I might add that I consider myself to be a conservative. In the United States of America, that means to conserve the legal order that this nation was founded upon, the Constitution. In fact, as a member of the military, I took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I did not take an oath of allegiance to the “leader,” or to the “state,” as required in some other nations. Thus, it came as something of a shock to me when Alberto Gonzalez, John Yoo and Robert Delahunty began issuing legal opinions that the Geneva Conventions, a treaty incorporated into our law, were quaint and did not apply, or that the president could, at his or her sole discretion, suspend them.
I will admit a particular sensitivity to the enforcement of the Geneva Conventions as my father, along with thousands of other American and Philippine prisoners of war, survived the Bataan Death March. This was despite the best efforts of soldiers who set aside the Geneva Convention of 1929 because of their oath of allegiance to the Japanese emperor. Following that war, my father’s former captors and their legal advisers were put on trial and convicted of war crimes, including waterboarding and punishing prisoners without fair trials, as required under the 1929 Geneva Convention. This treaty was replaced by the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 due to the mistreatment of prisoners like my father.
