{"id":6855,"date":"2017-07-02T06:47:07","date_gmt":"2017-07-02T12:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6855"},"modified":"2017-07-01T21:32:56","modified_gmt":"2017-07-02T03:32:56","slug":"not-war-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/07\/not-war-crime.html","title":{"rendered":"(Not) a war crime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"By<\/p>\n

As reported at PJ Media<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Defense Secretary James Mattis said the U.S. is going to focus on killing remaining foreign fighters in the Islamic State. \u201cBecause the foreign fighters are the strategic threat should they return home to Tunis, to Kuala Lumpur, to Paris, to Detroit, wherever. Those foreign fighters are a threat,\u201d he said. \u201cSo by taking the time to deconflict, to surround and then attack, we carry out the annihilation campaign so we don\u2019t simply transplant this problem from one location to another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll leave that to the generals who know how to do those kind of things. We don\u2019t direct that from here,\u201d he added. \u201cThey know our intent is the foreign fighters do not get out, I leave it to their skill, their cunning, to carry that out.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

An \u201cannihilation campaign\u201d? \u00a0That sounds war crime-like. \u00a0And presumably it would be, if the practice was to kill ISIS fighters who were attempting to surrender. \u00a0I would imagine that the U.S. follows all appropriate protocol in that respect, but that the assumption is that ISIS fighters are not surrendering so that it\u2019s a moot point; the objective seems to be to ensure that they have no ability to just \u201cdisappear\u201d but are forced into these two choices. \u00a0Even according to an\u00a0article about captured ISIS fighters<\/a>, they don\u2019t wind up in Iraqi government hands because they have surrendered, but because they have tried to hide among the civilian population yet have been identified.<\/p>\n

But this does raise the question: \u00a0if those fighters were indeed to surrender, what would be, or what should be, their fate? \u00a0Just as with the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, there is no ending point to this ongoing war, no point at which these men can be believed to be no longer likely to \u201creturn to the battlefield\u201d \u2014 when the \u201cbattlefield\u201d is not just a literal battlefield on which ISIS attempts to gain ground, but the entirety of Syria and Iraq and, if they are able to gain access, Europe as well.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0By Yo (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As reported at PJ Media: Defense Secretary James Mattis said the U.S. is going to focus on killing remaining foreign fighters in the Islamic State. \u201cBecause the foreign fighters are the strategic threat should they return home to Tunis, to Kuala Lumpur, to Paris, to Detroit, wherever. Those foreign fighters are a threat,\u201d he said. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":1397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,673,672],"class_list":["post-6855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-isis","tag-pows","tag-war-crimes"],"yoast_head":"\n(Not) a war crime<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As reported at PJ Media: Defense Secretary James Mattis said the U.S. is going to focus on killing remaining foreign fighters in the Islamic State.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/07\/not-war-crime.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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