It would seem that our relations with Europe have taken yet another turn for the worse, with the inane decision by a Spanish judge to issue international arrest orders for three American soldiers (see WaPo story for more details).
The arrest orders result from a tragic incident that occurred in 2003, during the invasion of Baghdad. An American armored unit was holding territory in Baghdad, and was being attacked both by small arms fire and by indirect fire (artillery and mortars). The troops knew that the Iraqis had been using spotters to direct artillery, and were trying to find the spotters, in part using information intercepted from captured radios. From the intercepts, they became aware that a spotter was in the process of trying to call in fire from a high-rise building in the area.
At the Palestine hotel, near the site of the battle, several reporters were observing the battle from balconies. Some of the reporters had cameras set up on tripods, and at least one was observing the action using binoculars. When the soldiers saw a reporter on a balcony using binoculars, with some sort device on a tripod next to them, they believed that they had found the artillery spotter, and fired a tank round into the building, killing two journalists. One of the journalists was a Spanish citizen. This incident is reported in detail in the book Thunder Run.
The incident was tragic, and an international media group, after an investigation, believed that the incident could have been prevented had the soldiers received better information about the hotel, which was well known to be occupied by journalists. An army investigation also concluded that the incident was an accident, and that the troops had acted within the rules of engagement.
This incident falls into the "bad things happen in wars" category. Reporters try to see what's going on. They use things like binoculars to do this. Artillery spotters try to see what's going on, in order to better direct high explosives toward their enemies. They use things like binoculars to do this. Soldiers who are on the receiving end of artillery fire have an understandable dislike of artillery spotters, and will do whatever they can to make them stop. Under the circumstances, it can be understandable for them to mistake a reporter on a distant balcony with binoculars for an artillery spotter on a distant balcony with binoculars.
The Spanish government doesn't see things that way. They have demanded that the US government either permit them to take statements from the soldiers involved, or to allow a Spanish delegation to quiz them. The US government has refused, so a Spanish judge issued the detention orders.
It is possible, I suppose, that the Spanish government is acting in good faith here. Stranger things have happened, or so people say. I'm not so sure. I've got to wonder exactly how likely it would be that this whole thing would be happening were the curent Spanish government not so opposed to the Bush administrations and its policies.
6 comments:
What is your objection? Spanish law allows this to happen - are you suggesting they should ignore their own laws? In the unlikely event the American soldiers are ever brought to Spain, they would face normal legal process. Shouldn't the court be given the opportunity to determine the rights and wrongs of the case, rather than the media, politicians, and bloggers?
The US is pretty much alone (with the exception of China, Libya, et al) in its desire to remain immune from international law. Its opposition to the International Criminal Court (which could prosecute US troops for war crimes) is in stark contrast to its support for war crimes prosecutions in the Balkans and now in Iraq.
I second this comment. There was no excuse for this incident. There was no need to fire without verifying the target. The rules of engagement require such. And that "bad things happen is wars" is a total cop-out.
Moreove, I think that the entire Bush administration should be prosecuted for the war crime of engaging in an aggressive war, one of the first charges in the Nuremberg Trials.
To respond to anonymous:
My primary objection is this: The three soldiers involved in the incident are, as far as I can tell, being treated as pawns in an international pissing match between Spain and the US. The international detention orders were issued for these three individual soldiers because the Spanish government was not happy with the response from the Bush government. As a result, these three people have effectively lost their ability to travel internationally. That is not fair to them, as individuals.
Personally, I have mixed feelings about the International Criminal Court. I think that there should be one, and I think that we should participate. However, I think that a court at the international level needs to incorporate more protections for the accused at the indictment level, particularly for low-level defendents such as line soldiers. As the situation currently stands, I think there is a lot of potential for political abuse in the way the system is set up right now, and that worries me.
I haven't yet made up my mind about whether or not refusing to participate was the right decision under the current circumstances.
Spencer:
To put it bluntly, you really don't know what you are talking about here.
First of all, artillery spotters are legitimate targets under the rules of war, whether or not they themselves are firing or carrying weapons. Spotting for others is a hostile act under the Geneva conventions.
Someone who is standing at a high spot, observing a situation where there is incoming artillery fire through binoculars bears a striking similarity to an artillery spotter. When the intelligence folks in your unit have a captured radio and are listening to an artillery spotter reporting observations from a building, this similarity becomes even more striking.
Reporters Sans Frontieres, an international media group, issued a report (http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/iraq_report.pdf) on the incident. The group is hardly a friend of the Bush administration, and has been highly critical of the way that the army and the admnistration have handled things.
Their report, as one might guess from the title ("Two Murders and a Lie") concludes that there is a great deal of blame that should be assessed for this tragedy. They also, however, issued some conclusions about where blame really should not be assessed:
"At the bottom level, Capt. Wolford and Sgt. Gibson reacted as soldiers in a battle situation. They directly caused the death of the journalists and wounded three others, but should not really be held responsible because they did not have information that would have made them aware of the consequences of firing at the hotel.
Their immediate superiors - battalion commander Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp and brigade commander Col. David Perkins - also appear not to blame. Their reactions and the accounts of embedded journalists indicate they too had not been properly informed by their own superiors."
Gibson, Wolford, and DeCamp are the three targets of the Spanish arrest orders. Despite the fact that both the Army's internal investigation and the investigation of an independent group dedicated to protecting journalists cleared them of wrongdoing, the Spanish are demanding that they be hauled into their court to face the same charges again.
That might be legally justified under Spanish law, but I don't think it is the right thing to do. I don't think it is a fair thing, and I don't think that it is being done in the service of justice. I think it's being done in part because of the deeply rooted differences of opinion between the Spanish government and the Bush administration, and I think it is being done in part because persuing this incident was one of the planks that the Spanish Socialists used to pound on the opposition party during the last election.
But why shouldn't the Spanish court be allowed to examine the incident?
I know for a fact the US seems to think it has the right to at least investigate, and also prosecute everyone who attacks US citizens. Now Spanish citizens has been killed bu US military.
It is not like the Spanish government is going to imprison the soldiers without trial or recourse to the law - They will not be sent to a Spanish version of guantanamo.
The problem is that teh US thinks that its citizens should be excempt for the normal rules.
/Soren
I can certainly see your point. I wasn't aware that it was the reporters-on-rooftop incident that sparked it. From the way Danish media portrayed it those three chaps were villanous war-criminals, and Spain was out to set a precedent for national handling of international crime, since the US was (and is) backpedaling on the permanent international warcrime tribunal.
The last part of it is probably right (and argueably fully justified), but I would certainly want to find a more worthy test case... Like the stuff with the Italian reporter. That sounded mighty suspect to me. Of course the Spanish administration, unlike the Italian, can actually find its own backside without a ground-control radar and a detailed flight plan. At least when they use both hands :-)
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