Oh, this morning's Globe is just a bottomless fount of amusing war-related developments. For starters, poor Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor is taking a beating, but not from whom you'd expect:
Minister under fire -- some of it friendly
... "I think [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper has clearly undermined him," Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said yesterday. "Whether or not it was intentional, only Mr. Harper would know." ...
First came Mr. Harper's climbdown Friday over a controversial ban on media coverage of repatriation ceremonies for Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
Mr. O'Connor was caught off guard not only by the reversal, sources say, but also by the manner in which Mr. Harper announced it -- saying he had left "fairly clear" instructions to leave decisions on media access up to soldiers' families.
For weeks, and with the Prime Minister's apparent backing, Mr. O'Connor had been saying the exact opposite.
Whoops. Poor Gord. Apparently, he hasn't quite figured out that, when it comes to party loyalty, Stephen Harper looks out for Stephen Harper. But the O'Connor embarrassment doesn't end there:
Most recently, in Question Period on Wednesday, Mr. O'Connor appeared to contradict a senior Canadian military commander's assertion that Taliban and al-Qaeda combatants are not accorded prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions.
"He's obviously not clear on what part of the Geneva Conventions applies to these prisoners that we take," Mr. Dosanjh said.
Mr. O'Connor's missteps are undermining his leadership of the Canadian military, which for the first time in decades is conducting combat operations and taking significant battlefield casualties, Mr. Dosanjh said.
Whether captives have full Geneva status "is not the first issue where he is not clear," Mr. Dosanjh said. "He has been less than clear on many things . . . on the lowering of the flag, on whether or not the families [of those killed in combat] were consulted with respect to the media ban."
Then there's O'Connor's just plain dumbass cluelessness on those quaint Geneva Conventions:
Canada's Defence Minister and the country's military high command are marching to different drummers on the rights of enemy detainees and the conflict needs to be resolved, Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said yesterday.
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor told the House of Commons on Wednesday that when the Canadian military "takes prisoners, it will always follow the rules of the Geneva Convention. There is no lower standard than that."
That appears to be at odds with a directive to Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan that there is a different standard: treating detainees humanely but denying them full "prisoner of war" status under the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
"I don't believe he understands what he is saying," Mr. Dosanjh said. "I find it incredible that Mr. O'Connor would say what he's said in relation to the Geneva Conventions.
And the cross-border parallels continue. The United States has a senile, bewildered civilian head of its armed forces ... I don't really have to finish that thought, do I?
2 comments:
Come now, CC. In your last blockquote you deride his ignorance of the Geneva Conventions while demonstrating your own. POW status is a specific instance within which the Geneva Conventions provide the following protections - I believe it's convention three. It requires particular criteria (insert right-wing talking points about uniforms etc. here, many of which do describe this distinction). The thing the right obfuscates is that civilians (originally intended to mean "all other persons") are entitled to a different category of protections - I believe it's convention four - which, f'rinstance, Guantanamo Bay violates.
So when he says that they're not entitled to POW status, he's asserting a quite reasonable position which is at least not a priori inconsistent with the Geneva Conventions. It's if he starts to make the distinction that they're also not civilians, and not entitled to convention four protections, that we shoot him. In cruel and unusual ways.
Y'know, your blog was much better when you did your own material, rather than constantly debunking and counterpointing the right. Maybe you should decide to set aside one day a week when you will not post responses of any kind - only original content and thoughtful (if cynical) analysis. It's all well and good to go to POGGE, but your signature cynicism goes well with real content, too, not just with wanker idiocy.
Harlequin:
I did, in fact, draw that distinction a day earlier here, when I specifically referred to another blogger and his reference to Article 4 of the Conventions.
And that distinction came up the day before as well, so I don't think anyone can legitimately accuse me of not appreciating the difference.
As for generating original material, it's a great idea. If only beating up on wankers wasn't such a full-time job ...
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