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Special Wartime Edition …
Throughout all the stuff that the media has brought forth about this latest war with the Middle East, a couple of things have actually caught my ear long enough to listen to them. The terms “rules of war” and “friendly fire”.
“Friendly fire” is one of those terms that just don’t sound right together. If someone fires a gun near or at me, I can almost guarantee you that it’s not an act of someone being friendly. It might be a mistake, like “oops, I wasn’t aiming at you”. It might be my fault, like “ugh, you ran in front of me”. But I can guarantee that its not friendly.
Saying “hi” is friendly. Waving at me is friendly. Shooting a gun off isn’t friendly. If you want to get my attention, whistle … or yell. But don’t shoot at or around me.
Okay, with that said, let’s move onto the rules of war. Now I’m sure at some point in my vast educational career, I was taught about the rules of war, also known as the Geneva Convention, or treaty. The name sounds fairly familiar, but I guess I wasn’t really paying attention in class when they went over the specifics.
So, I’m watching the news and hear the U.S. military experts whining about how the Iraq militia isn’t playing fair — they aren’t following the rules of war. Erm. First off, if some country comes into my country and starts shooting and blowing up things, I’m not going to follow the rules either when it comes to defending myself and the surroundings. I’d figure that the whole thing about war is that anything pretty much goes. You basically fight until someone wins, or gives up and runs away like the crying little baby they are.
Anyhow, I did a search for the “rules of war” and found them. Surprisingly, there are only fifteen of them. Hopefully I got the right thing. Seems really short. I guess I’m just used to the government’s love of wasting paper by producing bazillion page documents. Here are the fifteen rules of war:
An expanding bullet, upon impact, explodes within the body.
Ô›Rule 2: The use of expanding bullets or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering is prohibited.
Ô›Rule 3: The discharge of projectiles (such as bullets or rockets) from balloons is prohibited.
Ô›Rule 4: Prisoners of war must be humanely treated and protected from violence. Prisoners cannot be beaten or used for propaganda purposes (to try to change the way people think about something).
Ô›Rule 5: Prisoners of war must give their true name and rank or they will lose their prisoner of war protection.
MIA stands for Missing in Action. POW stands for Prisoner of War.
Ô›Rule 6: Nations must follow procedures to identify the dead and wounded and to send information to their families.
Ô›Rule 7: Killing anyone who has surrendered is prohibited.
Ô›Rule 8: Zones must be set up in fighting areas to which the sick and injured can be taken for treatment.
Ô›Rule 9: Special protection from attack is granted to civilian hospitals marked with the Red Cross symbol.
Ô›Rule 10: The free passage of medical supplies is allowed.
Ô›Rule 11: Shipwrecked members of the armed forces at sea should be taken ashore to safety.
Ô›Rule 12: Any army that takes control of another country must provide food to the people in that country.
Ô›Rule 13: Attacks on civilians and undefended towns are prohibited.
Ô›Rule 14: Enemy submarines cannot sink merchant or business ships before passengers and crews have been saved.
Ô›Rule 15: A prisoner can be visited by a representative from his or her country. Prisoners have the right to talk privately without observers.
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