For His Treatment of Children in the 'War on Terror' Bush is a War Criminal
Wed, 2008-05-21
By Dave Lindorff
Surely nothing that President Bush has done in his two wretched terms of office—not the invasion and destruction of Iraq, not the overturning of the five-centuries-old tradition of habeas corpus, not his authorization and encouragement of torture, not his campaign of domestic spying—nothing, can compare in its ugliness to his approval, as commander in chief, of the imprisoning of over 2500 children.
According to the US government’s own figures, that is how many kids 17 years and younger have been held since 2001 as “enemy combatants”—often for over a year, and sometimes for over five years. At least eight of those children, some reportedly as young as 10, were held at Guantanamo. They even had a special camp for them there: Camp Iguana. One of those kids committed suicide at the age of 21, after spending five years in confinement at Guantanamo. (Ironically and tragically, that particular victim of the president’s criminal policy, had been determined by the Pentagon to have been innocent only two weeks before he took his own life, but nobody bothered to tell him he was slated for release and a return home to Afghanistan.)
I say Bush’s behavior is criminal because since 1949, under the Geneva Conventions signed and adopted by the US, and incorporated into US law under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, children under the age of 15 are classed as “protected persons,” and even if captured while fighting against US forces are to be considered victims, not POWs. In 2002, the Bush administration signed an updated version of that treaty, raising the “protected person” age to all those “under 18.”
Treaties don’t mean much to this president, to the vice president, or to the rest of the administration, but they should mean something to the rest of us. Five hundred children remain in US captivity as "enemy combatants today." More are held who were captured as children, but grew up as POWs.
But capturing and imprisoning children isn’t even the worst of this president’s war crimes when it comes to the abuse of the young. Under Bush’s leadership as commander in chief, the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan has been considering any male child of age 14 or older to be a potential combatant. They have been treated accordingly—shot by US troops, imprisoned as “enemy combatants,” renditioned to Guantanamo, and even subjected to torture.
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