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- Thread starter fghtpilot
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There are two incidents that have left a very sour taste in my mouth. One was the prisoner abuse, second was parading Saddam on tv.
One aspect that we need to focus on as aircrew, is how nations can use labels to ignore the Geneva convention. By calling our captured pilots "air pirates" the North Vietnamese could claim that the convention did not apply so they could do anything to them. In the present day, to us it's clear that these men are terrorists, but you can bet that if another nation were to capture our people they would fling the scandal and their status in our faces.
Showing our POW's on t.v was something we roundly condemned Saddam Hussein for, and yet we did the same thing for expediency, i.e to prove that we actually had him. In time of war can we really expect our enemies not to do the same with our pilots?
Torture may work, but it's counter productive. I remember reading that German soldiers would do anything to get to our lines vice the Russians, because they knew that we would treat them well. It meant that they didn't always try to fight us to the last man, which definitely saved American lives.
However I do agree with JBoomer that it has been overblown. Do you know that Newsweek did not carry the Nick Berg beheading. There were theories that they thought it would help Pres Bush. And yet for weeks it seemed that the only News was Abu Ghraib. I remember because right after that I stopped my subscription to them. I don't mind news with a liberal bias, but at least give me the news.
One aspect that we need to focus on as aircrew, is how nations can use labels to ignore the Geneva convention. By calling our captured pilots "air pirates" the North Vietnamese could claim that the convention did not apply so they could do anything to them. In the present day, to us it's clear that these men are terrorists, but you can bet that if another nation were to capture our people they would fling the scandal and their status in our faces.
Showing our POW's on t.v was something we roundly condemned Saddam Hussein for, and yet we did the same thing for expediency, i.e to prove that we actually had him. In time of war can we really expect our enemies not to do the same with our pilots?
Torture may work, but it's counter productive. I remember reading that German soldiers would do anything to get to our lines vice the Russians, because they knew that we would treat them well. It meant that they didn't always try to fight us to the last man, which definitely saved American lives.
However I do agree with JBoomer that it has been overblown. Do you know that Newsweek did not carry the Nick Berg beheading. There were theories that they thought it would help Pres Bush. And yet for weeks it seemed that the only News was Abu Ghraib. I remember because right after that I stopped my subscription to them. I don't mind news with a liberal bias, but at least give me the news.
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