When semantics attack
January 26, 2008 10:16 am Canadian PoliticsLake Superior State University maintains a registry of what they call “Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. ” I have a distinctly Canadian contribution for the next round of updates: “detainees”.
This word has caused a cycle of media feeding frenzies over the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. And how appropriate that the Canadian mainstream media embrace a term that is genuinely Orwellian. For me, “detainees” evokes images of helpless victims of ruthless governments of the sort one would see in a Costa Gravas political thriller. It would never occur to me to associate the term with ragtag fanatical pillagers, bombers and extortionists. Even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary supports the former conclusion.
The Taliban irregulars captured in battle by Canadian troops are not being “detained” for political reasons. These are individuals who have used deadly force against our soldiers and innocent civilians, period. That they have embraced the authority of medievally-minded tyrants is secondary to the fact that they meet the legal definition of pirates:
Until 1856, international law recognized only two legal entities: people and states. People were subject to the laws of their own governments; states were subject to the laws made amongst themselves. The Declaration of Paris created a third entity: people who lacked both the individual rights and protections of law for citizens and the legitimacy and sovereignty of states. This understanding of pirates as a legally distinct category of international criminals persists to the present day, and was echoed in the 1958 and 1982 U.N. Conventions on the Law of the Sea. The latter defines the crime of piracy as “any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends.” This definition of piracy as private war for private ends may hold the crux of a new legal definition of international terrorists.
The rights of captured Taliban irregulars would in a strict sense amount to roughly zero. But sensible military commanders recognize the wisdom in the words of Prince Faisal in “Lawrence of Arabia”:
With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.
Letting your enemy know that he may be treated with some modicum of dignity in captivity makes it far more likely that waverers will surrender rather than fight to the death. The goal is to save Canadian lives, and not to attribute rights to lawless brigands.
When Canadian society is allowing fundamental rights like freedom of speech to be snatched away quietly by witless agents of the state, we need not waste our time creating an artificial set of rights for irregular criminals. Start by letting LSSU have its way with the word “detainees” in their next list: we have pirates to capture.
Update: The Torch outlines just how far the current government has to go in mastering honest communications about the Afghanistan mission
Glendronach
Greg :
Date: January 27, 2008 @ 6:22 am
Letting your enemy know that he may be treated with some modicum of dignity in captivity makes it far more likely that waverers will surrender rather than fight to the death.
It may also mean that the enemy might, just might, show the same mercy should any of our soldiers be captured.
MarkCh :
Date: January 27, 2008 @ 7:56 pm
It may also mean that the enemy might, just might, show the same mercy should any of our soldiers be captured.
Puh-leese. That’s the most implausible thing I have heard all day. Hello….these guys set off bombs in classrooms full of young girls.
Graham Johnson :
Date: January 28, 2008 @ 1:21 am
Ah! Semntivs. But how is a “Taliban Irregular” identified and distnguished from a peasant farmer? People who are not indigenous to what we know as Afghanistan have been running across cultivated acreage for aboutb three centuries. It has not been accepted with equanimity s the British, the Russians, the British again, the Soviets and now an array of Europeans and Americans are once again attempting to impose order … to the dismay of probably most Afghanis who are very poor, have a grea deal less that those who are running over their lands and who resist in general (not always) with “weapons of the weak”. The great difficulty that professional soldiers from the NATO countries has is how to distinguish the “Taliban irregulars” from everybody else. What this means is that verybody dressed in local clothing is at risk of injury, death or capture. And when Canadians hold (even detain) someone who is indistguishable from other Afghanis, that person may (and was until November) be handed over to the authorities in Afghanistan and there is a strong possibility when that happens that the person “detained” will be tortured. Canadian investigators found plausible evidence of toture under a chair. Whta happens when Afhhanis are captured or detained by, say, American forces is unclear. In the past they were sent to places like Guantanamo Bay. Here is another word, “rendition” — there are reports of conditions in the American enclave on Cuba which are much wose than even the worse Orwellian fantasy and after, is it & years, there has been little effort to bring these detainees (?) to any kind of just hearing. I assume that Glendronach has visited Afghanistan and knows Pushtu well and can readily distinguish “Taliban Irregulars” from everybody else?