Does Japan offer the better analogy?

Sandy Levinson

I note the following column published by Niall Ferguson in the Los Angeles Times. A professor of history at Harvard, he is, I'm quite confident, usually not thought of as on the left. So consider the following:

"Leave aside for now the question of habeas corpus; after all, prisoners of war have traditionally been denied this ancient protection. Much more sinister is Section 8 ("Implementation of Treaty Obligations"), under which "the president has the authority … to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and to promulgate … administrative regulations for violations of treaty obligations which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions."

"To see what this means, you need to know what the "grave breaches" are. According to Geneva Convention III, Article 130, they include "willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments" and "willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health."

"Insidiously, therefore, the Military Commissions Act empowers the president to authorize all lesser forms of physical and mental intimidation of prisoners. Suffering and injury are fine, in other words, as long as they aren't "great" or "serious." ....

"Official Japanese policy encouraged brutality toward prisoners of war by applying the Geneva Convention only mutatis mutandis (literally, "with those things having been changed which need to be changed"), which the Japanese translated as "with any necessary amendments."

"The amendments in question amounted to this: Enemy prisoners had so disgraced themselves by laying down their arms that their lives were forfeit. Indeed, some Allied prisoners were made to wear armbands bearing the inscription "One who has been captured in battle and is to be beheaded or castrated at the will of the emperor." Physical assaults were a daily occurrence in some Japanese POW camps. Executions without due process were frequent. Thousands of American prisoners died during the infamous Bataan Death March in 1942.

"Elsewhere, British POWs were used as slave labor, most famously on the Burma-Thailand railway line. Attempting to escape was treated by the Japanese as a capital offense, though the majority of prisoners who died were in fact victims of malnutrition and disease exacerbated by physical overwork and abuse. In all, 42% of Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese did not survive. Such were the consequences of "amending" the Geneva Convention.

"Red-state Republicans may still shrug their shoulders. After all, George W. Bush is no Tojo. Well, maybe not. But even if you don't see any resemblance between Bush's "administrative regulations" and Imperial Japan's "necessary amendments" of the Geneva Convention, consider this purely practical argument: As Winston Churchill insisted throughout the war, treating POWs well is wise, if only to increase the chances that your own men will be well treated if they too are captured. Even in World War II, there was in fact a high degree of reciprocity. The British treated Germans POWs well and were well treated by the Germans in return; the Germans treated Russian POWs abysmally and got their bloody deserts when the tables were turned."
Posted 3:46 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]