OH: Red Cross Warns of ‘Dehumanizing’ Rhetoric in ISIS Fight.
The organization is concerned about rhetoric that “dehumanizes” and “demonizes” the enemy or suggests that a particular adversary is “outside the bounds of humanity” and can be treated “as if humanitarian law doesn’t apply,” the group’s deputy director for the Middle East, Patrick Hamilton, told reporters via a telephone conference call.
Language that could appear to justify or encourage war crimes and illegal treatment of detainees has become more common on all sides of the sprawling conflicts in Syria and Iraq, Mr. Hamilton said, to the point that the Red Cross felt it necessary to remind all combatants that international law requires due process and humane treatment of detainees “with no exceptions.”
It isn’t so much that the Red Cross is wrong, but that it’s probably impossible for civilized people of any religion to share a planet with the genocidal likes of ISIS.