{"id":27800,"date":"2011-12-05T14:11:22","date_gmt":"2011-12-05T18:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=27800"},"modified":"2011-12-05T14:42:35","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T18:42:35","slug":"michael-yon-and-the-geneva-conventions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=27800","title":{"rendered":"Michael Yon and the Geneva Conventions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Yon apparently doesn\u2019t understand the Geneva Conventions<\/a><\/p>\n

For some inexplicable reason, Michael Yon continues to do his best Don Quixote imitation by suggesting (urging?) that soon a soldier will use the Birtherian logic of Oliy Taitz and crew and refuse to deploy to Afghanistan because of mandated violations of the Geneva Conventions:<\/p>\n

It could happen tomorrow. A Soldier might say, \u201cSir, I want to go to Afghanistan, but I am afraid that by violating the Geneva Conventions, I could be accused of a war crime. I am caught in a bad place. I cannot violate the Geneva Conventions and so there is no need to send me to Afghanistan to fly. I must refuse that unlawful order. If ordered, I will go to Afghanistan but I cannot fly in violation.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Soldier is obligated to obey the law. A Soldier is obligated not to obey unlawful orders.<\/p>\n

What would you do?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A fine rhetorical point Michael, I think what I would do is look up the specific Geneva Convention you claim we are in violation of, and then perhaps contact someone who knows the slightest thing about International Law. And, somewhat interestingly, that\u2019s just what I did.<\/p>\n

But just for giggles, let\u2019s look at the portions that Mr. Yon is citing to. I\u2019m keeping his bolded portions bolded, because he apparently thinks those portions buoy his position.<\/p>\n

Art.22. Aircraft exclusively employed for the removal of wounded and sick civilians, the infirm and maternity cases or for the transport of medical personnel and equipment, shall not be attacked, but shall be respected while flying at heights, times and on routes specifically agreed upon between all the Parties to the conflict concerned<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m not sure why he included this portion at all, since the legal onus in this part is not on the party flying, but the party on the ground. Perhaps it is to highlight that we are \u201cflying at heights, times and on routes\u201d NOT \u201cspecifically agreed upon between all the Parties to the conflict concerned.\u201d But of course this section refers to the obligations of those on the ground, not up in the air. It seems curious to include it in there, but since he felt it was important, I have left it in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The rest of the Article deals with the use of the insignia on MEDEVAC birds (Mr. Yon\u2019s actual bugaboo) and then this bolded portion:<\/p>\n

Unless agreed otherwise, flights over enemy or enemy occupied territory are prohibited.<\/strong>
\nSuch aircraft shall obey every summons to land.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Yon asserts without any discussion that:<\/p>\n

And so there it is. We are in violation of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan and are deceptively using the Red Cross. Is this prosecutable as a war crime? I do not know. Is it a violation of the Conventions? Yes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, actually, no it isn\u2019t. Mr. Yon\u2019s failure to cite a single legal source for this tortured logic is a necessary one; as no one I could find believes that there has been any violation of these codicils. Mr. Yon seems to believe that because the US has not pre-authorized flights with (someone) that we are in violation. But that isn\u2019t even what the passage says. In order to be in violation, one would have to a) be able to identify the specific leadership of the \u201cenemy\u201d to agree with, b) fail to do so, and c) would have to knowingly be violating their sovereignty (\u201cenemy territory\u201d) or have actual or constructive knowledge that they were flying over \u201cenemy occupied\u201d territory.<\/p>\n

One infirmity of Mr. Yon\u2019s position would also be the definition of \u201cEnemy.\u201d Since the combatants are a stateless society of terrorists, they (by definition) have no sovereign soil. Additionally, the term \u201cenemy occupied\u201d is referring to territory conquered by lawful combatants under the Geneva Convention, i.e., meeting the various requirements of Geneva not in evidence here, like the wearing of uniforms etc.<\/p>\n

Again, here you have one party that is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, and one party that is not. Contrary to Mr. Yon\u2019s interpretation, this doesn\u2019t limit the one party entirely in that regard, as is made clear by an earlier passages in the Convention. For instance, in Article 4 it states:<\/p>\n

Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.<\/p>\n

Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Technically then, any combatants in Afghanistan would be in a state of civil war, and even were one to assert that they are an \u201cenemy\u201d in the legal sense, it would fall to the problem that they wouldn\u2019t be protected persons.<\/p>\n

So not only is the \u201cenemy\u201d not legally entitled to \u201cenemy status\u201d under the GC by virtue of the conflict itself, but they also are not entitled to it because they are not in uniform etc. Further, in order for Mr. Yon\u2019s interpretation to be correct, one would have to have knowledge that an \u201cenemy\u201d was in a certain area (since it has none of it\u2019s own territory) which would of course still be under the legal authority of the host state, headed by Karzai in Kabul (atleast nominally) and not by some unnamed individual.<\/p>\n

My JAG guy just laughed and said he was too busy to thoroughly discuss how asinine this reading of the GC would have to be. He said even the National Lawyers Guild couldn\u2019t come up with anything this hare-brained.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BTW- In case it isn’t abundantly clear to anyone with an IQ north of a Campbell’s Soup Can, the intent of this passage of the Geneva Convention\u00a0is to keep enemy combatants from using MEDEVAC’s for insertions etc, not to limit their ability to extricate wounded personnel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Yon apparently doesn\u2019t understand the Geneva Conventions For some inexplicable reason, Michael Yon continues to … Michael Yon and the Geneva Conventions<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}