Olly, you’re right, Bush is a very dangerous president
why aren’t they the recognised government of the country? the americans funded them so why shouldn’t the west recognise them. the fact remains they were defending their country, terrorists may have been there but if the americans call people who habour terrorists terrorists themselves then to avoid hipocracy they will have to bomb their own cities, this is just another case of americans doing whatever they want. as per usual the super power ignore human rights and international law at their whim but fail to see in this case it WILL create more suicide bombers.
why are they war criminals? firstly the taliban
taliban: yes they killed their own people for ‘crimes’. they did not massacre people any more than americans have massacred people in their own prisons as the taliban too had their own legal system (their religious scriptures). the americans kill civilians every time they go into action but there has yet to be an american tried for war crimes - eg. in the pacific theater in WW2 it was army policy to kill japanese solider rather than take them prisoner as they may have concealed explosives. the taliban were defending their own country from external forces and from internal militants (you could even clas the northern alliance as terrorists as their track record is a few western embassy bombings and a one way trip to new york short of al qe’ad’s (just look at what happened the last time they re-took kabul, hundereds if not thousands of civilians were murdered).
al qe’ad: for the supossed members they first have to be proved to be beyound resonable doubt to be members of al qe’ad (confessions just after battle or after being subjected to stress positions/hooding for 24 hours do NOT count as proving membership beyoung resonable doubt). you also have to prove they are willing members and not press ganged into it. you have to prove they knew the full extent of al qe’ad’s operations. you have to prove with ACTUAL evidence all, and more, of those things.
above all - YOU HAVE TO TREAT THEM AS THE LAW PRESCRIBES (WHICH THEY ARE NOT) OR MORE AMERICANS WILL DIE, THERE WILL BE NO AMERICANS RETURNED AFTER CAPTURE, THEY WILL DIE HORRIFIC DEATHS AFTER TORTURE.
that is not in dispute, if al qe’ad or the taliban capture americans or coalition forces for that matter, they will die horribly. and it will be the americans who iniated in the first place as they broke th geneva convention first. in this instance the americans are clearly in the wrong, are lying hippocrits who obviously do not value the lives of their service men or they would attempt to give them some form of chance if they were captured.
as far as i see it, this consitutes the US digging themselves deeper and deeper. no matter what arguemtns they give to try and justify what they are doing, if they decide that they are above and beyond the laws that everyone else is bound by, then they are digging the ground from underneath their feet. this seems to be a pretty common state of affairs with the US in recent years, and it cant go on forever… they make themselves even more enemies each time they do something like this.
someday (presuming they dont have an imbecile like bush in power at the time) they’ll realise that they’ve made half the world hate them… and with everyone polarised into either allies or enemies of the US, who knows what’ll happen next.