Column: Innocence is not free
As I'm writing this, Iraqi video broadcast on Al-Jeezera indicates that not only have the Iraqis captured American soldiers, but they have executed many of them. It's an eerie feeling, the one I have right now. On the one hand, if I had to choose a way to die, I might prefer a gunshot to the head rather than a helicopter collision, where at least one has the ability to make peace with the fact that your life is ending, rather than laying dismembered on some godforsaken desert. Macabre pragmatism aside, I cannot shake a subtle rage. War is certainly cruel, but the Geneva Convention, of which Iraq is in blatant violation (if the reports are accurate), emerged after the mass extermination of World War II. Summary executions are the building blocks for genocide; once individual units start killing unarmed people. be they civilian or military, the stage is set for unrelenting murder.