The laws of war

The authors of the memo on the rights of captured terrorists set the record straight on the application of the Geneva Convention to illegal combatants. The press has largely parroted the mischaracterizations and alarmism of the Democrats on this issue.

They make the point powerfully that dealing with international terrorists is not a part of the Geneva Convention, which deals with wars between nations:

The Geneva Convention provisions make sense when war involves nation-states � if, say, hostilities broke out between India and Pakistan, or China and Taiwan. But to pretend that the Geneva Convention applies to Al Qaeda, a non-state actor that targets civilians and disregards other laws of war, denies the reality of dramatic changes in the international system.

The incoherence of the left since 9/11 is nowhere as striking as it is on the issue of treatment of captured terrorists.