, however, the insurgents do not obey the laws of war and they do not wear uniforms. As recently as the Second World War, any combatant who was caught in civilian clothing (or disguised in the other side’s uniforms, as were numerous English-speaking Germans on one occasion) could expect very short shrift– “short shrift” being defined by one wag as putting someone between a wall and a firing squad and then giving the order to shoot. This alone suggests that any non-uniformed insurgent, once he is identified as such beyond a reasonable doubt, can be executed on the spot.

The fact that the enemy murders prisoners routinely also places him beyond the pale of civilized warfare, and perhaps the old ways as practiced by the Romans should take over. Roman armies did not take prisoners unless they wanted slaves or captives for public execution in Rome itself. The enemy’s surrender was simply not accepted; he could die with his sword in his hand or he could be cut down after dropping it. If this thought does not appeal to our citizen-soldiers, and it is easy to see why a civilized soldier would hesitate to shoot even Abu Hamza al-Muhajer in cold blood, there are plenty of ways to run an operation in which the terrorists simply do not have an opportunity to surrender.

As an example, Japanese soldiers hiding in caves were often asked to surrender, the alternative being application of a flamethrower to the cave in question (the fire sucked the oxygen out and killed everyone inside) followed by use of a demolition charge to bury any survivors alive. In the case of Al Qaida or other terrorists hiding in caves, the flamethrower and explosives should be used without prior discussion. Attacks can be conducted at night, with the targets showing up as green blobs instead of humanoid figures. It’s probably easier psychologically to pull the trigger on a green blob– sort of like shooting an alien spaceship in a videogame– than on a person, and it’s also difficult if not impossible to see whether the green blob has dropped its weapon and put its hands in the air. Cluster bombs followed by napalm don’t leave any remains to bury, let alone terrorists trying to surrender.

Captured terrorists can also be handed over to the Iraqis themselves, as justice is somewhat rougher there than in the U.S. legal system. As an example, the ones who bombed a nursing home the other day would probably be hanged shortly after being tried and convicted, as opposed to living for another ten or twenty years while they exhausted their appeals.

The basic purpose of such reprisals is not “revenge,” but rather to compel the enemy to modify his behavior. It is no surprise that the enemy tortures and kills our captured soldiers (along with aid workers, including women) and bombs nursing homes as happened yesterday. The worst that will happen to him is that he may be sent to Guantanamo where he will receive good food, comfortable lodgings, and whatever he needs to practice his religion– accommodations suitable for prisoners of war but far more than terrorists deserve. Even at Guantanamo, he can expect additional consideration from Kumbaya-singing social workers and do-gooders who complain that he is not allowed to roam at large instead of having to stay within the walls and fences.

If the insurgent could instead expect a bullet in his head shortly after his capture, he would probably change his behavior considerably: perhaps by wearing a uniform and conducting his operations in accordance with the laws of war, or even laying down his arms and going home.

To be quite blunt, we have only two problems with what happened at Abu Ghraib:

(1) Some of the victims might have been innocent.
(2) Anyone who enjoys abusing prisoners, even guilty ones, is not fit to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States. (An exception might be if the buddies of the two murdered soldiers were to catch Abu Hamza al-Muhajer and beat him to a bloodly pulp but the abusers at Abu Ghraib were simply having a good time.)

We do not care what happened to any actual insurgents at Abu Ghraib. We are in fact glad it happened to them, although we reiterate that American soldiers should not have been the ones to do it.

Next comes the matter of torturing insurgents for information that might be used to save American lives or the lives of innocent Iraqis. We reiterate that, while an enemy prisoner of war is obliged to give us only his name, rank, and serial number, a terrorist has no rights whatsoever.

T. Bubba Bechtol, part time City Councilman from Midland, TX, was asked on a local live radio talk show the other day just what he thought of the allegations of torture of the Iraqi prisoners. His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience. “If hooking up an Iraqi prisoner’s scrotum to a car’s battery cables will save ONE American G.I’s life, then I have just two things to say: ” “Red is positive, Black is negative!”

Remember that the U.S. Constitution forbids torture for the purpose of:

(1) extracting a confession
(2) punishment

Torturing someone to force him to tell us where he planted a nail bomb, or where his cohorts are planning to execute hostages, is neither punishment nor extraction of a confession but reasonable and necessary force to protect innocent people. The movie Dirty Harry contains a perfect example. The bad guy, a serial killer who called himself Scorpio, claimed to have buried a teenage girl alive with only enough oxygen for twelve hours. The detective played by Clint Eastwood shot him in the leg and then refused to get him medical care until he revealed where the girl had been buried. Some people called the scene “controversial” but the bottom line is that it is entirely legal for a police officer (or in many cases a civilian) to kill someone if that is what it takes to stop him from perpetrating a murder, rape, or other violent felony. It therefore follows that it should be justifiable to beat the pulp out of him if that is what it takes to terminate a crime he is committing by remote control.

Suppose, for example, we captured an insurgent who knew where Abu Hamza al-Muhajer was holding the two American soldiers. We would have no problem whatsoever with “Red is positive, black is negative,” as long as whatever the terrorist screamed out during the process was not later used against him in a court of law, and as long as the current was turned off the instant he told our people what they needed to know.

Singing “Kumbaya” with terrorists is not humane, at least not to the innocent people the terrorists are murdering. It is time to take the gloves off and show them just how horrible war can be when all restraints are removed from it.

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Related: War Against Islamo-fascism, Political Correctness

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