Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 405635" data-attributes="member: 3146">Re: Re: Re: Cavalier Attitudes About Torture and MutilationWell, it appears that you're better informed than I am WRT the Geneva convention. My hat's off to you.Quite true--we in the modern West do tend to live off the interest of a previous civilization's moral capital which makes our instincts better than the formal beliefs we choose to defend.Well, acting against the soldiers of a corrupt empire is a different thing entirely, you're right. But I'm not certain that Roman law extended legal protection to bandits and required that a magistrate do the executing. Viking law and, I believe, many European legal traditions permitted anyone to kill an outlaw without threat of retribution. Now, outlaw had a specific meaning in Viking law but I think there might be a precedent for saying that by resorting to banditry, villains have declared themselves to be outlawed and thereby would be subject to death at the hands of ordinary citizens or residents without necessarily involving the authorities. Anyone know if there's any truth to that?True, however, the Geneva convention is also a legal document and in as much as it is exemplary of morality in times of war, the restrictions it places on the conduct of war also need to be taken into account.Well, even the spontaneous resistance must bear their arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war in order to merit the Geneva Convention's protections. I think there's still a good argument for summary execution and burial in a shallow grave if the villains hide among a civilian population, do not bear their arms openly, or do not respect the laws and customs of war.Part of the reason for the Geneva convention, if I understand correctly, was to induce signatories to behave in accordance with the customs of war so that they did not endanger civilian populations by hiding among them, making combatants indistinguishable from civilians, etc and thereby giving the opposing side a rational reason to abuse the civilian population.Consequently, if the Geneva convention is normative for moral conduct of warfare or combat, harsh measures are required against those who would violate its stipulations (by not bearing arms openly, not respecting laws and customs of war, etc) in order to provide incentive for doing so.The requirement for a tribunal to determine the prisoners' status as lawful or unlawful combatants is a safeguard to the process. It is, as I understand it, intended to ensure that lawful combatants are not treated as if they were unlawful combatants by a vengeful enemy. In this case, however, using the treaty as an example of a moral norm in the conduct of war, what is important is not whether or not there was actually a tribunal but whether or not the prisoners were actually unlawful combatants. Although this would clearly not be appropriate for actual signatories of the Geneva convention, I see no problem with PCs consituting a "competent tribunal" and deciding the status of their prisoners on the spot. That would seem in accordance with the moral norms of the Geneva convention if not the actual text of the treaty.</blockquote>

Verification