No kidding.
Yeah, OK. Clearly you’ve steered away from military service in your lifetime. I don’t care how many people blather on about the “just following orders” meme WRT Nazi Germany, it isn’t necessarily applicable here. The ROE are malleable, as is the urban theater we are asking American soldiers to adapt to on the fly. Especially when the line between civilians and combatants is as blurred as it is because nobody is wearing an identifiable uniform that immediately signals to our soldiers “enemy ahoy!”.
The bottom line here is that America needs to wake the fuck up politically speaking and NOT…SEND…SOLDIERS…INTO WARS…THAT ARE UNNECESSARY. Like the Iraq War.
And I am in favor of us pulling out of that fucking quagmire IMMEDIATELY.
The realpolitik issue at hand with that is Iranian hegemony in the ME, which we stupidly enabled by removing Saddam Hussein.
Iran’s government is radical and crazy. Our government is beginning to be xenophobic, too. This has zero to do with maintaining a large standing military and everything to do with knee-jerk politically based wars that make very little sense.
What??? Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They had nukes or were close to getting them. They were a threat to the whole world. They were responsible for 911.
Saddam did not like us.
They pissed off Cheney.
Surely you aren’t suggesting that out of a large group of testosterone-filled men, there won’t be ANY who are “itching to use their killer training” and put their skills to the ultimate test? I don’t suppose their are any who are thinking “I hope I never get sent to a hot-zone!”, either? The fact of the matter is, these soldiers exist. I can’t put a figure on how many, but how many is too many? More than 5? 1 in every barracks? Fellow soldiers are the ones who should be eradicating these types from the forces, but it seems they tend to lionize the former, and ostracise the latter.
This why the Afghanistan campaign is a myre. I was watching a Dispatches documentary by an undercover reporter in Afghanistan who managed to gain the trust of a band of Taliban militia. They went to villages and provided food. The reporter asked villagers what they thought of the Taliban and how they behaved when they were in their village. Every reply was positive.
The Taliban are winning over the “hearts and minds” of the ordinary Afghans precisely because idiots who think they’re still fighting WW2 can’t understand why running a bombing run against a village filled with civilians is a bad idea.
While I’m certainly of the view that what happened in that video (and other similar incidents) was tragic, calling them “warcrimes” and demanding these soldiers be tried as murderers is hyperbolic nonsense that seems to demonstrate a substantial ignorance of what exactly war means.
I’m sympathetic to the outrage over unnecessary deaths, and share the sentiment the the Iraq war is an unforgivable and unnecessary mess, but the outrage over the Iraq war shouldn’t spill over into lashing out at the military tasked with conducting that war.
First, I’d note that “war crimes” have a very specific meaning, which is not any civilian death during war. Civilian deaths do happen, it’s inevitable. I’m not trying to simply say that “war is hell” and we ought to accept civilian casualties, but on the other hand, it’s simply naive to think that the U.S. can be engaged in conflicts the size of Iraq and Afghanistan without there being some civilian deaths. And even then, there is an enormous body of law which governs how armed conflicts are conducted, and it’s that body of law which governs this incident, and that’s why we haven’t charged these soldiers with murder, as some people are advocating.
I’d note that a “war crime” requires a “grave breach” of the Geneva Convention. Now, what constitutes a “grave breach” can be defined by individual treaties, it generally requires a “willfull” killing of civilians. Cite: 18 U.S.C. 2441
Now, from my viewing of that video, I can clearly see weapons. All of them are not armed, but there are a few. And with some understanding of the surrounding context of the engagement, I think at best you could make an argument for a negligent, but not a willful killing of civilians here. That’s my take on the “war crimes” angle.
And second, I’d point out that the Laws of War, which are the governing rules for armed conflict provide some, but not absolute protection for civilians and there’s rather clear room for interpretation. Civilian immunity is not absolute and the state is not required to ensure zero casualties.
I appreciate the moral outrage associated with civilian deaths, but calling for these soldiers to be tried as murders ignores an enormous body of law developed over the last thousand years to specifically govern military engagements.
No I’m not suggesting that they aren’t ANY…there are. I knew a few. They are crazy. The majority of soldiers I knew when I was an enlisted man, and the many officers I knew and met during my Dad’s 36 year military career as an Army officer himself live more along the credo of “train like you will fight a war tomorrow, but hope you never have to”.
War sucks and the soldiers know it. Most would rather be at home with their families or partying after hours with their friends. Oh yeah, the Army parties. Hard to believe, I know.
We oughta remember when we talk about this stuff that the whole “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” was pretty much our idea. We won the second world war and everybody else lost, so they were more willing to listen to our idealistic crap about an overarching law of humanity that all people were obliged to obey, regardless of national affiliation.
Of course, there were cynics who suggested that it was just about us hanging the losers, but putting a nice face on it, like we gave a shit about such things. We would have hanged them anyway, but this made us feel all Old Testament about it, like judgment upon the nations.
About that same time that we established the legal principle of the responsibilities of commanding officers to control subordinates, the principle that held that even if a commander is entirely ignorant of crimes committed by his subordinates, he was nonetheless responsible since it was his duty and obligation to be aware. So, we found him guilty and hanged him.
We are the ones who set these principles in place. I would like to think we meant it.
Your idea!!?!
Geneva lies close to Aspen does it?
Nonsense of course, but you are indeed the leading nation in the notion “It’s all right when we do it!” while at the same time having the largest mouth to cry FOUL on anyone else.
Where do you live? How much do you guys pay us in rent?
Your side did make a big innovation in warfare rules by making it ok for civilians, errr… resistance, errr… combattants to wear civilian clothing .
This doesn’t make any sense. 
Are you saying none was armed (which is what “all of them are not armed” means), or that only some of them were armed (i.e. “not all of them are armed”)?
Yup, pretty much. First because you used a blog as your cite, and second because war is hell. There’s really no way of getting around that. It always has been hell. Soldiers and civilians always get killed.
Despite all our technology, it really is difficult to differentiate whom the enemy is in this modern type of warfare where there are no uniformed enemies. Especially from a moving aircraft far away.
Forgive me, but I’m going to guess this was lost because English isn’t your first language? Although, admittedly connotation is lost through text and that statement could be ambiguous standing alone, but I think I pretty clearly meant that some, but not all, of them were armed.
Elucidator is right, the U.S. was one of the main driving forces behind the post-WWII development of international humanitarian law, but I think you’re too willing to find “war crimes” without a firm understanding of what precisely “war crimes” means.
There is a legal regime that governs warfare, and it’s not civilian law. This doctrine specifically permits killing, and while there is a prohibition against willfully killing civilians and an imperative to avoid civilian casualties when possible, the fact remains that civilians will die in war, and the international legal regimes take that into account. I get that people don’t buy “this is war” as an explanation for why this happened, but I think refusing to acknowledge that it IS an armed conflict ignores that fact that armed conflict is governed by rules, but those rules are not what we, in largely western, modern societies are used to.
The doctrine is also open to interpretation, which is why you have a few voices calling events like these war crimes, but I’d also note that you don’t have substantial voices from the military community (in the U.S. or abroad) calling these things war crimes, nor do you have our allies or other international states pushing to prosecute the U.S. for having committed war crimes.
I’m not saying the video isn’t tragic, nor the many events like it that have happened in Iraq and Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasions.
This video should be a lesson. Within the military it should be a lesson in target-identification and necessity. Outside the military, it should serve as a warning, that when you invade other countries and engage in wars (on false grounds or not) people will die, combatants and civilians.
I think they made a mistake here, but I don’t think it rises to the level of a crime, under domestic or international law.
Not even close - as an Englishman it’s very much my first language.
Ah… fair enough, mistaken english on your part (are you non-native btw?).
I guess the formulation “all x are not y” is an Americanism along the same lines as “I could care less” (i.e. a common phrase which actually means the complete opposite to what’s intended)?
Will pop a quick thread into MPSIMS rather than discuss in this one though.
What? Again?
Now I would like some cites on this.
You were a driving force convicting the conquered Germans for warcrimes, and after that? What?
The biggest crime is that they tried to pass off this incident as if there was no wrong-doing whatsoever, and would have kept this evidence from the world, but for a whistleblower’s actions.
Now, whatever your views, I’m sure you’d have to admit that this incident would not be used as a recommended practice video for how to behave in future circumstances.
This thread still chugging along I see.
Well, it’s understandable that you haven’t heard of them, since little is known outside of a select circle of people, but I believe Fuzzy Wombats was referring to an obscure organization called ‘The United Nations’ and a treaty that is cryptically known as ‘The (4th) Geneva Convention’ (though the US had roles in earlier one’s too…but again, not many people have ever heard of ‘The Geneva Convention’, so it’s understandable that you didn’t know this).
-XT
The fact that it is numbered the 4th might be a clue to that there already was a Geneva Convention before the war.