It’s not a trivial issue so your 2nd paragraph is pointless. This is the 2nd time in a year that NK has attacked SK. It’s the exact opposite of trivial.
Do you really need more evidence than “almost every building on the island was damaged”? Yes, I understand that there were only four deaths and two of those were military, but that does not discount the injuries to other people and the damage to structures.
Human Rights Watch does qualify the MB-21 as inherently indiscriminate.
That’s because you are improperly addressing a false view of context and ignoring what the case law and precedents actually say. Again, the law has given examples of indiscriminate weaponry. That doesn’t mean that we need to have an exhaustive list of indiscriminate weaponry, or that weaponry that is less indiscriminate than the examples is not indiscriminate. You are suggesting that rather than use the actual metrics that determine whether or not a weapon is indiscriminate, we invent new ones and see how analogous they are to other indiscriminate weapons.
Again, indiscriminate weapons are those that, among other things "cannot be directed at a specific military objective " and “long-range [weaponry] which cannot be aimed exactly at the objective”. I have provided cites showing that the Grad rocket cannot be used for point-targets. You have not disputed this fact.
The fact that the V-2 was very inaccurate, or biological weaponry has absolutely no specificity at all does not mean that the Grad “can be aimed at a specific military objective” or that it “can be aimed exactly at an objective”. Your own attempt at a rebuttal relied on the fact that the Grad can hit targets, at short range, largely by filling an entire area with high explosives due to the sheer volume of fire.
And this is the fundamental fallacy you’re using.
The case law and precedent is not structured in such a way that “if it’s like these weapons, it’s indiscriminate”. But that weaponry which ""cannot be directed at a specific military objective " and/or “long-range [weaponry] which cannot be aimed exactly at the objective” are indiscriminate.
Since you are using analogies, your position is a bit more like
“Heavy things shall be defined as something that the average human being could not easily lift.”
“What are some examples?”
“Well, elephants are heavy. Battleships are heavy. Mountains are heavy.”
“Your claims make no sense, a 400 pound weight is nothing like an elephant, or a battleship, or a mountain.”
“Yes, but under the definition it…”
“It’s nothing like those things.”
The Grad rocket can not be directed at a specific military objective and cannot be aimed exactly at a military objective. Especially when we begin to push it to the edge of its operational range, rather than at short range which, as you quoted, only achieves a measure of success due to its huge volume of fire.
There’s also the fact that the use of weapons is situational. Taking out a square mile or two of desert that has only troops in it is far different from taking out a square mile or two of populated territory with both civilians and military targets in it.
Well, a cite was already provided that the attack on Yeonpeyong effectively damaged virtually every building on the island.
As for a specific map, I’m not sure that there’s one available currently. There’s a pretty shitty one at Wikipedia that doesn’t seem to be based on satellite imagery, is drawn rather than photographic, and lists the source of NK rockets at something different than satellite analysis seems to confirm. The arrows indicating northern fire may be roughly drawn, however, and there may have been a second battery to the north west that also opened up on the island. This is another map that seems to (perhaps) form the basis for Wikipedia’s map, but it seems to have the same flaws and may or may not be accurate. This map seems to be somewhat accurate, without showing as much detail as might be preferred.
SK’s military base is on the western tip of the island.
So, basically we have two possible scenarios:
[ol][li]North Korea attacked using indiscriminate weaponry and damaged virtually every building on the island.[/li][li]North Korea attacked using discriminate weapons and damaged virtually every building on the island, including schools and clinics.[/ol][/li]
Quite the choice, huh?
Actually, I tried to look at that cite in the OP, and all I saw was a link to the seven page thread on this board. That didn’t strike me as an actual cite at all.
But upon further review, after looking at the maps you provided, I think you’re probably right on your overall point (even though I disagree about your characterization of a BM-21). The island is of sufficient size that the inaccuracy of the weapon doesn’t explain the concentration of fire around the township; and actually seems to indicate that the town was the actual target.
I think the military base is indeed of such a size (large enough that if targeted accurately, the estimated CEP would mostly fall within the boundaries of the base itself) that indicates that the Norks could have accurately targeted military facilities with that weapon, but they didn’t.
So, upon reflection, I think you’re probably right, that the North Koreans illegally targeted civilians in this attack.
Interesting. Must have had my cache filled with the wrong cut and pasted link. I’m on an iPod at the moment, so certainly not ideal for cutting and pasting links, but
Should do it.
I think.
Clickable link here.
Thanks for the assist. The article is showing up as truncated for me. Folks who want to look it up and find a version that doesn’t seem ti be cut off can google “wall street journal yeonpyong virtually every building”.
Well, if not for that confusion, we could have wrapped up the thread in a few hours, and what fun would that be?
If I understand your post correctly, then NK’s war crime is not the use of indiscriminate weapons, but discriminately targetting civilians.
Which is a fair point, and goes back to something mentioned earlier - that the Norks seemed to be aiming at the center of the island hoping to hit something, including but not limited to the military base on one end of the island. They were targeting the whole island in hopes of hitting the military base. Does that constitute a war crime? Perhaps, but it seems almost to be in the nature of the low quality of the NK targeting systems - this is the best they can do. So rather than aiming at one end of the island and having much of their barrage go into the sea, they aimed at the middle and hoped to destroy the island as a whole.
It seems almost a moot point - I thought that waging a war of aggression was determined to be a war crime since Nuremberg, and a larger war crime than indiscriminately targeting civilians.
Regards,
Shodan
Yep. One can use precision-guided weapons in an indiscriminate manner, by aiming them at non-military targets.
I wouldn’t say this is an open-and-shut case, beyond a reasonable doubt, that it is a war crime, but it is a very plausible and compelling case.
I don’t exclude the possibility that they thought aiming at the middle of the island was the best way to score a hit on the military facilities, but there’s two problems with that: one, the weapon isn’t so inaccurate that the hits were going to go all over the damned place, and two, the impacts seem disproportionately within the town, indicating that they were generally hitting what they were aiming at. (Of course, we don’t really know how many rockets hit in unpopulated areas, but it does seem that the town was hit far harder than other parts of the island.)
Completely and totally agree. It’s like raising the point that a drug dealer committed a series of murders with a sawed-off shotgun. How many people get outraged at the illegal modification of the gun?
I didn’t want to flip through the whole thread, but since Finn’s position is essentially that it used a weapon that was not accurate enough to accomplish the tactical goal of the strike without heavy collateral damage… did NK have a better option?
That’s an irrelevant question, however. A lack of accurate weaponry generally does not enable a state to blaze away with indiscriminate fire.
The Allies’ indiscriminate bombing of German cities is generally justified on the grounds that it was the only available means of achieving the strategic goal of knocking out German war production.
You should check the dates of ratification for the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute as well as check the bit about civilian casualties that are clearly excessive to concrete military goals.
Yes the NK had a better option. NOT FIRING ON THE ISLAND.
That is a point you’ve mentioned before. If the conclusion is that therefore NK should not go to war at all, that is clearly true. However, it opens up the temptation to locate military targets close enough to civilians that, given the limits on the weaponry of likely enemies, mean that those enemies cannot strike against you at all.
Not that the South Koreans were doing anything like this.
And as Ravenman mentions, this seems like a bit of a distraction. If I were going to bring up the NK leadership on charges, I can think of a lot of things they have done that are a lot worse and less ambiguous.
It’s a bit like what Isaac Asimov put forth as the quintessential joke -
Regards,
Shodan
One could argue with great confidence that the GC and the Rome Statute simply added additional clarity to the existing prohibitions on the use of excessive force against civilians.
In any case, the customary international law on the requirement for proportionality in the use of force dates back to at least the early 19th century. There was a case in which British raiders attacked an American ship that was believed to have been harassing the Canadians. I’m trying to remember the name of the case, but it is escaping me at the moment. Despite the hole in my memory, it is a very well known case… Christ, I can’t believe I’m blanking on this.
In any case, the GC and the Rome Statute didn’t invent the concept of limitations on the conduct of war that affects civilians. The dates for those treaties doesn’t matter.
The dates do matter because it isn’t as if all the laws that were codified were part of customary international law, let alone codified international law from the 19th century. The very fact that we waged a world war with extensive use of poison gas and another fought under the principle of Total War shows that prohibitions against those modes of war were far from universal.
Shodan: yes, it is a minor point. But if you check the thread that got closed, or the pit thread it spawned, you’ll see that not only were all other issues hammered to pieces, but some people were happy to use a broader scope to drag a number of other issues in. I had written something on the Grad right before the thread was locked, and wanted to addrss only that issue Ina thread which would hopefully not get locked or see another handful of Warnings.
Also, under the law it’s a crime to shield military forces with civilians and defended towns are considered differently from undefended towns, and a degree of collateral damage is allowed in the pursuit of valid military objectives. It is not as simple as saying that war can not go on around civilians.