Which, to me, begs the question of why we created Laws of War in the first place.
Oh, if you ask anyone, they'll gladly tell you.
I at first thought that this was all just meant to be a justification of war. After all, if there are Wars of law, war must be legal, right? I assumed that we created laws of war not to punish war criminals, but because if there are war crimes, there must also be law-abiding war, meaning war can be legally justified.
Honestly, I find that whole line of thinking absolutely disgusting.
I fully admit that a lot of this is related to my position as a pacifist; I am philosophically and fundamentally opposed to all forms of war and violence. I don’t propose we abolish the military entirely, but that is because my position as a pragmatist cannot (at time of writing) see a way of doing so that doesn’t put people at risk of greater harm... but I also admit that that may well be due to military propaganda that has convinced everyone that they require a military.
See, this is where my confusion starts:
Why do we have a military? It may seem like a dumb question, but think about it - every single sovereign country on this planet either has a military or relies on another country’s military, so why is that? Well, the main reason given is that the potential for other countries or large groups of their citizens to attack, invade, or whatever “insert horrible militant action here” meaning that we require an army to defend against such attacks. Basically, other countries pose a clear and present danger of attacking, so we need to defend ourselves from armed assault.
However, that implies that the only reason a country has a military is because other countries have a military. So, they have one because we have one, but we have one because they have one? It’s a vicious cycle. Of course, some countries have a military not for defence, but because they actually plan to invade, attack or what-have-you “insert horrible militant action here” against their neighbours, which makes them the aggressors in this whole situation, but where does this madness end?
See, from my perspective, the existence of multiple militaries around the world means that every single country in the world is caught in a Mexican Standoff. Everyone has a gun pointed at each other, because some people want to shoot; some don't want to be shot; some have no bullets, but want to scare others from shooting them; & some are pretending they don't want to be shot, but really they're waiting to shoot that guy as soon as he lets his guard down.
It is, honestly, a ridiculously complicated and dangerous farce no matter how you look at it. TV Tropes defines it perfectly, a Mexican standoff is "a stalemate in which everyone must lose". And we do, all the time, because as soon as someone starts shooting, it causes untold injury, death and suffering.
So, we tend to all agree that in the international military situation, just like a Mexican Standoff, the person who fires the first shot is a monster. They're doing the wrong thing by starting the crossfire. They’re the aggressor; they’re the one starting the war. They’re the asshole, the Secret Hitler in this game. In fact, some countries (but not all) as well as laws of war, also have what's called laws of aggression. A law of aggression exists to prohibit acts that would deliberately disrupt the peace which is why crimes of aggression are also called "crimes against peace", or more commonly known as acts of war.
But, why criminalize an act of war, an act that starts war, but not war itself? That's like criminalizing threats of violence, but not violence and murder, I was more confused than ever. But, then, I was doing research and I came across an interview by Noam Chomsky, when he was talking about the war crimes committed by the American military, during the Vietnam War, and the philosophy of war crimes:
"If we do that to other people, that's 'normal'. It's if they do something to us that the world is coming to an end, but if we do it to them it's so normal, why should we even talking about it? [...] Defeated countries are forced to pay some attention to what they did. Victors never are."
—Noam Chomsky, Power and Terror (2002)
Finally, it all made sense, and I actually had to change my plan for this whole blog post when I realized that, because I wasn't confused anymore. See, war crimes aren't about justifying war—this belief was based on my own lack of empathy for those who are pro-war, since I think wars aren't justified, but to people who want to fight wars, war is already justified. In fact, a lot of the inspiration (and terminology) behind laws of war comes from just war theory. But, this being the case, war crimes aren't about being held accountable for your actions during war...
War crimes are one of the Spoils of War, an excuse to parade around defeated enemies as criminals.
Most of the countries that came together to sign the Fourth Geneva Convention did so in 1949, not coincidentally, just four years after the Nuremberg Trials in 1945. It's believed that World War 2 inspired a lot of what was discussed, because of just how devastating that war was, but that's not true. As Chomsky points out, when charging the Nazi officials with crimes, whilst obviously genocide and unlawful movement of people and children was on the docket, it was a conscious decision by the courts that rather than punish the Nazis for their crime, the Nuremberg trials was also about forgiving the war crimes of the Allies. Nazis did a lot of aerial bombings of the civilian, urban populations—the Blitz was an infamous attack and well documented assault on innocent British civilians—yet that wasn't considered a war crime because the Allies bombed civilian German cities even more than they had them. So, that obviously couldn't be a war crime, because the Allies did that and Allies are the good guys, right?
It is laughable that whilst some remember the Nuremberg Trials as a just punishment of the Nazis—and there was some benefit, as it delegitimized the Nazi party in Germany—the Nuremberg trials were ultimately a farce, a kangaroo court, nothing more than a public humiliation of the losing side.
I'm not saying you should feel sorry for the Nazis, they were (and are) horrible bigots. What I'm saying is that you should blame Americans and the British for taking part in their own war crimes. After all, just five years after signing the Geneva Convention, Britain decided to take part in the Malay Emergency, in 1948.
Whilst it's not a highly publicised the U.K. also decided to take part in a lesser known conflict (at least, I hadn't heard of it until now), called the Malayan Emergency, that began in 1948. U.K. troops were actually the first army to use Agent Orange as a military weapon, but that's not the only atrocity perpetrated by British armed forces. According to some, these technically
don't count as war crimes, since they weren't explicitly used as weapons
against civilians (and don't count as "chemical weapons"). But either way, they definitely perpetrated the Batang Kali massacre, killing at least 24 civilians, were collectively punished in internment camps, and participated in headhunting, taking the decapitated heads of victims as trophies during the conflict. Despite these war crimes, indignities and atrocities, the British authorities either decided that the actions were entirely justified, or they simply claimed that there wasn't enough evidence either way—even claiming that genuine photos of soldiers smiling while holding severed heads were faked—and quietly censored the reports.
Then, America just 12 years after signing the Geneva Convention, took part in the Vietnam War in 1955.
America was infamous for using Agent
Orange, even though the Brits beat them by seven years, but they also employed napalm, and land mines (at time of writing, it's estimated that
500,000 unexploded landmines are still hidden in the Vietnam landscape)
against the people of Vietnam. Whilst it is
known that many American soldiers engaged in massacres of Vietnamese
civilians, and the rape of Vietnamese women, through forced prostitution and gang-rape, which is obviously a war crime... technically
America is one of those countries that didn't ratify all of the Geneva
Convention Protocols, including Protocol I which includes Chapter II Art
76, which explicitly makes rape and forced prostitution illegal.
One could argue that, regardless, Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions states that inhumane treatment, and outrages upon personal dignity
are prohibited - despite this, not a single American soldier (or their
superiors) that were responsible for raping or killing of Vietnamese
civilians was charged as a war criminal... so, all such cases were
either covered up by the military, or in the less than 50 cases where
the criminals faced any kind of punishment, the criminals were merely
court-martialed, serving only a few years in prison on reduced
sentences.
These are not war crimes, because the definition of war crime, as discussed, is not actually an act that is prohibited by the laws of war. A war crime is: "When the enemy does something nasty to us, and we want to rub their noses in it".
The sad part about this is that it came from a good place.
Because the Geneva Convention was genuinely created by a humanitarian, a Swiss Businessman called Henry Dunant saw the cruel and pointless suffering of injured soldiers during the war, and decided to do something about it by establishing the Red Cross, and he was even the protocol leader during the First Geneva Peace Conference of 1863... he wanted to make the world a better place and reduce the suffering caused by war. He was an idealist. The problem is that ideals are no match for politics. Whilst outwardly supporting and ratifying the Geneva Convention, every cosigner did so under the same belief:
"This is to stop you from doing harm to us,"
And ultimately, this is the reason why I am a pacifist. Because I don't believe in just violence or war... I don't hold the same belief as those countries that allows them to justify their own warcrimes.
See, they have the belief that violence, murder, atrocity and even war can be just, if done for the right reasons. What are the right reasons? Well, they're whatever reasons we decide upon. I mean, they have to be, right? Because we're "the good guys".
But the worst crime of all, as far as I'm concerned, is that when they fed you that garbage, you fell for it.
I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I'm going to go listen to an Edwin Starr song...
