>>"Battlefield" has become a somewhat murky concept - especially in asymetric warfare. If I am a soldier in Iraq and I catch a guy planting an IED are we on a battlefield? Is he a "criminal" Does he have rights under US law?
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>If the US law somehow applies to a citizen of a foreign country, then that country is de facto a colony. The US then have all the obligations as an occupying force, as per Geneva convention - they need to provide a lot. Which they have failed for five years, and keep failing. So why not give up if not up to the task?
I think the *last* thing we want is a colony. I am perfectly happy our being an occupying force in a subjugated country with all the rights and privileges that has historically entailed - including shooting anyone who doesn't see it that way, stealing anything that isn't nailed down (hard to nail oil) and going back to the ships with the best looking women over our shoulders. This thing about winning wars and then taking responsibility for the vanquished is really giving war a bad name.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
