No, the exact terminology has been made into word games in this case, and that's what bothers me. We had an administration declare, "We don't torture, " on the grounds of having redefined things we recognize under treaty as torture to be otherwise. This is not an arena in which we can afford to let anyone play word games, but we have. Johnson getting away with declaring "war" on poverty was annoying; this is dangerous.

That's why I fear a tribunal would turn into a star chamber, not because I distrust our military personnel, but because I distrust our civilian leaders. Members of our armed forces may object to illegal orders, may protest, may refuse to become accomplices by obeying them, but rarely can they prevent them being executed. To whom may they appeal for justice? The International War Crimes Tribunal we proposed and then rejected when it said we must be subject to it also?

And I still contend the Barbary Pirates were a navy, if an irregular one. Certainly they didn't observe the Geneva Convention first agreed upon in 1864. They gave allegiance to a country and political leader, not a cause, and not only did they obey that leader both when told to pirate and when told to cease, but other nations, including France and Britain as well as the US, negotiated relief from piracy with diplomatic envoys of nations and leaders they recognized as legitimate. They negotiated an end to the piracy with heads of state, not pirates (or at least, not shipboard pirates; whether the Pasha of Tripoli was a pirate or rightfully treated as a head of state is something to discuss with other contemporary heads of state, but the First Barbary War began not with an act of piracy, but a declaration of war from that Pasha when Jefferson refused to continue tributes on becoming President. )