Of lawyers and war

Seems that lawyers are getting more involved in war these days. They take their place right up with the generals. Now war is a horrible thing, been in one myself, so I know what I am talking about. Its slaughter,mayhem,and atrocity city. Over history wise men, realizing that they couldn't end war, decided to make war civilized(what an oxymoron, to slaughter people is not civilized) OK we came up with the Geneva convention and on the surface, we adhered to it when it suited us. I am sure Hiroshima and Nagasaki don't fit in with the parameters of the Geneva convention. But the excuse has always been, look how many lives it saved,without asking how many lives it took. My Japanese professor in college was a survivor of Nagasaki, and he didn't paint a pretty picture. In Vietnam we basically ignored a lot of it(what the hell, the enemy didn't sign that treaty, so why should we be bound by it) An example is white phosphorus,WP or willy peter in military talk. WP burns, it doesn't stop burning, you can't extinguish it, it burns thru your body and comes out on the other side, also makes a nice white smoke cloud. The Geneva convention states that WP cannot be used against troops, but it can be used as a marking round. I was an artillery FO in Nam and boy we sure used alot of "marking rounds".( Great stuff to airburst over trenches)
Now it's more sophistcated and this where our friends the lawyers come in. During the Rwanda mess in the late 90's, many concerned people were afraid genocide was taking place. The USA, and other signatories were bound by the UN charter to take action against genocide. Remember "Never Again". Well nobody wanted to get drawn into Rwanda, especially America after she got whupped in Somalia on a peacekeeping mission. So a State dept spokeswoman said,well there have been acts of genocide but we aren't sure the whole thing is genocide. This same excuse is being used in Darfur. We need a bunch of lawyers to sit around for a few years deciding what the legal definition of genocide is. By the time they sat down for their second cup of coffee,800,000 Tutsis had been killed in about 4 months. and we are not sure it's genocide?? DUH!
The second Bush administration ducked the Geneva convention by defining al Qaeda operatives as enemy combatants, and hence not eligible for Geneva convention nicities. We could imprison them without due process, torture them in foreign prisons and deny them basic rights. Oh, right, their terrorists,but I,ll bet if the Japanese captured the crew of the Enola Gay after she laid her egg and loped off their heads with samurai swords, we'd be squaking, Geneva convention. In war the victor gets to make all the definitions. I do not mean to condone terrorism or the actions of groups like al Qaeda, but the average brainwashed suicide bomber kid isn't really much different than a brainwashed soldier or Marine. Easiest thing would be to outlaw war completely and settle difference with a chess match,although I'm not sure that Bush would be able to beat bin Laden. Obama on the other hand, checkmate in 6 moves!