St Patrick's Day

     The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association honors Saint Patrick's Day by posting George Washington's General Orders of March 16, 1780, giving the Continental Army the day off March 17.  Referring to himself in the third person as he customarily did, General Washington wrote,

     The general congratulates the army on the very interesting proceedings of the parliament of Ireland and the inhabitants of that country which have been lately communicated; not only as they appear calculated to remove those heavy and tyrannical oppressions on their trade but to restore to a brave and generous people their ancient rights and freedom and by their operations to promote the cause of America.  

     The actions of the Irish Parliament prompted many Americans to hope that Ireland's independence was imminent.  On February 24, 1780, Philadelphia newspaper The Pennsylvania Packet published a November 17, 1779 letter from an unnamed crewman or officer from L'Orient, a ship commanded by John Paul Jones.  The writer exulted, "The Parliament of Ireland have acted with a degree of spirit, that surprizes every body.  On their meeting, instead of echoing back the Lord Lieutenant's speech, as is usual, they in their address to the King, demanded a free trade in every respect; and if this is refused them, there is no doubt but that they will declare themselves independent."
     During the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), Britain detained some captured American sailors in Ireland.  In December 1783, Washington assured an association of Irish immigrants that "the Hospitality and Beneficence of your Countrymen, to our Brethren who have been Prisoners of War, are neither unknown, or unregarded."
     Washington's letter is available online courtesy of PBS.  Read about the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association at their website, mountvernon,org.  For background on the office of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the British monarch's representative in the Kingdom of Ireland and the executive authority there, please read the entry at Wikipedia.

Infamous Decapitators Treated Kindly

During China's War Against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945), China's part in World War Two (1939-1945), Japanese soldiers became notorious for beheading helpless victims.

For the Allies, Japan's brutality was not an excuse to abuse Japanese Prisoners of War.

US interrogators hosted Japanese prisoners at "Camp Tracy," actually a luxury resort hotel at California's Byron Hot Springs.  US interrogators treated Japanese prisoners kindly, providing them meals cooked by Asian chefs and spa baths.

In 2010, former interrogator Al Nipkow told The San Francisco Chronicle that "as far as brutalizing anyone--there wasn't any question about that.  It wasn't allowed."

Please check Kevin Fagan, "Army official touts WWII's nisei interrogators," The San Francisco Chronicle, 24 January 2010, http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Army-official-touts-WWII-s-nisei-interrogators-3201614.php [accessed 12 December 2014].   The treatment of Japanese prisoners by Chinese guerrillas is mentioned in the second section of this post, "Treating Enemy Wounded."  

Torture Endangers American Lives

   In a November 28, 1782 sermon of thanksgiving, Rev. John Witherspoon remarked, "The barbarous treatment of the American prisoners...will be a stain upon the British name to future ages."
   The United States tightened security at embassies around the world in preparation for the December 9, 2014 release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on torture committed by CIA personnel in the years following the mass murder attacks of September 11, 2001.
   It is helpful to remember that it is not the Senate Intelligence Committee report that might inspire violence.  Advocates of torture claimed the torture and perverted sexual degradation would somehow save American lives.  Instead, torture is still endangering American lives, years after the torture happened.

The [un-]Islamic State used Waterboarding

The Washington Post reports that ISIS or ISIL (now calling itself IS) apparently waterbaorded four captives, including the late journalist James Foley.  Reporters Adam Goldman and Julie Tate write, "President Obama has condemned waterboarding as torture."

More importantly, US courts treated the technique as torture, as did the post-World War II war crimes court, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, in which the US participated.

Judge Evan Wallach's research demonstrated this.  Wallach is a veteran of the Nevada National Guard, having served in the JAG Corps (military lawyers).

Wallach's scholarly essay appeared in The Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.  A shorter version appeared as an Op-Ed for The Washington Post.  

nonsectarian revolution

In response to an August 1776 address from the Association of Baptist Churches in Louisa County, Virginia Governor Patrick Henry remarked, "I am happy to find...that those religious distinctions which formally produced some heats are now forgotten.  Happy must every friend of virtue and America feel...to perceive that the only contest among us, at this most critical and important period, is, who shall be foremost to preserve our religious and civil liberties."

In a May 1776 sermon, Presbyterian pastor John Witherspoon, the sixth President of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), said, "Nor was there ever perhaps in history so general a commotion from which religious differences have been so entirely excluded."

The prison ships operated by the British off occupied cities like Charleston and New York held American Revolutionaries of various religious and ethnic backgrounds.  On a prison ship off Savannah, Georgia, for instance, Jewish-Americans Mordecai Sheftall and his fifteen-year-old son Sheftall Sheftall were messmates with Congregationalist minister Moses Allen.  

John Witherspoon, "The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men," 17 May 1776, in The Selected Works of John Witherspoon, ed. Thomas Miller (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990), page 142.