Iraq War: War and Atrocities

Rummy don't care about no convention, in Geneva or anywhere else

One of the most disturbing things any high American official has ever said in public was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comment on CNN's Hunt Novak & Shields program on 12/01/01. Robert Novak - the same Novak who's so much in the news over the Wilson/Plame scandal - asked Rummy about reports of killings of prisoners-of-war by the Afghan Northern Alliance troops who the US was supporting:

Do you feel, Mr. Secretary, there is a problem, however, when apparently most of the prisoners, all of the prisoners, are in the hands of the Northern Alliance, which I don't believe signed the Geneva Convention and are not the nicest guys in the world? Does that bother you at all?

The premise of Novak's question was flawed from the start. The body of international law which is often referred to by the shorthand "Geneva Convention" applies to all belligerents in a war, whether they have formally agreed to them or not. But Afghanistan is a formal signatory to the Geneva Convention. And the Northern Alliance at that time was recognized by the US, the UN and almost all countries of the world as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.

Rummy replied first by referring to the deaths in the 9/11 attacks. And he continued:

The fact that they [the Northern Alliance] don't happen to subscribe to some convention that we do or that other countries do is a fact. It is also a fact that we have to stop those terrorists from killing more Americans. And I don't feel even the slightest problem in working with the Northern Alliance to achieve that end.

Any defense minister in any other country in the democratic world who had publicly sneered at the Geneva Convention laws as "some convention" and brushed off well-sourced press reports of deliberate murder of POWs by their allies would likely have been forced to resign within 24 hours or less.

We now know that US Special Forces were fighting very closely together with Northern Alliance troops, often giving them very detailed tactical direction in battles. So that makes Rummy's cavalier attitude toward atrocities and violations of international law all the more disturbing.

As reports mount of questionable shootings of civilians in Iraq, I've often thought of Rummy's comment then and the kind of signal it sent to US commanders and soldiers and to our allies.

Tags: afghanistan war, iraq war, geneva convention, law of war, robert novak, rumsfeld, war crimes