Meanwhile, in Germany...

[Aaron MkII]

That's actually irrelevant to the legality.

[Simon_Jester]

I suppose, but it does affect how often medics will have to "defend their patients." And themselves. And how much firepower they'll need to do it with. Unarmed medics work fine if no one's shooting at them. They run into problems if people start shooting at them disproportionately.

Hm.

It would be nice if someone held guerillas responsible for war crimes.

[Aaron MkII]

I suppose, but it does affect how often medics will have to "defend their patients." And themselves. And how much firepower they'll need to do it with. Unarmed medics work fine if no one's shooting at them. They run into problems if people start shooting at them disproportionately.

Hm.

It would be nice if someone held guerillas responsible for war crimes.

True enough.

Adam, have you actually read the conventions? They have pretty hard and strict limits on behavior in war, insurgents having to adhere to them sets them up for harsher punishment in general then trying them as criminals.

[Simon_Jester]

How would you go about that responsibility though? It seems to me that it'd just be taking even more power away from the weak and giving it to the strong.

Not that I expect any better from international law in practice, though.

(If they were strong in the first place, they probably wouldn't have to be guerillas.)

I'm not sure, but look at the consequences of not doing it too, before you rush to judgment.

What happens to "freedom fighters" who commit as many war crimes as they feel the need to? What do they turn into? Sometimes, it's a totally viable strategy for guerillas to force compliance on their own people by being more brutal to "their side's" civilians than the occupying army is. Suppose the guerillas win- what kind of government will they set up, given that their military and leadership are used to things like killing civilian "enemies of the people" as a way to scare people out of working for their opponents?

We all know the consequences of letting an occupying army be brutal and kill local civilians to get their way: imperialism and cruelty and grand-scale intercontinental racism. But are the resistance forces that fight those occupiers immune to those consequences? If they win, can they just turn around and go "well, that was all necessities of war and now we will go back to running the country in a decent way and tolerating our enemies instead of killing them in the night?"


Now, I'm sort of trying to look at this from the point of view you have recently started taking towards war- war is bad because it involves so much death and suffering and cruelty. That makes a lot of sense, but it has implications when you look at the decision to fight a guerilla war against an occupier, and how you go about fighting it.

Because you can argue that it is "necessary" to allow guerillas to be brutal to their own people as a way to repel the occupying army. But at some point that just means you're ignoring the utilitarian consequences of the war- why war is bad. What if the guerillas are being brutal, but the occupiers (being from, say, the modern Canadian army) really aren't being brutal? Wouldn't it be better to just... not try to kill them? If you're killing more of your own people than the enemy is, what's the argument that justifies continuing to fight them?

Is it something like "well, the guys who got invaded are the wronged party, so they have a right to keep fighting even if there's lots of collateral damage?" And "the guys who got invaded don't need to justify why continuing to fight is better for them and for everyone else than not fighting, because everyone has a right to fight an invader?"

See, I might buy into that. But I'm not a really committed pacifist. The idea that one side has a right to keep fighting no matter what the consequences are doesn't fit well with the general vein of pacifism, or at least it doesn't seem that way to me.

If I'm really opposed to wars because of the suffering and death they cause, wouldn't I expect whichever side is choosing to cause the collateral damage to be the one to stand down? Why does one bunch of guys with guns get a free pass and the other doesn't?

I mean sure, "standing up for the powerless is not the same as standing up for the powerful." But what does it mean when guerillas claim to be "standing up for the powerless" when they kill more of their even-more-powerless civilian population than the powerful enemy does?

To me this is a bit confusing and uncomfortable, I guess. I don't like the idea of national resistance forces getting labeled as terrorists because of people getting killed when they shoot at the invaders. But I also don't like people getting to just arbitrarily label themselves "freedom fighters" and be totally immune to any questioning or prosecution or accountability for their actions. Both of those things can be very bad for the country they happen in.

[Aaron MkII]

*shrug* how did it work out for the Axis, Saddam and Serbia's prez?

[Simon_Jester]

D-13, can't all these questions be equally well applied to wars between organized, conventional armies? Why would the winner submit to judgment, why would punishing the loser make things better?

Taken to the extreme, this argument invites the question: Would we be better off just not trying to enforce these laws against anyone at all?

I think the answer to that is "no," because I think the Geneva Conventions do more harm than good by defining a standard of behavior that remains in place even in times of war. Pressure to keep to that standard can make a war less horrible than it would be otherwise, if the guys on the ground are left to make up their own rules for what they're allowed to do.

If nothing else, having the standard helps us identify which people are behaving "better" or "worse."

[Simon_Jester]

I acknowledge the practical difficulty of convincing guerilla movements to obey the applicable* laws of war. But even so, doesn't that affect the way we judge the guerillas themselves? There's a tendency to pitch guerilla forces as heroic resistance movements, especially for people who feel political dislike of whoever's occupying the country- guerillas become "freedom fighters" when they're fighting someone you don't like. But if the guerillas are just as brutal as the occupiers, if not more so, despite the fact that they live in this country and are supposedly acting in its interests... well, how does that make sense? How can you really want someone like that to win?

*Some won't apply- say, because the guerillas have no possible way of taking prisoners. That can happen in conventional war too: suppose you're commanding a B-17 squadron over the Ruhr valley during World War Two and the town you were about to bomb surrenders. You can't take the surrender from an airplane. They'll just ignore you until you go away then go back to business as usual. So... what do you do but bomb?

But while some laws cannot sanely be applied to guerillas, others can- like shooting or not shooting at medics.

[Aaron MkII]

There's also the "hey guys how about not shooting medics and we bring you into talks aimed at getting you a voice in government?'

[Simon_Jester]

There's also the "hey guys how about not shooting medics and we bring you into talks aimed at getting you a voice in government?'

As long as bringing them into the government isn't batshit crazy, I'm happy with that.

Is the goal here to condemn their ethics, or to get them to follow the rules?

...Both?

I mean, I want to see both some degree of humanity in guerilla war (which I admit is unlikely) and an end to the idolization of brutal assholes just because they happen to be fighting guerilla wars (which is slightly more likely).

I would also like to see an end to the idolization of brutal assholes who are not fighting guerilla wars, and who are instead carpet-bombing people or burning them with napalm or (as Shroom might put it) stabbing them with white phosphorus bayonets. Which around here in this forum is less of a problem IMO, but is a huge problem elsewhere.

I don't see why I can't want all those things.

Ought the rules be followed? Yeah. But that's not going to happen if the rules disproportionally benefit one side, especially if they benefit the strong side. The other guy will also ask "what's in it for me?"

And, really, of course they are going to benefit the strong side, since if they didn't, they can just ignore them. What can the weak side do about it? If they had the strength to enforce the rules on an equal basis, they wouldn't be the weak side!

In many cases, the strong side faces rules about guerilla war that would greatly hamper it- the most recent add-ons to the Geneva Convention arguably have this effect. These rules can be greatly to the guerillas' advantage... especially if we believe that the guerillas and the civilian population are on the same side, which is sometimes but not always true.

Although this still does not secure a reciprocal and fair process of rule-enforcement for guerilla war, alas. Sometimes the occupier systematically breaks the rules for dickhead reasons (heavy shelling of areas the guerillas occupy); sometimes the guerillas break the rules for ideological reasons (car bombs that blow up like one enemy soldier and thirty random passersby).

If the end goal is to get these rules followed, step one is to start following them ourselves, and step two is to get the other guy to buy into step one for himself.

Although what do you do if the other guy says "fuck your step one, you're an invader?" Do you keep following the rules and, well, dying for the other fellow's sins? Or do you start saying "fuck you too buddy" and doing all the horrible shit you shouldn't have been doing in the first place?

I mean, I can get how you'd say "follow the rules even if the other guy doesn't." But you have to admit that's a really nasty row to hoe.

[thejester]

Just quietly, the issue here is not the 'crime' but the Geneva Conventions themselves. 'Don't shoot the medic' is a relic of some idealised European battlefield; even if the Taliban were inclined to do it, how would it be in anyway practical? How do you identify the medic in an IED ambush? If you shoot an RPG into a Humvee and the turret gunner keeps firing even as a medic is performing first aid on the driver, can you shoot back? The problem is pretty clearly that the law has no relevance to modern experience, not that the insurgents are evil for arming people and Western armies are evil for arming their medics in turn.

[Simon_Jester]

Just quietly, the issue here is not the 'crime' but the Geneva Conventions themselves. 'Don't shoot the medic' is a relic of some idealised European battlefield; even if the Taliban were inclined to do it, how would it be in anyway practical? How do you identify the medic in an IED ambush? If you shoot an RPG into a Humvee and the turret gunner keeps firing even as a medic is performing first aid on the driver, can you shoot back? The problem is pretty clearly that the law has no relevance to modern experience, not that the insurgents are evil for arming people and Western armies are evil for arming their medics in turn.

Under those conditions, I think a reasonable interpretation of the Geneva Conventions would be that you can shoot- the medic isn't being specifically targeted, the vehicle isn't marked with the Red Cross, and so on. So, not an issue.

Really, the more relevant question is the indiscriminate nature of things like IEDs blowing up random trucks that have nothing to do with the fighting- it's functionally equivalent to dropping belts of land mines on the roads, and people would rightfully scream at the US or Australia or Germany for doing a lot of that.

Speaking of prevention... oh something from psychology.. ah here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamenta ... tion_error

My concern is if we allow ourselves to say X is evil, we might be making that error; maybe it isn't their bad personalities that brought this on, but a shitty situation in the world.

Wikipedia lists this as a way to fight the flaw: "Taking heed of "consensus" information. If most people behave the same way when put in the same situation, then the situation is more likely to be the cause of the behavior."

A war can't be fought by just one person, whether conventionally or insurgencies. They need to get a lot of people on board; they need to have some kind of consensus. If they can get one, can we still be sure it is because they are bad people, or should we conclude it is a situational cause?

If it is a situation.... well, maybe that's something we can fix. This is a big reason why I'm optimistic that world peace is indeed possible.

The underlying problem, I think, is that you get different responses in different societies.

For most of history in nearly all the world, killing innocent peasants in retaliation for an ambush on your soldiers was accepted behavior- if not state-endorsed, it was at least tolerated when the troops spontaneously did this. For sheer ugliness of this, see Grave of the Hundred Head.

Today, this is simply not tolerable in the parts of the world that give a shit about the Geneva Conventions. But if you go around and ask, say, African warlords about this idea... they just might shrug and say "war is hell." Or go "what the hell are you talking about, you naive fool? How else do you we those greedy bastard peasants from murdering us in our sleep?"

There are places and times where if you talk about rights and wrongs and justice and injustice, you're dealing with people who are so hardened and alien to your frame of reference that you're not going to get through to them.

What then? Leave them to butcher their neighbors in peace?

Although what do you do if the other guy says "fuck your step one, you're an invader?"

Go home!

But, if you aren't willing to do that, it's kinda hopeless to force the other guy to comply anyway, so I guess you really have no other choice except to live die with it.

So, you say to guerillas "I am no longer brutalizing your people. Will you stop brutalizing your people now?"

They say "Fuck you! You're an invader!"

You go home.

Why does this not fill me with confidence about what happens to those people now that the guerillas are in charge?

I mean, I can get how you'd say "follow the rules even if the other guy doesn't." But you have to admit that's a really nasty row to hoe.

Aye, but we don't admire saints because they chose the easy path.

I make a point out of not expecting sainthood as a matter of public policy; I couldn't bear the constant disappointment. If you can, you're psychologically more resilient than me, and I suppose I envy you that.

[thejester]

Just quietly, the issue here is not the 'crime' but the Geneva Conventions themselves. 'Don't shoot the medic' is a relic of some idealised European battlefield; even if the Taliban were inclined to do it, how would it be in anyway practical? How do you identify the medic in an IED ambush? If you shoot an RPG into a Humvee and the turret gunner keeps firing even as a medic is performing first aid on the driver, can you shoot back? The problem is pretty clearly that the law has no relevance to modern experience, not that the insurgents are evil for arming people and Western armies are evil for arming their medics in turn.

Under those conditions, I think a reasonable interpretation of the Geneva Conventions would be that you can shoot- the medic isn't being specifically targeted, the vehicle isn't marked with the Red Cross, and so on. So, not an issue.

But doesn't your response perfectly highlight the absurdity of this debate? The medic will still be shot at and he could still very well die. The idealised European battlefield where medics could walk out between two trench lines doesn't exist anymore, and arguably never did. Coming up with a courtroom answer just shows the irrelevance of these conventions. Which, incidentally, goes to your broader point. You're anchoring this 'why don't insurgents get done for war crimes?' question in the assumption that insurgents are a response to an occupying power when 90% of the time they are not. The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were and are as much about the long term political control of those countries as any freedom fighting bullshit, and consequently most of the violence is directed at the civilian populace. Which begs the question: why should Pashtun Tribesman 1 care about the Geneva Conventions and 'war crimes' when he's already abandoned the civil law of the land in favour of sustained, deadly violence against his fellow citizens?

[Simon_Jester]

Just quietly, the issue here is not the 'crime' but the Geneva Conventions themselves. 'Don't shoot the medic' is a relic of some idealised European battlefield; even if the Taliban were inclined to do it, how would it be in anyway practical? How do you identify the medic in an IED ambush? If you shoot an RPG into a Humvee and the turret gunner keeps firing even as a medic is performing first aid on the driver, can you shoot back? The problem is pretty clearly that the law has no relevance to modern experience, not that the insurgents are evil for arming people and Western armies are evil for arming their medics in turn.

Under those conditions, I think a reasonable interpretation of the Geneva Conventions would be that you can shoot- the medic isn't being specifically targeted, the vehicle isn't marked with the Red Cross, and so on. So, not an issue.

But doesn't your response perfectly highlight the absurdity of this debate? The medic will still be shot at and he could still very well die. The idealised European battlefield where medics could walk out between two trench lines doesn't exist anymore, and arguably never did. Coming up with a courtroom answer just shows the irrelevance of these conventions. Which, incidentally, goes to your broader point.

Eh. I don't think it's lawyering- I'm trying to come up with a rule that works to make things less horrible sometimes, without trying to make people stop fighting wars altogether by tying their tactics up in red tape. "You can't shell this area or set bombs in it, you might hit a medic" is simply not going to work and I know it. I don't think that removes the principle that a medic should be able to expose themselves to enemy fire without being shot at- if they're clearly labeled and if the people aiming the guns can actually see him.

As far as I'm concerned you've got to try to do this because the alternative is to basically abolish international law as "impractical." Accept that guerillas will do whatever the hell they think is expedient, and accept that counterinsurgency troops will do whatever the hell they think is expedient.

I suspect that doing it that way would make a lot worse for guerillas and a lot better for would-be conquerors. The powerful gain a lot more from freedom of action than the powerless. So I'd rather not do it that way, because it leads back to the imperialism and cruelty I was talking about before.

You're anchoring this 'why don't insurgents get done for war crimes?' question in the assumption that insurgents are a response to an occupying power when 90% of the time they are not.

Suffice to say that I wish we had a system capable of enforcing war crimes on victors. Or that had enough legitimacy that people would listen to it rather than deciding in advance that it's too biased to matter. I know perfectly well we don't. I still grumble from time to time.

The insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were and are as much about the long term political control of those countries as any freedom fighting bullshit, and consequently most of the violence is directed at the civilian populace. Which begs the question: why should Pashtun Tribesman 1 care about the Geneva Conventions and 'war crimes' when he's already abandoned the civil law of the land in favour of sustained, deadly violence against his fellow citizens?

This I buy into, I agree wholeheartedly... and it's why I don't think that Pashtun Tribesman #1 can by any stretch of the imagination be considered to be the good guy of the piece.

Which is not to say you do. But some of the opinions I've heard on the occupation of and war in Afghanistan... suffice to say that as long as we can call a murdering thug a murdering thug, even though he's a weak murdering thug rather than a strong one, I'm satisfied on that account.

Call things what they are, that's half of what I'm saying here.

[Thanas]

Something I wanted to add:

"A soldier's obedience finds its limits where his knowledge, his conscience, and his responsibility forbid to obey orders." - Generaloberst Ludwig Beck. This is the core of what our soldiers are supposed to be taught and how they are supposed to conduct themselves. This concept was introduced to stop the "orders are orders are orders" which had permeated the Wehrmacht. Thus, disobedience to unlawful orders is not only permitted, but required by our soldiers.

[Losonti Tokash]

American servicemen are supposed to operate under the same principle. There's obviously a large disconnect between ROTC and active duty (along with theory and practice), but we were reminded over and over again that we had a responsibility to ignore and report unlawful orders and that blind obedience was not a defense.

[Thanas]

Hadhita alone shows that the principle is clearly not enforced in practice.

[Ahriman238]

In the American tradition soldiers are absolutely required to obey all LAWFUL orders or face a court-martial. Though I believe the penalty for such is rarely more than dishonorable discharge.

A servicemen is, of course, morally and legally obligated to refuse any illegal orders, such as conducting a massacre, sleeping with a superior, or taking part in a coup, and you can be charged for obedience to obviously illegal orders. In theory you are even trained to understand what you can and can't be ordered to do.

However, "get into that plane, we're going to Iraq" is not an order you can refuse and remain in the military.

[Simon_Jester]

At the small-unit level, groupthink and the shared social bonds of the unit are usually going to overwhelm an individual soldier's impulse to dissent.