Glenn Reynolds: Time to Scrap the Geneva Accords and Start All Over

Glenn Reynolds, in his blog (June 1, 2004):

We've heard a lot about the Geneva Conventions over the past couple of years.  And some people -- noting, among other things, that the United States hasn't fought against an enemy who applied the Geneva Conventions to our troops in nearly 60 years -- are wondering if we should scrap the Conventions.

Now Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is joining those voices, with a column in the Baltimore Sun.  Dershowitz writes:

The Geneva Conventions are so outdated and are written so broadly that they have become a sword used by terrorists to kill civilians, rather than a shield to protect civilians from terrorists. These international laws have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. . . .
The time has come to revisit the laws of war and to make them relevant to new realities. If their ultimate purpose was to serve as a shield to protect innocent civilians, they are failing miserably, since they are being used as a sword by terrorists who target such innocent civilians.

Dershowitz has some specific suggestions on how the laws of war should be modified in light of the rather drastic changes in circumstances since the Geneva Conventions were adopted, and I highly recommend that you read the whole thing. 

Also, UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge has some thoughts on Dershowitz's column, as does San Diego law professor Tom Smith.  Interestingly, Dershowitz isn't the only liberal icon to question the current human rights status quo.  The New Republic is doing the same thing, though on different grounds, criticizing Amnesty International for excessive anti-Americanism at the cost of its mission:

In fact, it could be argued that one of the most serious emerging threats to human rights today is Amnesty's decision to spend a disproportionate share of its limited resources attacking the United States--at the opportunity cost of focusing attention on governments that are slaughtering, enslaving, torturing, and imprisoning millions of people around the world.

Yes, you'd think they'd be focusing on places like the Sudan, where The Telegraph reports:  "Arab militia use 'rape camps' for ethnic cleansing."

In Darfur, Sudan's western-most region, the people remain untouched by last week's peace agreement signed between the country's Islamic government and Christian rebels.  Sudanese soldiers and the government-backed Janjaweed militia still terrorise, and at the centre of their campaign of"ethnic cleansing" is a policy of systematic rape designed to drive civilians from their settlements.

Yet Sudan, bizarrely enough, actually has a seat on the United Nations' Human Rights Commission.  Proof enough that"human rights" as a subject area requires some rethinking if it's going to be about, you know, actual human rights.