I’m sure I don’t need to dig up specific examples, as everyone should be well aware by now of how we treat “enemy combatants” we capture and send to Guantanamo Bay. Isolation, degradation, and even torture.
And then I saw this in yesterday’s Dispatch (emphasis mine):
Crew coach Sigi Schmid’s 82-year-old father, Fritz, is visiting Columbus this week and was at the game against D.C. United last night. His eyes lit up when asked about the years he spent in a prison camp in England during and after World War II.
“We had a wonderful time,” said Schmid, who spent 32 years working in Los Angeles area breweries after immigrating to California in 1956.
“We had some terrific soccer teams. We had some players who went on to play some top-notch soccer in Germany. We had a camp team and we would play teams outside the camps. We’d play everybody – soldiers, civilians, guards.”
Schmid, from the Stuttgart, Germany, area, was captured by Canadians during the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. He was held in England until 1948.
“We had it better than the people in the big cities in Germany,” said Schmid, who was a referee in the Los Angeles area for 30 years. “We had more food than anybody. We had the same ration the British army had, but everyone in the camp worked on the farm, too. We could even buy beer.”
That’s what those “quaint” Geneva Conventions provided for. Actual humane imprisonment of enemy troops.
Sigh.
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