I already did. Specifically in the context of the drive-by to which I responded. One might make the case that in the era of Total War, cities were simply targets and any tactic was acceptable. However, to defend the deliberate use of ring fires and firestorms as “justified” by the rather erratic distribution of a couple hundred 220 kilo bombs that were poorly delivered by inadequate aircraft does not establish a higher moral ground.
It is a non sequitur because you turned the question around to ask if the non-signatory would be bound by the terms laid out. It is a nonsensical question, the answer is obviously no. When I wrote “the conditions would nonetheless apply as they would between two signatories,” it was clearly meant from the signatory’s perspective. It is all that has been talked about so far.
I’d suggest talking a good look at and reading Geneva and the applicable parts of the Hague for a clarification of this. Geneva provides specific details of what treatment prisoners deserve. All it does is build on the foundation in the Hague and elsewhere that prisoners are to be treated humanely, must be fed, cared for, can’t be punished for successful escapes if later recaptured on the battlefield, etc. “Consciously and explicitly putting aside” Geneva is tantamount to claiming that you aren’t bound by your hometown from killing your neighbor because murder isn’t defined as a crime in your local ordinances. Even if it isn’t defined by your hometown, at a minimum it is by your state and at a national level.
Susanann,
We got them back by nuking their ass twice.
My appologies to you sailor and to anyone else who might have taken offence. Latro and I have lost touch with each other. I did not have a current email address for him nor could I obtain one here. Thank you for your understanding.
Back to the OP: the Japanese treated POWS abominably because
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the leadership thought they were embarking upon an all-or-nothing final battle for the survival of their conception of Japan.
There was no incentive to treat prisoners well. -
since Japanese troops were expected to fight to the death and not be captured, there was no incentive to treat Allied POWS well so that Japanese prisoners would be treated well.
3)Japanese military discipline was incredibly harsh and brutalised the Japanese troops.
There’s a bit of a hole in this point. While by the end of the war it had become an all-or-nothing battle, at the beginning of the war it wasn’t seen that way by most Japanese leadership. The Japanese plan for the war was to take by force the resources it couldn’t acquire through diplomacy that it needed to fight its war with China. To protect these conquests, a string of bases would be built in the Pacific, upon which the US would bleed its strength until the (in their eyes) decadent Americans and Allies could take no more and would be driven to the negotiating table. Japan never planned on ‘defeating’ the US, it planned on forcing it to give up the fight in a manner somewhat akin to Vietnam. The vast majority of Allied prisoners taken by the Japanese were captured in the first 100 days, when Japan launched an unbroken string of conquests. Abuse, murder and mistreatment began immediately, at a time when Japan still though it could, and would win. Going further back, Japanese treatment of Chinese prisoners in the 1930s was equally horrific.