>OTOH, we haven’t fought a “conventional” enemy in a “conventional” war since Korea in 1953. Ask any vet who served in Vietnam or Iraq, he or she will tell you that it’s practically impossible to positively identify the enemy when he looks the same, dresses the same, and acts the same as the civilian population.
This is why the politicians had to create the terms “enemy combatant” & “enemy non-combatant.” According to the Hague Conventions {the Hague is the one people usually cite as the Geneva convention regarding *lawful combatants* and POWs} such non-uniformed militaristic action makes them unlawful combatants and therefore NOT SUBJECT TO ANY PROTECTION FROM THE HAGUE.
IOW, it could very well be lawful for US troops to execute, “gangland style,” captured taliban/al’queda operatives w/o any trial.
Such a policy would garner much opposition from Americans who would call it murder, but it might not be.
Right. And as long as our people make doubly sure that their captives are actually Al Queda, Taliban, or any other breed of Islamic terrorist I have no objection if they kill them on the spot where they're captured.
When it comes down to kill or be killed, and it has in Afghanistan, I want our people to be the ones doing the killing, and also the ones coming home in one safe and sound piece. And furthermore, I couldn't possibly care any less what the pompous, self-righteous, America-hating globalists at the Hague OR the UN have to say on the matter.