Claudia Rosett, writing in today’s WSJ Opinion Journal, turns a critical eye to the Red Cross:

The real shame of Guantanamo Bay has nothing to do with U.S. treatment of captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters now held there. It has everything to do with the International Committee of the Red Cross rushing to the scene, waving the Geneva Conventions as if riding to the rescue of those lovable old POWs on ‘Hogan’s Heroes’–demanding that modern disciples of terrorism be handled simply as good old conventional prisoners of war.

The real issue is not the size of the chain-link cells for the detainees, the color of their jumpsuits or the calorie content of their Froot Loops, but whether the venerable Red Cross, still reliving yesterday’s conflicts, can catch up with the terrorist shift now redefining modern war. If it can’t, the U.S.–which provides more than 25% of the ICRC’s funding–might do well to rethink its ties to the Red Cross.

And while we’re at it, let’s not forget the ICRC’s refusal to acknowledge Israel’s Red Star of David, even as they recognize the Red Crescent of the Muslim world…

Pundits critical of the military are quick to suggest that the lumbering U.S. Military-Industrial-Complex is somehow consigned in perpetuity to be “fighting the last war” (though interestingly, the “last war” is nearly always Vietnam — chronology be damned!), leading to the unfortunate and ill-advised usage of such words as “quagmire” and “stalemate.” So perhaps it’s time to turn the tables — as Rosett has — and call on the Red Cross to examine its own historical stasis.

[update: Flit’s Bruce Rolston, whose work I greatly admire, disagrees with Rosett’s piece — arguing that she is unduly arrogant, and that the ICRC, far from behaving badly, is simply doing its job: “It goes without saying that a Convention last ratified in 1949 could be up for an overhaul. But it’s also safe to say that the kind of overhaul Rosett desires, apparently the removal of due process restraints and any residual sense of impartiality when dealing with soldiers in countries Americans currently disapprove of, would be a cure worse than the disease.”

I submit that these two arguments clash on semantic grounds — and that, taken together, they reinforce the need for a clear definition of the actual legal status of these Gitmo folk. War prisoners, after all, have different entitlements than do unlawful combattants or battlefield detainees. Rosett’s tone may be belittling to what she sees as a certain stage-y, hand-wringing, ICRC breathlessness; but I don’t think she’s behaving quite as arrogantly as Bruce’s response implies.]

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