Reply #30: Post hoc and irrelevant. [View All]

You need to show the insurgency--or at least this group--would have followed the Geneva Conventions in the absence of American violations. A track record to that effect is lacking, so the only ground for conjecture is, "Gee, I don't know them, they must be good guys." That gives more benefit of the doubt than I personally think is warranted.

But in any event, the insurgents aren't bound by the Geneva Conventions, so the only condemnation possible is the kind of moral calculus that formed the original basis of the Geneva Conventions. Part is post-Englightenment rules of warfare and what's just and moral in war, as viewed by the upper echelons of the military force, civilian politicians, and academics/jurists, and is as much cultural as political. Part is symmetricality. But an insurgency is by definition asymmetrical. And this insurgency is, by definition, non-Western, and may well not share all the appropriate cultural and Enlightenment norms; in fact, if they're with the Islamist portion of the insurgency, Enlightenment norms are specifically excluded except as they happen to coincide with previously established thinking.