It may not seem like it, but wars do have rules. These are contained in the Geneva Convention and beyond. Serious offences like murder, rape or mass persecution are known as “crimes against humanity”.
The International Criminal Court (“ICC”) is the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. The U.S., Russia, China and Ukraine are not members of the ICC. Meanwhile, the ICC has focused its work on African dictators.
Source: https://www.npr.org
Biden has called Putin a war criminal. But what about the U.S.? More recent U.S. war criminals include George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and many others. Then there is Tony Blair from the U.K. and a host of other Europeans! Historically, those who were prosecuted for war crimes were the Nazis, the leaders of Japan (WW2), Liberia, Chad, Serbia and Bosnia because they lost the war and were adversaries of the U.S. There will be no prosecution of Saudi Arabia for war crimes committed in Yemen or the U.S. military and political leadership for war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Vietnam, Korea amongst others.
If we demand justice for the Ukrainians then shouldn’t 1 million people killed by the U.S. in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen deserve the same outcome? This collective hypocrisy makes a rules-based world which abides by international law some form of utopia.
Civilians in every war have been considered legitimate targets. In the summer of 1965, then-Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara called the bombing raids north of Saigon that left thousands dead an effective means of communication with the government in Hanoi. McNamara, six years before he died, had the capacity for self-reflection. Interviewed in the documentary, "The Fog of War," he was repentant, not only about targeting Vietnamese civilians but about the aerial targeting of civilians in Japan in World War II, overseen by Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay.
Industrial killing defines modern warfare. It is impersonal mass slaughter. It is administered by vast bureaucratic structures that perpetuate the killing over months and years. It is sustained by heavy industry that produces a steady flow of weapons, munitions, tanks, planes, helicopters, battleships, submarines, missiles and mass-produced supplies, along with mechanized transports that ferry troops and armaments by rail, ship, cargo planes and trucks to the battlefield. It mobilizes industrial, governmental and organization structures for total war. It centralizes systems of information and internal control. It is rationalized for the public by specialists and experts, drawn from the military establishment, along with pliant academics and the media.
Industrial war destroys existing value systems that protect and nurture life, replacing them with fear, hatred and a dehumanization of those who we are made to believe deserve to be exterminated. It is driven by emotions, not truth or fact. It obliterates nuance, replacing it with an infantile binary universe of us and them. It drives competing narratives, ideas and values underground and vilifies all who do not speak in the national cant that replaces civil discourse and debate. It is touted as an example of the inevitable march of human progress, when in fact it brings us closer and closer to mass obliteration in a nuclear holocaust. It mocks the concept of individual heroism, despite the feverish efforts of the military and the mass media to sell this myth to naïve young recruits and a gullible public. It is the Frankenstein of industrialized societies. War, as Alfred Kazin warned, is "the ultimate purpose of technological society." Our real enemy is within.
War is never the answer. No one is right. And might is not right. There must be a mechanism for legitimate arbitration. And all nations must accept its decision and are members of the court. After over 200,000 years on the planet we still behave like barbarians! We are allowing the military industrial complex to dictate our destiny. Should we allow this?
References:
The dangerous myth of American innocence: only our enemies commit “war crimes”, Chris Hedges, March 24, 2022 (https://www.salon.com).
What is a war crime and could Putin be prosecuted over Ukraine? Dominic Casciani, BBC News.
How could Vladimir Putin be prosecuted for war crimes, www.theguardian.com, 4 April 2022.
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