Niall Ferguson writes an article about the benefits of adhering to the Geneva Convention. His analysis falls down at the end:


Official Japanese policy encouraged brutality toward prisoners of war by applying the Geneva Convention only mutatis mutandis (literally, "with those things having been changed which need to be changed"), which the Japanese translated as "with any necessary amendments."

The amendments in question amounted to this: Enemy prisoners had so disgraced themselves by laying down their arms that their lives were forfeit. Indeed, some Allied prisoners were made to wear armbands bearing the inscription "One who has been captured in battle and is to be beheaded or castrated at the will of the emperor." Physical assaults were a daily occurrence in some Japanese POW camps. Executions without due process were frequent. Thousands of American prisoners died during the infamous Bataan Death March in 1942.

Elsewhere, British POWs were used as slave labor, most famously on the Burma-Thailand railway line. Attempting to escape was treated by the Japanese as a capital offense, though the majority of prisoners who died were in fact victims of malnutrition and disease exacerbated by physical overwork and abuse. In all, 42% of Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese did not survive. Such were the consequences of "amending" the Geneva Convention.

Red-state Republicans may still shrug their shoulders. After all, George W. Bush is no Tojo. Well, maybe not. But even if you don't see any resemblance between Bush's "administrative regulations" and Imperial Japan's "necessary amendments" of the Geneva Convention, consider this purely practical argument: As Winston Churchill insisted throughout the war, treating POWs well is wise, if only to increase the chances that your own men will be well treated if they too are captured. Even in World War II, there was in fact a high degree of reciprocity. The British treated Germans POWs well and were well treated by the Germans in return; the Germans treated Russian POWs abysmally and got their bloody deserts when the tables were turned.

Few, if any, American soldiers currently find themselves in enemy hands. But in the long war on which Bush has embarked, that may not always be the case. The bottom line about mistreating captive foes is simple: It is that what goes around comes around. And you don't have to be a closet liberal to understand that.


What mote in the eye of his arguement is this: How were the Japanese treated by Americans and other Allied forces? Were they similarly tortured, murdered and forced into slave labor? No. So what goes around, does not always, come around. As stated above, the Japanese treated their POW's abominably. They were operating according to a completely different moral code. The US was magnamamous in victory as that was dictated by our moral code. Each was fundamentally unable to accept the other's reasoning for their behavior. We are seeing a retread of that now. The jihadis act according to a moral code that is incomprehensible to Americans. They believe they are free to visit any evil upon us without compunction as we are kufars and deserve no mercy. This is the same fanatical mindset we saw with kamikaze pilots (suicide bombers) and vows to fight to the last man if a ground invasion was attempted. Do you know how many Japanese units surrendered in the Pacific theater? Zero. None. They all fought to the last or until they were unable to fight any longer. Some even stayed in the jungles to continue the fight until the 60's and 70's. Only by massive, overwhelming force was such an ideology defeated. They had to be not just defeated but vanquished. Laid low and forced to accept they were totally broken. I fear we're seeing a the same play again. If we exit Iraq early and it falls into a failed state and the jihadist mindset grows, this can only end badly. The kind of bad ending that features mushroom clouds. I pray I'm wrong.

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