• krashmo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Disclaimer: what I’m about to say is not in support of any action, it’s just philosophical musing.

    Isn’t the whole concept of a war crime sort of hypocritical? War is inherently barbaric and uncivilized. Yet we seem to think we can make it something other than that by placing restrictions on parts of it. The goal is to defeat your enemy but society says it’s not gentlemanly to do it in a particular way, as if treating it like a sporting event with ineffectual referees will fundamentally change what’s happening. At the end of the day we’re still giving the green light to kill a bunch of people. I get why we do it, it just seems insincere to stop short of saying any amount of killing is immoral. We’ll only allow you to kill these people in these places under these circumstances.

    I don’t know how this helps anybody it’s just something I was thinking about.

    • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The Geneva Conventions laws were built around the idea that while War is hell, War is also inevitable. The purpose was to provide a framework around the way war can be waged while trying to limit the atrocities committed while it is happening. Providing protections to prisoners of war and civilians in combat zones is beneficial to both sides because without those protections in place, it leads to an circle of escalation by both sides’ armies against those not actively engaged in combat against you (i.e. army A kills civilians, army B kills civilians asl retaliation, army A’s soldiers mistreat POWs as retaliation, army B’s soldiers no longer accept surrender from Army A in battles and executes those surrendering, etc)

      So yes, admitting war is inherently barbaric and uncivilized. But that doesn’t do anything to help prevent the fact that war crimes happen in war. The goal of defining war crimes isn’t to make them something other that barbaric and uncivilized. It’s simply to try and set a soft limit on the level of crap an organized military can and/or should do to non combatants in order to facilitate a quicker end to the conflict instead of needing to eliminate every last living member of the other side in order to declare victory.

      • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Those same conventions also have clauses around the usage of civilians to defend military targets. These same clauses make Israel’s strikes in fact not war crimes by the same Geneva Convention that people love quoting.

        Also, another thing you have wrong. The Geneva convention isn’t as much laws as an agreement between countries, and more of a suggestion to other countries not part of it.

        • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The Geneva Conventions are international humanitarian laws consisting of four treaties and three additional protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war.

          It’s the first line of the Wikipedia page. They’re laws because they are enforceable, and you have a trial for those that have violated those laws.

    • shrugal@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      War parties usually don’t want to completely eradicate the opponent’s population, just break their fighting power and force them to surrender. The “tolerated” form of war is a power struggle between those who want power (incl. keeping it, so defending yourself), and it should leave out those who don’t as much as possible. So the idea is that you only fight the people on the other side who actually signed up for fighting, and spare those who would rather flee or accept defeat. Ofc in reality it’s never that clear cut, soldiers can be forced to fight against their will for example.

    • Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      If war is unavoidable, wouldn’t it be a good idea to have an international council capable of condemning tactics that lead to total destruction?

      The concept of war crimes and international courts aren’t there to concede that war is acceptable. They are there to grapple with the fact that war is inevitable and try to mitigate the worst, most horrific and lasting consequences.

      If the international courts had the power to stop war crimes they would, but they don’t have that power. All they do is condemn. Why is it hypocritical that they condemn war crimes when they don’t have the power to stop wars either?

      • krashmo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Condemning something you believe to be inevitable is a rather pointless exercise in my opinion. It may not be wrong but it’s not exactly useful either unless you believe it can be avoided, in which case it is no longer inevitable.

        In any case, you’re speaking from a UN perspective and I’m speaking from the perspective of individuals. The way we speak of war as if it’s something that can be noble so long as the enemy “deserves” it. Nevermind the fact that your enemy thinks the same of you. We’re fine with dehumanizing and killing large groups of men but women and children is a step too far. It’s perfectly acceptable to bomb a factory full of workers but not a hospital. The concept of innocence in war presupposes that those who participate in it are not worthy of the same consideration as those who do not, despite the fact that in many cases a small group of people directed the actions of everyone else equally. Maybe that’s a valid point but it does seem to clash with Western ideals of equality and judicial review.

        • Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Woah dude, you’re putting a lot of words in my mouth.

          It may not be wrong but but it’s not exactly useful unless you can believe it can be avoided

          There’s no metric saying that war crimes weren’t avoided by condemning them.

          Also, we don’t use mustard gas anymore. We don’t use zyclon d. Or agent orange. There are plenty of tools of war we don’t utilize anymore because we condemn them as war crimes, even if there’s no actual, tangible punishment for utilizing them.

          There’s plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of just calling those things war crimes and condemning them.

          Are you going to say that you prefer a world where we didn’t condemn and phase out more brutalistic forms of warfare in the name of alleviating hypocrisy? Because grandstanding about how not all war crimes, or war, can be averted, is advocating for a world that’s much worse off for the lack of restraint.

          Edit: I’m not deaf to your point that the individual participants of war are no more deserving of death than anyone else. But is preventing some death in the name of sparing women and children morally the same as just letting everyone be killed for a concept of equality and justice?

    • slinkyninja@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think the idea is that a ‘good’ war (lolwut?) is one they would surgically cut out that opposition like a tumor without affecting everybody else.

      Madmen see the world as a thing they can change with simple actions, wielding power only to hurt.

    • SirToxicAvenger@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      “War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means.” - Clausewitz