Michael Yon and the Geneva Conventions
Michael Yon apparently doesn’t understand the Geneva Conventions
For some inexplicable reason, Michael Yon continues to do his best Don Quixote imitation by suggesting (urging?) that soon a soldier will use the Birtherian logic of Oliy Taitz and crew and refuse to deploy to Afghanistan because of mandated violations of the Geneva Conventions:
It could happen tomorrow. A Soldier might say, “Sir, I want to go to Afghanistan, but I am afraid that by violating the Geneva Conventions, I could be accused of a war crime. I am caught in a bad place. I cannot violate the Geneva Conventions and so there is no need to send me to Afghanistan to fly. I must refuse that unlawful order. If ordered, I will go to Afghanistan but I cannot fly in violation.”
A Soldier is obligated to obey the law. A Soldier is obligated not to obey unlawful orders.
What would you do?
A fine rhetorical point Michael, I think what I would do is look up the specific Geneva Convention you claim we are in violation of, and then perhaps contact someone who knows the slightest thing about International Law. And, somewhat interestingly, that’s just what I did.
But just for giggles, let’s look at the portions that Mr. Yon is citing to. I’m keeping his bolded portions bolded, because he apparently thinks those portions buoy his position.
Art.22. Aircraft exclusively employed for the removal of wounded and sick civilians, the infirm and maternity cases or for the transport of medical personnel and equipment, shall not be attacked, but shall be respected while flying at heights, times and on routes specifically agreed upon between all the Parties to the conflict concerned.
I’m not sure why he included this portion at all, since the legal onus in this part is not on the party flying, but the party on the ground. Perhaps it is to highlight that we are “flying at heights, times and on routes” NOT “specifically agreed upon between all the Parties to the conflict concerned.” But of course this section refers to the obligations of those on the ground, not up in the air. It seems curious to include it in there, but since he felt it was important, I have left it in.
The rest of the Article deals with the use of the insignia on MEDEVAC birds (Mr. Yon’s actual bugaboo) and then this bolded portion:
Unless agreed otherwise, flights over enemy or enemy occupied territory are prohibited.
Such aircraft shall obey every summons to land.
Mr. Yon asserts without any discussion that:
And so there it is. We are in violation of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan and are deceptively using the Red Cross. Is this prosecutable as a war crime? I do not know. Is it a violation of the Conventions? Yes.
Well, actually, no it isn’t. Mr. Yon’s failure to cite a single legal source for this tortured logic is a necessary one; as no one I could find believes that there has been any violation of these codicils. Mr. Yon seems to believe that because the US has not pre-authorized flights with (someone) that we are in violation. But that isn’t even what the passage says. In order to be in violation, one would have to a) be able to identify the specific leadership of the “enemy” to agree with, b) fail to do so, and c) would have to knowingly be violating their sovereignty (“enemy territory”) or have actual or constructive knowledge that they were flying over “enemy occupied” territory.
One infirmity of Mr. Yon’s position would also be the definition of “Enemy.” Since the combatants are a stateless society of terrorists, they (by definition) have no sovereign soil. Additionally, the term “enemy occupied” is referring to territory conquered by lawful combatants under the Geneva Convention, i.e., meeting the various requirements of Geneva not in evidence here, like the wearing of uniforms etc.
Again, here you have one party that is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, and one party that is not. Contrary to Mr. Yon’s interpretation, this doesn’t limit the one party entirely in that regard, as is made clear by an earlier passages in the Convention. For instance, in Article 4 it states:
Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.
Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention are not protected by it. Nationals of a neutral State who find themselves in the territory of a belligerent State, and nationals of a co-belligerent State, shall not be regarded as protected persons while the State of which they are nationals has normal diplomatic representation in the State in whose hands they are.
Technically then, any combatants in Afghanistan would be in a state of civil war, and even were one to assert that they are an “enemy” in the legal sense, it would fall to the problem that they wouldn’t be protected persons.
So not only is the “enemy” not legally entitled to “enemy status” under the GC by virtue of the conflict itself, but they also are not entitled to it because they are not in uniform etc. Further, in order for Mr. Yon’s interpretation to be correct, one would have to have knowledge that an “enemy” was in a certain area (since it has none of it’s own territory) which would of course still be under the legal authority of the host state, headed by Karzai in Kabul (atleast nominally) and not by some unnamed individual.
My JAG guy just laughed and said he was too busy to thoroughly discuss how asinine this reading of the GC would have to be. He said even the National Lawyers Guild couldn’t come up with anything this hare-brained.
BTW- In case it isn’t abundantly clear to anyone with an IQ north of a Campbell’s Soup Can, the intent of this passage of the Geneva Convention is to keep enemy combatants from using MEDEVAC’s for insertions etc, not to limit their ability to extricate wounded personnel.
Category: Politics
What a maroon!
I had a debate just like this in class at college over water boarding it was me vs multiple others and yet they failed to do their research citing phrases and not sections of the GC. They made an emotional appeal that it was torture when the debate was over the legality of water boarding (morality wasn’t even up for debate). I hammered them on their lack of logic, facts, and general debate etiquette but in the end it was up to the class to decide who won and they picked the other side. Very frustrating, but it taught me a very important life lesson too.
Well if we were at war with “normal” folks, (like another country) this might come into play. However, the “insurgents” are more like criminals who have no organized leader that we can talk to…they hide and fight by stabbing in the back.
Even if we did give them the flight routes, they’d just use the info to shoot down our dust offs.
when all arguments and ad hominems fail, pull out the GC. and i loved how you connected orly taitz and yonbo. 😀
Isn’t there also a part in the GC that says if two parties are engaged in conflict and one of those parties has not recognized the GC the party that has is still bound to it, unless the party that hasn’t recognized it violates some facet of the GC?
I know that’s pretty convoluted but basically the insurgents have violated the GC many times so if I remember/understand correctly doesn’t that absolve us of our commitment? Not saying we should fire bomb towns or anything like that but Michael Yon’s complaint seems ridiculous under those circumstances.
Yon apparently forgot that the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that Common Article 3 applies to this war.
Common Article 3 is unlike the others in that it’s self-contained. For it to apply means that the rest of it does not.
That said, I do agree with him that we should remove those red cross emblems from our aircraft. None of our enemies respect them, and none of America’s critics will ask them to.
Randy, I also would be fine with removing the crosses, but his allegation of us violating the GC is (IMHO) essentially giving sucor to those who think the US violates international law. As Yon is expanding the scope of his pissing contest with the Army, he’s making the rest of us look like assholes.
Anonymous was me. Computer acting funky today.
Agree with you on that, TSO.
It’s worse, considering that our enemies and their friends on the left have been whining about (and been wrong about) the GCs since almost the beginning.
It’s one thing for Yon to be naive about the specifics of the law.
He really ought to know better about who this helps.
I would like to throw out that those are guidelines so that CASEVAC birds ARE NOT SHOT DOWN. Now you have to realize that the Geneva Conventions are GUIDE LINES
You can’t really have any “laws” in war. There is so much confusion going on that yes Civilians will die.
the Geneva Conventions are to prevent the woeful, and even gleeful disregard of what most of humanity would call “good”. To intentionally target civillians, civillian structures, and medical facilities. To try to inspire terror with tactics that leave no room for mercy. Now who does that sound like?
HOW ABOUT EVERY ENEMY WE’VE FOUGHT SINCE 1941?
Germans: pretty infamous for that
Japanese: Less know, but if anything worse (actually used biological warfare)
N. Koreans/Chinese: had no problem with killing civilians.
Vietnam: I suppose in all the hubub over My Lai, people forgot to report how the Tet offensive also saw a massive campaign against civilians, and actually the VC were worse than anything the US did.
Soviet Union: Evil Empire is not even close.
Iraq: Chemical Weapons are just the tip of the ice burg.
Afghanistan: Haven’t we documented enough how bad the Taliban was?
Various Islamist terror factions: I suppose blowing up market places and throwing acid on school girls is not a good thing.
Actually when you think about it America seems to be the only ones that actually give more than lip service to the concept, or the execution. We should not give this idea up, as Michael Yon so desires. Why? Because it proves we’re better than they are. Despite the calls of “war Crimes” the left are always screaming about, in truth our conduct has been very close to exemplary. It seems a shame that no one wants to bring al-Zwaheri on War Crimes, or even suggested that Alwaki might have been guilty of the same.
I’m pretty sure our medevac pilots would resign en masse. if the Army told them to land every time a Taliban soldier signaled for them to do so. I’m also pretty sure that Yon would do his best to convince a pilot to do otherwise if he found himself on one of those flights.
Seems to me I recall being taught that the Geneva Conventions very specifically apply to wars between countries. Since we are technically not at war with Afghanistan or Pakistan, and the Taliban are not a soveriegn country….. GC compliance becomes voluntary on our part? Let’s face it – our troops bend over backwards to comply with asinine ROE’s promulgated by the Washington loonies in ways which be thought unthinkable by any of our enemies.
I’m going a little off topic here. I just drove into Kuwait from Iraq yesterday. I was eating a meal in the DFAC on Camp Virginia when I noticed a plug for the Army-Navy game on CBS December 10, 2011. That’s all fine and dandy but the ass hats at CBS chose a damn Soulja Boy song for the montage commercial. Did I miss something? Is he back in everyone’s good graces now?
Oily Taitz… LMAO… 😛
@#10 “You can’t really have any “laws” in war. Really? That is a new one for me.
Every now and again, some numbskull decides that he’ll disobey his orders to deploy in the theory that the war is illegal. He fantasizes that, at his court-martial, the court will have to decide the legality of the war to decide whether he’s guilty or not – so that it’ll be a fantastic antiwar publicity stunt.
Anyone who thinks that needs to study the case of United States v. Huet-Vaughn. Bottom line, according to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces:
“[t]he duty to disobey an unlawful order applies only to a positive act that constitutes a crime that is so manifestly beyond the legal power or discretion of the commander as to admit of norational doubt of their unlawfulness.”
So if your PL orders you to torture prisoners, you don’t get to do it, and hide behind “we were just following orders.” But if you’re ordered to deploy, you sure as hell don’t get the option based on your own reading of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Charter, or any other such thing.
I hope no one is foolish enough to take the advice this man is offering. If you do, your court-martial will NOT decide the legality of the war, or even listen to your arguments on the subject.
FMY.
Yawn er Yon…..being a regular bozo isn’t an easy task for Yon.
I know that Yon is not well liked by most readers of this blog, but some of his points are valid. The policies that are being pushed down to the troops on the frontlines are based upon twisted understandings of the GC. What the GC “says” is more a telephone game than actual first person knowledge. While I don’t like the messenger, I also do not like the haphazard application of “what the GC says” to justify each crazy good-idea fairy that comes along…..and it has gotten way beyond that within the last few months.
He errors when he says that the RED CROSS is being deceptively used. It is not deception, but it is a violation of the GC for non-combatants, designated as such by the GC, to act contrary to to the guidelines for non-combatants. Another example of this would be the corpsmen, medics, and doctors who do not wear the red cross arm brassard and designator on their kevlars.
The problem is that Afghanistan is not a war. We are in Afghanistan at the request of the Government Of the Islamic Repulic of Afghanistan and our operations are guided by their policies and laws.
Another sticky point: If noncombatants are authorized to use small arms, what is their actual limitation when it is applied to the U.S. arsenal. Some say that 9mm pistols, 5.56mm rifles, and shotguns are the limit. Others say that small arms is a way of defining all calibers .50 and smaller, including shotguns. Big difference, yet the generals cannot agree.
Additional point: If a corpsman is operating with Recon, is he a noncombatant? Where is the provision within the GC that authorizes him to nullify his medical/noncombatant status?
If we aren’t going to fully abide by the GC, then we either need to modify it or drop it. Half-measures just cause problems and allow people like Yon to twist what is happening.
Yawn is merely beating this very dead horse because of his removal from his embed after his pissing match with MSG Grisham found him on the losing end. He attempted to get a Congressional Investigation to bring down the MSG and again failed. He claimed a CPT assaulted him in his tent at a 4-4 Cav base when in fact the good CPT came in and chewed his ass about his half baked comments in regards to an E-7 SFC that was in the CPT’s Civil Affairs unit as well as at the same base. When all was said and done Yawn got the boot from the Command in Afghanistan and he ran off to Thailand to spend some quality time with his houseboy and continue whining about this ignorant idea of removing the Red Crosses on our MEDEVAC helo’s
Yawn has gone so far as to compare the MEDEVAC helo’s of the US Army to the CSAR Pedros of the USAF and how the Pedros can be armed and have no Red Crosses on them. Pedros are NOT MEDEVACs they are Combat Search and Rescue and thus are not in the same class as MEDEVACs but Yawn ignores this tidbit of info while he refills the Kool Aid for his flock of drones. One last tidbit and that is Yawn has stepped on his wicky one too many times and he has probably seen his last embed with ANY US Military unit.
@20: and yet, he is somehow couched as an “expert” by unknowing baboons and policy makers. $5 says somehow, he worms his way into another unit, and “tells it like it is” in such a way that royally screws all of us.
One thing is certain: yawn has the smartest brain between his own ears.
Outside of that, he is a strong competitor to the rocks and camel dung he likes to take pictures of.
A few years ago, I thought that MY was a hero for going over there on essentially his own dime, but I’ve seen him get nuttier and nuttier as time has gone on. This last post from him is just over the top crazy. He might as well hang it up and call it a career. His objectivity is long gone…
@20 Probably the exact reason he keeps on and on with this. When you are funding your own trip to theater and reporting on the US military, contributors will hit that Paypal link to help you out. When you are sitting in Thailand, or Laos, reporting on Afghanistan…well, those donations kinda dry up. So, what you do is create a controversy and ride that horse. Looks like we are getting a new angle to the MEDEVAC issue…which is the entirety of US compliance with the Geneva conventions. What I have read so far makes him look exactly like a carrer E-4 craphouse lawyer…but I digress.
Another curveball- What would he say about a C model gunship medevac-ing wounded? Drop the guns and rocket pods and slap on a red cross?
When that came to my inbox I just had to laugh…more proof that he is a self-involved, narcissistic POS. Did you see how he opened a “private” thread to discuss his “Red Air” column? Can’t take the heat and tell the truth, why, just block the so-called haters…I despise MY, Really and truly.
FMY…Having got that out of the way, how come you are all so meeeeeeeeeeeeeean to YonClown? Don’t you KNOW he has seen more combat than 90+% of all our troops? Sheeeeeesh! And how come you are maligning his time in Thailand? I mean, he HAS to have time with his Ladyboys (eerrrrrrrrrr I mean, to study those pesky Geneva Conventions!) He is so busy ‘supporting’ our troops that he totally missed a breaking story of not one but TWO Canadian Generals being courtmartialled for ND. How WILL Canada defend itself against such incompetence without YonClown rushing to the defence? He DID promise to defend Canada when the US invaded them. STOP being so mean to him. He has so many *exclusive* stories to tell, that only HE is qualified to tell…(because his koolaid drinkers are convinced he is still in AFG, doncha know!)and you are just beating up on him…the only truth-teller out there….
(And for those of you who don’t know: yes, that was ALL sarcasm!)
Yon has been on a JAG about arming MEDEVAC, a concept about which even the preponderance of MEDEVAC is not enthused. He seems to lack the fundamental understanding that hanging all the guns and rockets in the world on a helicopter might, and I say MIGHT, only protect it until the enemy changes his TTPs. Extortion 17 and Super Six 4 were both armed platforms and they both got wacked with simple RPGs with great loss of life.
Yon seems not to appreciate the fact that in density altitude limited situations, adding another crewmember (gunner), ammunition and weapons makes performance an even bigger issue, not to mention the fact that you lose even more interior space for casualties and care.
Yon consistently wanders off into the operationally incomprehensible being someone who has a little bit of knowledge, a hesitation to actually find all three sides of the story, an inordinate passion for crusades and a hint of issue with leadership. What he consistently fails to demonstrate is a respect for the constraints on, and acumen of, leadership.
There are reasons why the Army MEDEVAC proponency does not want to arm its helicopters. The proponency is made up of MSC MEDEVAC pilots who have the most to lose by poor operational choices with regard to the aircraft they fly. Sadly Yons myopia and inability to balance passion with objective reality keeps him from seeing this. Even more disheartening is that he has the ear of policy makers who share the same handicaps.
Arming MEDIVACs really won’t do anything. And putting crosses on Air Ambulances is actually a good thing. Why? because that is what the Western World respects. You can NOT put wolves into sheep’s clothing. Why? one word: Lusitania
We play by the rules. They don’t. Its just the way it is.
But just for giggles, let’s look at the portions that Mr. Yon is citing to.
The Convention cited refers to the protection of civilians and, to my non-lawyer reading of it, applies to flights with only civilian passengers.
Doesn’t appear to me that it says what he thinks it says.
@#29 “Arming MEDIVACS (sic.) really won’t do anything.” Really?
Arming MEDEVACS is an old argument. This is akin to the medic in WWII carrying a pistol for self-defense. After the SS started shooting at our medics and the Japs used the red cross as a target as well, we changed our tactics. Some started carrying M-1 carbines and other weapons… not only for self-defense, but for self preservation.
As for a “Dustoff’s” M-240 returning fire in a hot LZ during a casevac pickup… I would argue that it would do something.
Three things TSO has missed in his interpretation, or should I say Bastardization or maybe blood libel of mr yon and his position:
1) Mr yon took a very important picture that is responsible for the success of the surge in Iraq and the downfall of Michael Moore
2) Tso has missed the point entirely that mr yon has made about the slow speed of nine line recovery. Birds are slow and cannot defend themselves. His plan of stabilizing patients on the ground and then firing
them into fobs via large cannons toward giant liquid foam pools or circus netting makes the most sense and is practical if implemented accordingly
3) TSo has zero experience with photography or top gun aviator sunglasses, unlike mr yon
4) and mr yon brings up a slew of points tso has ignored in this article (conveniently)
a) we should abandon the Geneva convention or follow it, perhaps adopting his Bangkok Assembly plan, would be a start
B) we can’t win in Afghanistan so long as Canadiens are allowed access to females and satellite hockey
C) uncle jimbo has never been able to prove that he is indeed an uncle
D) Brazilian waxes should be mandatory for every nato soldier on r and r (In Thailand these kids use this coconut base and a green tea rub afterwards that will cross your eyes)
E) perhaps, just maybe, Nicole brown killed oj Simpson
Ask the questions, tso.
Then Answer the questions asked
And then question the answered questions that were asked after you have had that Brazilian wax, because i am telling you it is friggin amazing
I posted a big F you on his blog, but does anyone else remember in his book (before he went off the deep end), that he BRAGGED about picking up a weapon and firing a few shots during a firefight? I’m sure he wasn’t currently enlisted, wearing a uniform, properly declared, etc. Therefore HE violated Geneva Conventions. Was an unlawful combattant, etc. Mr. Yon–next flight, skip Thailand and have yourself tried at the Hague if you’re so moral and omnicient of the Geneva Conventions. Or–eat a steaming bag of dicks.