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Asymmetrical Warfare

Entry 348, on 2006-06-13 at 13:33:39 (Rating 4, News)

I suppose that being a military leader isn't like a popularity competition, but I was surprised at some of the comments coming from the commander of the US camp at Guantanamo Bay. He described the three recent suicides there as "asymmetrical warfare waged against us". Huh? Alleged terrorists killing themselves is warfare against the US? And this word "asymmetry" means the US doesn't engage in acts of war in return, apparently.

I know the US has almost no credibility left anyway, and that comments like that can't make things much worse, but I would have thought there might be a little bit of common sense which could be applied to try to calm the international situation. No wonder things are just getting worse when idiotic comments like that are made.

Ken Roth, from Human Rights Watch put it differently. He said "these people are despairing because they are being held lawlessly", which I'm sure is true. They are being held lawlessly, and despair would be a logical consequence for most of them.

If a terrorist follows a path of violence he should accept that similar tactics might be used against him, but that use of revenge by both sides has to end somewhere. The US says their enemy are lawless terrorists. If not following internationally recognised law is a bad thing, why does the US do the same thing? This reinforces my comments in my blog entry of 2006-06-09, the US is supposed to be a lawful, Christian, fair country. Its time they started acting that way.

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