Double-red-crossed.

• Author: Casey, Lee A.

THE INTERNATIONAL Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is an impressive edifice--both physically and morally. Its Swiss headquarters, once a Belle Epoch luxury hotel, is perched on a commanding height overlooking Lake Geneva. Just below is the Palais des Nations, formerly home to President Woodrow Wilson's ill-fated League, and now occupied by the United Nations. The whole area exudes a comfortable, faded-paint kind of civility--complete with peacocks roaming free on the UN lawns below. It is, of course, home to the world's oldest non-religious organization dedicated to humanitarian relief--an organization with a unique place in international law, identified by the four 1949 Geneva Conventions as an "impartial humanitarian body."

It is in this ostensible role that the ICRC has clashed with the Bush Administration. Early in 2002, President Bush determined that captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban members were not legally entitled to be treated as "prisoners of war" (POWs) under the Geneva Conventions, which reserve the multifarious rights and privileges of POWs for groups that meet the basic criteria of "lawful" belligerency. Those requirements were drawn from earlier international practice and agreements, and include subordination to a responsible command structure, wearing uniforms, carving arms openly, and operating in accord with the other laws and customs of war. These are the elements that distinguish regular armies from irregular or guerrilla fighters, not to mention terrorists.

Neither Al-Qaeda nor the Taliban meets these minimum requirements and, as a result, the president concluded that those groups were "unlawful" or "unprivileged" enemy combatants. Such individuals are entitled to be treated humanely, However, they are also subject to prosecution in military courts and may simply be held, without a criminal trial, until the war is over--even if that takes years. Wars sometimes do.

The ICRC disagrees. In a series of more or less direct statements issued over the past two years, the group has decried the detention of Al-Qaeda and Taliban members at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, suggesting that they must be treated as pOws under the Geneva Conventions, or as civilians entitled to a speedy trial in civilian courts. The ICRC also has accused the United States of intentionally using psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on the detainees. The basis of this claim appears to be both the "indefinite" detention of captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban members, as well as the use of "stress" interrogations, including "solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions."

It is important to understand what the ICRC is actually saying. It is not simply arguing that the type of criminal sexual conduct that took place at Abu Ghraib was abusive, as it surely was. Nor is it claiming that detainees are being subjected to the types of actual torture--such as extensive and brutal beatings--suffered by American POWs during the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf wars, which it effectively ignored. Rather, the ICRC is suggesting that simply holding captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban members without trial and devising an interrogation regimen designed to "break their wills"--without actually subjecting them to torture--itself violates international law and is indeed "tantamount to torture."

The United States has, of course, denied that its detention and interrogation policies constitute "torture" or equally forbidden cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Under the law actually applicable to American actions, the government is correct. The problem is that the ICRC fundamentally disputes the legal rules applicable to the United States, demanding--whether directly or indirectly--that the U.S. government comply with legal norms it has not approved and to which it is not bound. In this, the ICRC is acting not as an impartial interlocutor or advisor, but as an advocate--seeking to achieve recognition and implementation of a particular set of legal norms of which, as a policy matter, it approves.

There is nothing inherently wrong with such advocacy. It is the bread and butter of NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The ICRC, however, is supposed to be different. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International make no pretense of impartiality and do not receive millions of American tax dollars each year, as does the ICRC. By claiming that American policy "violates" international law, knowing full well that the United States disputes this interpretation, the ICRC has gone far beyond its mandate and has abused its unique international position. As a result, the United States can, and should, reassess its relationship with the ICRC. Indeed, that reassessment is long overdue.

Amici Humani Generis?

THERE IS much mythology surrounding the ICRC, especially in the United States. First, the ICRC is often confused with the American Red Cross and wrongly credited with that organization's blood drives, disaster-relief activities and lifesaving training courses. The American Red Cross is only loosely associated with the ICRC, as part of the "Red Cross Movement." It is in fact an independent charity organized...