John Yoo Quotes
It is also worth asking whether the strict limitations of Geneva make sense in a war against terrorists.
Yoo, John. "Terrorists Have No Geneva Rights." The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 26 May 2004.
The German Green party was traditionally a left wing party, very concerned with civil rights and generally opposed to repressive use of police and military. However, faced with terrorism, the party would consider what under circumstances other than terror would have been unthinkable.
The Justice Department had sent a memorandum arguing that since Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups did not represent any state, were not signatories to the Geneva Conventions, and commonly committed atrocities in violation of the Geneva Conventions, then there was no obligation for America, or any signatory nation, to protect captives of these terrorist organizations. See {589866} for a contrary position that was taken.
Arab terrorists were raiding Israel. The United States, not yet having experienced September 11 was urging Israel not to retaliate and quietly allow diplomacy to operate.
Goldsmith headed the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel—the office that makes legal opinions to guide the Federal Government’s conduct. Goldstein had been asked to render an opinion as to whether terrorists captured in the Iraq War were protected by the Geneva Conventions. The Justice Department staff had concluded that all Iraq civilians were covered including terrorists and insurgents. He was called to meeting at the White House with the President’s and Vice President’s counsels. When Goldsmith revealed the Justice Department conclusion, Addington grew agitated and made this response. The quotation provides insight into the operations of the George W. Bush White House and its relationship with the rest of the government.
Ever since the end of WWII, no major war has been fought where there has been a classic victory where one nation is conquered by another and there is a surrender. Many of the wars have been fought against non-state actors or our war aim is a regime change or the establishment of a more friendly government. We have no desire to occupy the countries generally, and there is often no one “in charge” of the enemy who can even surrender. Bruce was referring to the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War. In each case, despite the lack of a surrender document, it can be said that America won both of these wars initially and then had great trouble with the occupation, the nation building, and keeping the peace. In Iraq and Afghanistan we suffered almost no casualties in the initial invasions. The occupation and “peace” is where we suffered almost all of our casualties.
Ironically, one of the major objections to drone strikes is that they have caused civilian casualties.
Several American soldiers have been court marshalled and found guilty of illegal torture for Warterboarding prisoners to induce them to provide information. Most experts agree that intelligence received this way is highly unreliable in that victims will say anything they think the torturer wants to hear to get the torture to stop.
The Iraqi Army when first confronted by the ISIS forces literally dropped their uniforms and weapons and ran to melt into the civilian population. Many of the best Iraqi officers had been purged by the Sunni-dominated government because they were Shiite. Others because they had no political connections. That left an officer corps of cronies and incompetents to lead troops that had little loyalty to the national government and had no ideas why they should risk their life. They were much better equipped than ISIS because of their American supplied weapons, but they allowed ISIS to capture much of these. Ya’Alon and many others were very skeptical of the same army to do better the second time around.
There was extensive hostility expressed by civilian populations in Pakistan and other countries where the United States made Drone strikes to take out terrorist leaders. However, there was much anti-American feeling in Pakistan before the Drone strikes.
John Choon Yoo is a Korean-born American legal scholar and former government official best known for authoring the Torture Memos, which provided a legal rationale for the torture of detainees during the War on Terror. Yoo is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
