UKC

It would seem to me that that various war crimes are being perpetrated across the globe at the present time.
For instance by ISIS in Iraq, by hocoburom (SP?) in Nigeria and arguably by Hamas and Israel over Gaza.
Does the war have to have finished before a war crime can be declared? Or is is because of the sensitive nature of these wars being to a greater extent difficult because of the religious aspects involved?
Does this mean that the Islamist war criminals will never be brought to boot because they are protected by (supposedly) words in the Koran.

In reply to Al Evans:

Well you can only be guilty of war crimes if you lose, so obviously you have to wait for a result.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

Is this true? I thought some of both sides got found guilty in the Balklans conflicts.

In reply to Al Evans:

Sorry, I was being flippant Al. I guess it's not always true, but I get the impression you're more likely to be tried if you're not American (or British).

In reply to Al Evans:

I think its more about the fog of war, and having to gather evidence, however I have recently heard ban ki moon (sp?) say he wanted to investigate war crimes in gaza.

In terms of definition, it seems to be anything systemic ie ethnic cleansing, genocides, rape etc, and also seems to need large numbers.

Whilst clearly british and american soldiers have comitted war crimes in the past, all that I am aware of were isolated, and not part of the army's objectives, and I guess this is why none have gone to the war crimes tribunal.

The fact that we do try and convict our soldiers that do cross the line probably supports this view.

In reply to Al Evans:

There used to be a thing called the Geneva Convention that for several generations now has been 'conveniently' more or less forgotten. (As on these forums, perhaps?) Originallly, a war crime was any act that fell outside of the rules of the convention. Yes, it really was that simple. Wasn't it?

In reply to balmybaldwin:

What about the systematic fire-bombing of Japanese cities in the second world war, and two atomic bombs dropped on cities full of Japanese civilians? I remember seeing a really good documentary called 'The Fog of War', which is basically a long interview with Robert McNamara. From what I recall, he concedes they were behaving like war criminals, and he believes they would have been tried as such if they'd lost the war.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
Where does the "Dambusters" episode come into this? Attacks resulting on hundreds of civillian deaths which would now be illegal under the Geneva Convention (I think).

Would this be a war crime if carried out today?

I'm asking this out of genuine interest...I tried to Google the question, but some of the resulting answers are a little bit belligerent and defensive. (ie 'how dare you even suggest this is a war crime, out brave boys were fighting the nazis')

Not disputing the skill and bravery of the pilots...just asking the question of how you view an action through the prism of history and which side you're on.

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

The bombing of civillian cities by the british, americans, germans wasnt considered a war crime I dont think, I dont know why other than the excuse they were aiming for factories. Dont know what they would think now, but bombing in the early days was a blunt inacurate weapon.

I dont really have a good knowledge of the eastern pacific part of the war, but there is an argument that the nukes dropped saved more lives than they took given the stance of the japanese at the time (suicide bombers, honour preventing surrender?), especially given that they really cemented the idea of the nuclear weapon as a deterrent over the next 70years. Thats not to say it wasnt a war crime.

In reply to ThunderCat:

I don't know what the rules were at the time. Whether they're applied fairly is another question.

As far as I know, the Americans refuse to allow their military personnel to be tried for war crimes. I may be wrong, I just remember reading it, in 'Rogue State' maybe, which is does ague the case for American being a rogue state under their own definition (I'm not trying to single out the Americans deliberately).

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Seems like if you if you want to deliberately kill civilians, use a plane to do it. If you haven't got planes, you're stuffed!!!

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

I don't know enough at all to comment either I'm afraid. I've just never felt entirely comfortable celebrating the dambuster thing.

In reply to Al Evans:
I also recall the interview with McNamara , and that he felt they were in a real damned if you, damned if you don't situation as the casualty estimates for invading Japan were so high, and politically undefendable.

To Al - if you want to in and arrest some members of ISIS for war crimes, go right ahead. The problem there is one off practicality, not political sensitivity

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:

'Fog of War' is on YouTube, not sure Sony Pictures will be too happy about that.

youtube.com/watch?v=nwXF6UdkeI4&

In reply to ThunderCat:

You've forgotten Coventry, London Blitz et all.

In reply to balmybaldwin:


Yes they were aiming for factories in some cases, but bombing was too inaccurate and it was considered more effective to bomb the workers in their houses around them to kill them and deprive them of sleep. The next "logical" step was to expand the target to include the whole city. After that even cities with no industry were targeted. To put it bluntly this was "total war". This area bombing was a policy endorsed by Churchill and his cabinet, and military leaders, although Churchill, to his shame, tried to distance himself from it after the war. This is the main reason why the Bomber Command crews didn't receive a Campaign Medal after the war.

Area bombing was a deliberate policy to kill and maim civilians and destroy their homes in the mistaken, hope that it would demoralise them to the extent that the population would overthrow Hitler so as to end the war.

In fact it had the oposite affect, as did the Blitz, in that it strengthened the population's resolve to fight on and beat the enemy.

"Total War" might be seen as a war crime, but the real crime is war itself, and represents humankind's inability to resolve so many disputes peacefully..

In reply to Trangia:

The origins of the Second War a 'dispute', discuss.

In reply to Mike Highbury:

Have you read Max Hastings' "All Hell Let Loose"?

Anyway can you suggest a more appropriate word?

In reply to balmybaldwin:


It covers a range from abusing a single POW up to massacres of entire populations.
There is at least one case of a British soldier being found guilty of war crimes in relation to the killing of a prisoner but that was dealt with by UK military court martial.
I think the idea is the international court only gets involved if the local justice system fails to do anything.

In reply to Al Evans:

The other crime is to ignore the lessons of history.

WW2 showed that the Blitz, area bombing of Germany and fire bombing of Japan's cities didn't cause the enemy to give up, in fact it achieved the opposite and strengthened the people's resolve.

Exactly the same is happening in the Hamas/Israel conflict. Hamas will never achieve it's aims by firing missiles into Israel any more than poking a wasp's nest with a stick will get rid of the wasps.

Israel's disproportionate shelling and bombing of Gaza won't achieve a long term solution, in fact it's strengthened the popularity and support for Hamas in Gaza, and brought down world wide condemnation on Israel (with the exception of Mr Cameron).

In reply to Trangia:


Yes.

Pretty depressing read all round. Rather disabused me of any notion that 'we' played a particularly significant part in the war other than effectively holding the line for several years. As to war crimes, virtually every nation committed them but some (e.g. Japan/Germany) did so systematically.

In reply to Trangia: IIRC it was actually well known - from experience of the blitz, and the Spanish Civil War, that the demoralisation and productivity effects of bombing was vastly overstated - one of Churchill's advisers - Solly? - overstated and falsified the evidence to ensure that the bombing would continue.
And there is an unpleasant anecdote of Bomber Harris being stopped for speeding one night as he drove home - he was warned by the policeman that he if he wasn't careful he could kill someone. 'Young man', he is supposed to have replied, 'I kill thousands of people every night.'

In reply to Skyfall:



That could be a significant part? Though I'm not saying war isn't hell.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

The positive effect (for the Allies) of area bombing of Germany is that it tied up thousands of men, fighter aircraft and artillery in in anti aircraft defence at a time when they were badly needed at the front and this may have materially have affected the outcome of the war.

In reply to Trangia:
The replies so far all seem to have focussed on mass executions, mostly by bombings, isn't mass rape a war crime? Also the way the executions are carried out too, I can actually see a difference between shooting someone at a distance (or bombing them) and stoning to death and beheading someone.
Generally targeted deliberate mass killing of women and children is also usually considered a war crime

In reply to Timmd:


Yes, you're right, of course it was. I think the real point is we still tend to overlook the much larger part played by Russia in particular but also the hugely influential economic/industrial power of the USA which made the outcome more or less inevitable once fully committed. Our military performance was also pretty woeful in many respects, which is usually glossed over. However, without taking a stand almost alone, things would probably have turned out v differently.

Back to the OP, it's often forgotten that British and American troops pillaged and raped on quite a scale when fighting through Germany. Though not systematically and certainly not implicitly encouraged.

In reply to Trangia:


I think when you're having a proper war, 'total war' i.e. you're fighting to prevent your nation being destroyed then there is no law. Law can only exist in a meaningful way if a body has the means to enforce it, otherwise it's just a voluntary code and when fighting for survival it's not surprising those nicety's will go out of the window.

At the end of the day, no international body can do anything to stop a developed, well armed nation in a state of total war invading another nation, short of physically getting in it's way and destroying it's army. A pretty big ask from another nation who isn't involved in the conflict.

The wars we have these days are not real wars, they are just little spats where we basically bomb some massively less advanced nations a bit until we judge we've spent enough money on it.

The numbers lost (in terms of population percentage) are tiny (for us) and they are often fought at arms length so we can afford to abide by our own little let of rules and be all caring as we make sure to only kill 100's of people with bullets rather than gas because that's not allowed.

But if Britain was under a full scale land invasion from a nation with an army to match our own then any concept of the 'rules of war' would go out of the window pretty quickly when the survival of our nation was at risk. I think it would simply be a matter of kill them all at any cost.

As for things like systematic rape etc, the only reason I don't think we'd resort to that even in a total war situation is simply because it would be of minimum use to our aim, why bother sending in a load of men to kill and rape the population of a village in order to scare the locals into submission when you have the ability to wipe them off the map at the press of a button. After you've left a few villages as nothing but a smoldering mark on the earth, the rest would fall into line pretty quickly.

In reply to Lord_ash2000:

As for things like systematic rape etc, the only reason I don't think we'd resort to that even in a total war situation is simply because it would be of minimum use to our aim, why bother sending in a load of men to kill and rape the population of a village in order to scare the locals into submission when you have the ability to wipe them off the map at the press of a button. After you've left a few villages as nothing but a smoldering mark on the earth, the rest would fall into line pretty quickly.

Your first point about there being no rules in war is valid. However there is the point of rules within the theatre of war that are basic humanity, you don't rape, you don't slaughter babies in arms or their mothers, you don't overstep the accepted grounds of humanity. You don't chop a man to bits slowly, you shoot him in the head, you bury them , even if it's a mass grave from respect not to just cover up your atrocities.
There are lots of activities going on in the Muslim wars that are beyond the bounds of 'fair' war and should definitely be seen as war atrocities.

In reply to FesteringSore:


No I haven't, I just didn't mention because it's very rare that we get asked to celebrate the bravery and skill of the Luftwaffe in the way we do 617 squadron - we already condemn them (and rightly so!) and have hours of newsreel footage of the devastation, burning wreckage etc that they leave behind...

In reply to Al Evans:

Yes I do see what you mean, I was talking about it in a more general sense. There is a difference between doing whatever you need to do to gain an advantage in a war and needless violence towards individual people / groups.

It's as if in many of the Muslim parts of the world they are doing stuff like this to punish the populations on a very local level for not submitting to which ever particular version of Islam they are trying to force on them. I'm thinking mainly in Syria/Iraq/Africa here. Maybe they are just evil but I think it's probably more a case of it being a very effective way for an army with little real hardware to inflict terror in a population.

There has been a long history of pretty brutal violence in Africa by rebels fighting for control and a lot of these were not Islamicly motivated. I guess you'll be pretty scared of so and so's army if you know they will come to your village and hack you all to death with machete's if you don't fall in line and/or fight for them.

I guess its hard to fight conventional wars in places where neither side have much hardware or proper armies as we'd know them. It's more just groups of men with guns and a pick up truck.

In reply to ThunderCat:

I'm sure the Luftwaffe crews were just as barave as the allies cews, and no more guilty of war crimes , it is the deliberate acts of sadism perpetrarted in war that I consider war crimes, sometimes a General, sometimes a single man, all should be punished. It should be simple to differentiate between an act of war and an act of pyscopathy.

In reply to Al Evans:


My original point was about whether we should celebrate and glorify the Dambusters when we demonise the Luftwaffe. I might have deviated slightly.

In reply to ThunderCat:

Thats a bit irrellevant, like saying did Maradonna have the hand of god or the hand of satan, to the victor his spoils, to the psycopath his just desserts please.

In reply to Al Evans: Yes, I have to say, my biggest regret about not being religious and have some belief in an afterlife is not what happens to me - I'm reconciled to the fact that I'll be nothing - but what didn't happen to some deeply unpleasant and sadistic people who I would dearly like to have seen suffer.

In reply to ThunderCat:

I think we are right to celebrate the dambusters. Not because the casualties inflicted should be ignored, they shouldn't. They should be celebrated for the fact the crews actually pulled off this slightly hair brained feat of engineering.

In reply to Al Evans:
Here is your cure for insomnia.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/jsp-383


(Believe me, this is the abridged version of this subject!)

In reply to Lord_ash2000:

I've read that ISIS have billions of funding. If that is right, they should be able to afford more than a pick-up truck or two.

Is ISIS better understood, not as some medieval throwback, or even as a form of Islam, but as the Khmer Rouge in a new guise, in another place?

In reply to 1poundSOCKS:
Curtis LeMay, who instigated the fire-bombing of Japanese cities, said at the time that if the US were to lose the war he would be tried as a war criminal. He didn't give a damn.

He would probably also have started WW3 over Cuba had Kennedy not overruled him.

In reply to Andy Long:

I watched it again last night. Scary stuff.

In reply to Andy Long:

>Curtis LeMay, who instigated the fire-bombing of Japanese cities, said at >the time that if the US were to lose the war he would be tried as a war >criminal. He didn't give a damn.


Interesting and intelligent bloke. Influenced the set up of RAND after the war - initially to war game a successful nuclear exchange with the soviets. Dark but compelling shit. Endlessly fascinating think tank / policy lobby that has its fingers in so many pies of domestic and foreign policy and most of the big names in U.S. revolving government ( not the actual elected politicians) seem to have been alumni.

D