This is from Mike Walker, USMC (retired)...
Supreme Injustice
On 11 September 2001, while the attacks on the United Stated were taking place, a Kuwaiti Islamic extremist was in Afghanistan working closely with the repressive and brutal Taliban regime. The Taliban were actively supporting Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda. This Kuwaiti fellow had received formal military training in his homeland before entering Afghanistan. He was, in fact, regarded a radical and considered a criminal deserter by the Kuwaiti government.
Several weeks later the United States launched a military operation against al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan. The United States and its Coalition allies entered the war as adherents of the Geneva Conventions. Our enemies saw this as a weakness to exploit. Al Qaeda exceeded beyond their wildest dreams.
The Geneva Conventions began as an attempt to create a legal framework for the treatment of wounded soldiers on the battlefield and was later expanded to deal with prisoners of war. It gave birth to the International Red Cross.
In general terms, the Geneva Conventions define combatants as members of the armed forces or militias or individuals wearing a distinctive uniform and carrying open (vice concealed) arms/weapons/explosives. These individuals must also obey the orders and customs of war as defined by the Geneva protocols.
To be sadly truthful, the courts in the United States only hold US and Coalition forces to these standards. The enemy gets a de facto free pass against any and all transgressions within the framework of the Geneva Conventions. If they are prosecuted at al it is only through the American criminal justice system. Shame on them.
The courts have chosen the corrosive route of “selective prosecution” and the results are appropriately destructive not only to the ideals of justice and our American judicial system but to the safety and wellbeing of our citizens and the potential victims throughout the world.
The courts have, for whatever reason, failed in their responsibility to impartially enforce these standards as set by the international protocols that the United Stated has apparently “superficially” agreed to uphold. Shame on us and let us now reap the whirlwind.
How dare I write such a rant? Let the facts speak for themselves as we return to our well-armed Kuwaiti combatant.
By no later than late 2001, our Kuwait extremist joined the ranks of al Qaeda/Taliban (the two were one-in-the-same by this time in Afghanistan) serving as what is rationally accepted as a “combatant.” I use the word “rationally” in that he was a member of an organized combat unit, armed (AK-47 rifle, ammunition, grenades, etc), and participated in combat operations.
He fought with the Taliban/al Qaeda throughout the fall and into the winter of 2001-2002 and then into the spring of 2002; eight months of sustained armed combat operations against US/Coalition/Allied Afghan forces.
The United States mistakenly (or by foolishly naive idealism: hint Senators Obama & McCain) accepted the official assurance of the Pakistani Government that its military had secured the Afghan border at Tora Bora and Usama bin Laden and his minions would not be able to retreat into Pakistan or use Pakistan as a safe haven/military sanctuary.
Eventually, optimism and green inexperience gave way to hardened reality and Allied Forces in Afghanistan moved to close the Tora Bora escape valve without Pakistani “help.” It was at this point in 2002 that our Kuwaiti cum al Qaeda “soldier” was captured as he attempted to flee Afghanistan in order to join his al Qaeda comrades in their Pakistani sanctuary.
Now, as I wrote above, in any other war, our Kuwaiti fellow would be considered a prisoner of war and locked up for the duration. No. No. No.
We now have to consider the brutal and chaotic battlefield as a “crime scene.” Never mind that the witnesses are killed or that the evidence is destroyed in the fighting. Never mind the fact that the participants are a wee bit more focused on survival than police work that they are not trained for, nor ever envisioned to perform under the Geneva Conventions.
No matter that most human norms are abandoned or pushed aside as trivialities in combat. No, in America, we will subvert the truth. We will consciously ignore reality. We will deliberately suspend belief in what we know. Instead will superimpose an unrealistic and unattainable norm.
We will create burdens and hurdles and that are impossible to attain. Then we will condemn and penalize the participants for not making the impossible possible. We set them up for failure and then revel in it. The end result is a sad and gross injustice in its most arrogant and ignorant form established by those posing as the guardians of justice. It is, plain and simply, a travesty.
Why this outrage? Because our al Qaeda combatant was shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where he should have remained. Instead, on 3 November 2005, by the poisoned fruits of our own legal system, we released him to the selfsame Kuwaiti authorities that had allowed him to desert their armed forces and join the Taliban/al Qaeda so many years before.
As was completely predictable, he again slipped out of Kuwait and rejoined his al Qaeda comrades. This was exactly what he was attempting to do back in 2002 when he was captured. He never deviated from his armed struggle, poetic verses notwithstanding. Al Qaeda subsequently assigned him to Iraq where he personally murdered six (6) Iraqi policemen in Mosul, Iraq, on 26 April 2008 in a “martyr” operation.
I suppose some will take cold comfort in the fact that it was six Iraqi policeman and not six American soldiers who were murdered and that this fiend, Abdullah Saleh Ali al Ajmi, is now stone-cold dead. I cannot. I served in combat in Iraq. I came to deeply respect and admire the Iraqi people. I came to deeply respect and admire the Iraqi soldiers and policemen who served with us.
I cannot express my sorrow for the families of the dead Iraqi police officers or my outrage at the role my country’s courts recklessly played in their murder.
Semper Fi,
Mike
