Quote:
Originally Posted by MajorPo
Ah war crimes, is there really such a thing? Some truly shocking and disturbing things happen in armed conflict, most notably the killing of people. We may like to think that there is a noble purpose to war and it can somehow be fought like a gentlemen's agreement.
I think this 'pretended civility' collectively makes a society feel better about sending out it's armed citizens to murder groups of armed citizen of another society. We like to call these groups armies and dress them all the same so we don't have to think of them as people.
Once the war is done and we have no more distractions, we sit back and think about what happened, and find fault with the way our enemy played their part. If they didn't follow our 'moral code' (whether or not it was the same as their own) we call them criminals and if we are the victors and in a place to do anything about it, we prosecute them. This again supports our sense of moral superiority and makes us collectively feel better about all the murder and destruction commited by our own citizens.
Basically I think war crimes are all a load of self-serving nonsense. War is about the application of lethal force to ensure victory. I don't believe there is anything worse you can do to a person than kill them, so whether you torture them to death or shoot them in the head it all means the same thing in the end. Is there really a 'good' death, I'd say no.
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I'm inclined to agree to a certain extent.
I'm always struck by the hypocrisy of the Nuremburg trials. Many people who study the second world war and who are British, Australian or new Zealander share a sense of disgust as we happily hanged the Nazis but let the japanese war criminals make deals with America to get out of how they treated our POWs.
The biggest issue, as stated, is the lack of a clear winner. My own nation, Britain, has a long and distinguished history of glory, honour and good conduct in war. We have this reputaion because we tend to win and kill any poor bastard that disagrees with us. We pioneered biological warfare in the 18the century French and Indian wars, we invented concentration camps in the Boer war and we developed a taste for rape and pillaging during the Indian mutiny which was quietly ignored.
America is another good example. The American government has always made much of the moral highground, claiming to be fighting for freedom and democracy. yet they have conveniantly opted out of any international agreements that would subject American soldiers to international war crimes tribunals. American war crimes are well documented in Vietnam and there was a case of US marines raping a civilian in iraq and calling in an airstrike to try and cover the crime.
The simple fact is you can not ask a human being to throw away every thing he has been taught from childhood regarding violence and killing and expect him to only kill the people you want him to.