A Note On 'Drone Strikes', Ladies And Gentlemen

[coalition_unwilling]

247. Good, thoughtful piece. It does seem to me that the U.S. government seeks to have its cake and

eat it too. To wit, Guantanamo and other detention facilities around the globe. If these non-state actors are belligerents and not common criminals, then surely their status comes under the purview of the various Geneva conventions, yes? Are you going to maintain that the U.S. government has at all times acted within the scope of Geneva?

Geneva specifically provides that alleged combatants shall have the right (not a qualified right but an absolute one) to a timely status hearing. That has not been done for many of the captives at Guantanamo, nor for those detained at many of the other detention facilities. Geneva also provides that corpses of combatants not be buried in unmarked graves. How do you square that with the ultimate dispositon of Osama bin Laden's corpse?

If the U.S. deviates from Geneva in its treatment of captured combatants but also denies said combatants due process rights as laid out in the U.S. Constitution, then we are in a never-never land of unchecked executive power and should proceed directly to restore Star Chamber.