You think we should give up, then, and abandon the Hague and Geneva Conventions, perhaps use them as toilet paper. It's really rather pathetic to hold that belief in this day and age, but never mind that.
I beleve the US has already done that with legal euphemisms.
Enhanced interrogation (torture)
Special renditions
Illegal combatants (anyone chosen not to get Geneva Conventions protections.)
For most countries it would be a stain on their reputation. For a country that boasts of freedom, human rights and democracy it is a huge loss to the world.
To be blunt, there's a famous picture of South Vietnam's police chief executing a captured Viet Cong prisoner that helped end the Vietnam war, because of it's impact when shown on the evening news. The problem is, that's totally legal as he was in civilian clothes when he was fighting and captured, and was therefore liable for execution as a spy according to the Conventions.
So really, if the US wants to execute them all out of hand, that's theoritically totally legal. Unfortunately.
However nobody's going to actually do that, so we enter rather serious legal gray area, and the rules haven't been defined because this sort of guerilla resistance thing was not envisioned in the conventions. Most interpretations would place them as rebels under the terms of the conventions, and therefore they have no legal rights under the conventions, so all they get is what their country gives them. However the US isn't their country. It's all very interesting, if you're a law student, but the bottom line is nobody really knows what their legal status is or what rights they have. Distasteful as it may be, it would be difficult to prove the US has acted against international law.
Now, its own law, that's another matter.
Fallujah
Congradulations, you just removed yourself from serious consideration by not understanding the goals of that operation.
Ah, another lost soul, who's gripped with fear at the insignificance of his own existence. Western cultures are individualistic and we're old, really old compared to the third world. To us, death is the worst that could ever happen to us.
It's funny to hear this said, because most people, even here, really can envision things worse than death. (Religion
is good for something! But even without it, it's still quite possible.) Perhaps you can't, but that's really your problem.
Well, guess what! To the rest of the world, which is really young (the majority of the population is >20), dieing is easy. Living day to day in slums, being disrespected, loosing face or being humiliated is a lot worse in their book. Death and especially death in combat is one of the most honorable things that could happen to you and an opponent who risks the same and may do it you is someone they respect.
China called. Said you haven't got a clue. Ditto India, and most of Southeast Asia. Life is cheap, but death is usually dishonor. Of all the countries in Asia, only Japan ever really embraced the concept of honorable death to the degree you like to think, and then only in the post-Meiji governments up until WW2 illustrated blatantly how badly the militarists were duping everyone. Africa has damn few examples of a warrior tradition. The Middle East is closer, but again death is usually dishonor. You failed. Much the same can be said of Russia. The ex-Soviet-controlled countries of the Warsaw Pact see eye-to-eye more with Western tradition than anything else.
Overall, your argument, if you had one, was incredibly generalized, and logically bankrupt. About all it had going for it was that it sounded pithy.
