Scratch my back and I won't flail yours with razor wire

Jason Kuznicki at Positive Liberty is up in arms about a report that the United States has detained (or "kidnapped" as he would have it) the wives of suspected insurgents to pressure their husbands to turn themselves in.

There's a lot to criticize here, beginning with the title of his first post, "My freedom does not require this protection." The grotesque stupidity of this should be pretty apparent - it's not his freedom anyone is concerned about, it's the bodily integrity of those Iraqis and coalition soldiers who haven't been shot or blown up yet. They might just have slightly different and more relevant views on the matter.

Where is the outrage at this? When FARC does this in Colombia, we are outraged. But when our own armed forces kidnaps women and children, we should rally round the flag, because it’s so good that we are willing to take extraordinary steps to protect our freedom.

When the FARC does this its victims are either entirely random or very tenuously related to the relevant decision maker to be influenced, the Columbian government. It's the difference between bombing legitimate targets that will necessarily involve some collateral civilian casualties and bombing a city at random in order to "break their will." The FARC also lacks a robust internal bureacracy through which complaints may be addressed.

They detail a practice that is forbidden by the Geneva conventions, to which we are signatories. This practice happened (and for all we know, is still happening) in a conflict zone, Iraq, where the conventions are unquestionably in effect.

I won't dispute the legality of doing this. But I'm damned pissed off at the ACLU comment in the news article that this is "not an acceptable tactic," an opinion that Kuznicki clearly shares.

"Kidnapping" may be illegal under the Geneva Conventions, but don't confuse that with morality. The Geneva Conventions are at their root simply an agreement between states not to do certain things to each other. Morality played some small role in deciding what things were off limits, no doubt, but efficacy is at least as important. Most important of all, however, was the morality of protecting one's own troops and not the enemy's.

Hollowpoint bullets aren't banned for military use because anyone was shocked at the idea of inflicting casualties on the other side - they just decided full metal jacket was good enough and was a decent compromise to avoid more grievous injuries to the signatories' own forces. Similarly, the acquiescence in recent years of many nations to a proposed landmine ban owes little to increased morals and nothing at all to more horrible landmines - those countries just don't think their evolving geopolitical situation will require them to use them anymore.

This bilateral "I won't use horrific/unpleasant methods against you if you don't to me and their lack will not overly cripple my war effort" agreement is the point, not the supposed beyond the pale nature of what's being given up. Can anyone honestly say that these rules are being respected by the insurgents/terrorists/whathaveyou in Iraq? Of course not. They don't play by the rules, and they as a moral matter have no claim on the protections provided by the rules.

Now it may be that some Geneva proscribed methods are always morally beyond the pale. But it takes a willful blindness to think that "kidnappings" (two of them! in the first year of the insurgency!) fall into that category. The sort of pathetic anklebiting mentality that takes this up as a cause celebre while shrugging over the noncombatants killed in bombings like the recent attempt to get Al-Zawahiri in Pakistan is frankly embarassing.

You're not pissed off about the "kidnappings" - you're pissed off about the war, full stop. Why you expect anyone who has accepted the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis and a couple of thousand Americans to care about trivialities like this is puzzling.

There is much more that could be potentially said: discussions of efficacy of such "kidnappings" and their potential unforseen consequences, the need to change outdated GC rules rather than ignore them, and whether a terrorist rebellion against a democratic government really deserves to fall under their protection at all. But if you'll pardon me, I need to go express my outrage at the guy I just saw jaywalking away from a car wreck. I think the other guy ran a red light and nailed him pretty hard, but that, of course, is no excuse at all.