The Belmont Club suggests a differentation in treatment of freedom fighters:
No of course not. As currently interpreted the Geneva Conventions only apply to individuals bent on destroying America. Individuals who blow up elementary schools, kidnap children, attack churches and mosques, kill invalids in wheelchairs, plan attacks on skyscrapers in New York, behead journalists, detonate car bombs with children to camouflage their crime, or board jetliners with explosive shoes — all while wearing mufti or even women’s clothing — these are all considered “freedom fighters” of the most principled kind. They and they alone enjoy the protections of the Geneva Convention. As to Americans like Tucker and Menchaca or Israeli Gilad Shalit — or these fifteen British sailors for that matter, it is a case of “what Geneva Convention?” We don’t need no steenkin’ Geneva Convention to try these guys as spies. That’s the way the Human Rights racket works. Don’t go looking for any Geneva Convention in Somalia, Darfur, Basilan or Iran. Try Guantanamo Bay.
Personally, I liked the part where the author reminds us that terrorist comfortable with using children to hide their bombs and then blowing the children up when detonating the bomb enjoy more international outrage and press coverage when arguably their supposed Geneva convention rights are violated. Meanwhile, actual soldiers who most likely find the blatant use and killing of children abhorrent, in fact are denied their Geneva Convention rights and not a peep can be heard from either the MSM or the international community. One might say there is a ‘disproportionate’ response to coverage of actual Geneva Convention violations.