Eh. When you talk about the GC, you’re really talking about two different things–the Conventions as a legally binding agreement, and the Conventions as a baseline understanding of how POWs/detainees/prisoners/etc should be treated. It’s one thing to say that the Geneva Conventions, as a technical matter, don’t apply to captured AQ or Iraqi insurgents. It’s another thing entirely to say that, because of this, we can uniformly ignore the standards of treatment prescribed by the Conventions. And that’s my problem with this line of argument–it tries to assert the latter statement via the former. I agree that the Conventions probably don’t apply to AQ–but I think you have to make an affirmative case for why captured AQ don’t deserve similar protections as a matter of course, rather than just argue that the Conventions don’t apply and therefore we can do whatever we want to them.

Anyway, hasn’t Obama declared that all captured combatants will be extended GC protections in any case?

Prisoners of signatories who were captured in uniform get rights under the Geneva Convention. The convention explicitly excludes from protection non-uniformed combatants as well as prisoners from non-signatories. During World War II, most of the countries involved signed and honored the Geneva Convention as a means of ensuring good treatment for any of their own soldiers held by the enemy. If countries were required to treat nicely the soldiers of signatories as well as non-signatories, few countries would have signed or honored the Convention, since there would be no benefit to doing so.

Some people seem to think that in a time of war, the participants should be expected to honor agreements which would work to their disadvantage. Such a notion is foolish. Participants seeking to win a war will undertake whatever action they believe will most effectively achieve that aim. They will not undertake actions detrimental to that aim, agreements or no.

The question of how ‘enemy combatants’ should be handled should be based upon what course of action will best serve the war effort. Rounding up people who are near an area that fighting took place and holding them perpetually without endeavoring to determine their role in that fighting is not apt to help the war effort, and may alienate enough potential allies as to harm the war effort. Thus, the war effort would probably be best served by a different policy. Unless the captured prisoners are from Geneva Convention signatories, however, the Geneva Convention has nothing to do with the issue.

Closing Guantanamo had some symbolic value

Radley, why are you using past tense?

Quickly! Let us replace this small group of individuals with ultimate and absolute authority with another small group of individuals with ultimate and absolute authority! That will surely solve all our problems. Or wait, if we’re true revolutionaries, let us also replace the system which grants ultimate and absolute authority with another system which grants ultimate and absolute authority! That would be almost unthinkable, but would, without a doubt, solve all our problems.

Instead of dealing honestly with the issue, people used this to politicize the entire process declaring bush “torturer-in-chief”. Now that the shoe is on the other foot I’m wondering when those cool posters of Obama as a demon sucking the blood out of muslims are going to become available.