Corpse-Counting

Radio Free Europe has a valuable case study on the politics behind counting war casualties. The article details the work of Mirsad Tokaca, a contro-versial Bosnian figure whose careful studies put the casualty figures of the war over Bosnia-Herzegovina at about 97,000, less than half of the official government tally of 200,000. Moreover, while most commentators act as if the 200,000 represents noncombatant dead among Bosniaks, the ethnic group against whom it is widely accepted that genocide took place, the database concludes that of the war's direct victims, almost 40,000 were civilians and 57,500 were military victims. Of the civilian victims, some 33,000 were Bosniaks, 4,100 were Serbs, and 2,200 were Croats.

Tokaca's work has taken place under the auspices of a non-governmental organization, the Research and Documentation Center, whose key report "Human Losses in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1991-1995" is also known as the "Bosnian Book of the Dead." The 200,000 estimate (beware of round numbers) was promulgated by government officials during the war and reiterated by the global media and Western scholars. By contrast:

"Tokaca's database is the only one in existence that offers the war dead sorted by name, place, and circumstances of death. Civilians, soldiers, women and children, of Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims alike. The list contains 14 separate streams of information, free of ethnic prejudice, and based on facts, not estimates.

Patrick Ball, director of the Human Rights Program at the U.S.-based Benetech Initiative, has said the "richness and depth of this database is astonishing." Ball, who has worked with nine truth commissions around the world, said the RDC database "could have a significant impact on how the history of the Bosnian war is understood."

But many in Bosnia are not happy with his findings:

"Smail Cekic is one of Tokaca's critics. The head of the Sarajevo-based Institute for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, Cekic questions Tokaca's research methods and accuses him of "fogging the essence and size of the genocide" of Bosniaks. He also says Tokaca "covers up" the depth of what he calls the "demographic disaster" committed against the regional populations, believing that Tokaca should include in his statistics those members of society who would have been born to those who were killed.

I'm with Tokaca. I suspect that much of the backlash against his analysis is due to the notion that a finding of "only" 30,000+ civilian dead would undermine claims that Bosnian Muslims suffered a genocide, but the concept of genocide is based on intent, not scale. Moreover, seems to me that 30,000 dead is plenty to justify outrage. While the argument that his database is weighted toward deaths is valid, the same organization is indeed investigating "indirect victims" separately, another pathbreaking exercise. Either way, it's important to base such claims on accurate data, and incredibly difficult - politically and logistically to find that data in conflict and post-conflict zones. The courage it has taken for him to stand up for unbiased reporting in that society is an inspiration.

What Every Professional Journalist Needs to Know About War Crimes

As I perused the web this morning I was delighted to come across a resource on the laws of war at the Society of Professional Journalists' website. In describing some of the historical antecedents of the existing laws of war, they make an important and correct observation:

"There is no one 'Geneva Convention.' Like any other body of law, the laws of war have been assembled piecemeal, and are, in fact, still under construction."

Important point, since so many commentators refer to "the Geneva Convention," but there are actually four; and since the laws of war are not limited to the Geneva rules but include the Hague Conventions and various other treaties and rules from customary law.

An important source of international humanitarian law, however, seems to have been overlooked by the SPJ: the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court. The website reads:

"It is impossible to produce a complete and up-to-date list of war crimes. Even today, weapon systems such as land mines are being debated at the highest levels of international policy."

That's not true, and nor does one sentence follow from the other. In fact, a complete and (at that time up-to-date) list of war crimes appears in Article 8 of the Rome Statute, the multilateral treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. While there are other lists, the Rome Statute is authoritative in the sense of being the product of a multilateral discussion involving most UN member states.

Whether additional things should be added to that list and what else might qualify under an item on the list, are different questions and, perhaps, await the first ICC Review Conference next year.

Srebrenica Victims Angry At Acquittals

This week, Bosnia's top war crimes court convicted Mladen Blagojevic for inhumane treatment of prisoners, but acquitted three others accused of participating in the Srebrenica massacre for lack of evidence. The acquittals have drawn ire from victims' groups:

"“This is a disgrace. While we are looking at mass graves all day long, verdicts like this are made. I'm very unsatisfied with the Bosnian courts,” Sabra Kolenovic, a member of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, told IWPR."

However they may feel, this is a triumph for Bosnian rule of law. These verdicts came not from the international tribunal in the Hague, but from Bosnia's national courts. When Bosnia's government took over war crimes trials of not-so-big-fish accused of crimes during the war, there were questions as to whether a post-war government could provide genuine justice over men accused of participating in atrocity.

The courts' refusal to consider the defendants guilty until proven innocent, despite the emotional needs of and political pressure by those who lost loved ones, is both consistent with international standards of due process, and likely to contribute to the courts' legitimacy over time.

McCain: War Hero or War Criminal?

Robert Richter has an article at Counterpunch arguing that commentators should focus more on McCain's conduct as an airman during Vietnam. In particular, his frame as a war hero may be incongruous with his role in the US policy of indiscriminate bombing during that war.

As character assassination attacks on Sen. Barack Obama have now taken over Sen. John McCain's campaign, and because McCain cites his military experience as of prime importance, now is the time to focus closer attention on a facet of the Arizona Senator's own character. This is related to his 23 combat missions for Operation Rolling Thunder - the Pentagon's name for U.S. bombing of North Vietnam... The targets McCain and his fellow pilots actually bombed in Vietnam and his justification then or now for the actions that led to his capture, are no longer simply old news. They are part of what must be taken into account today, as voters weigh support for him or Obama to be the next President of the United States.

Fair enough. I too would like to see more focus on how Presidential candidates fought in US wars rather than whether they did. However two minor misconstruals of the Geneva Conventions in his piece:

First, the time period to which he refers was the mid-60s, but the explicit protection for civilian populations against indiscriminate bombing was only codified in treaty law in 1977. So, under which provisions of treaty law would McCain or other US pilots be prosecuted for "war crimes" for failing to live up to a post-1977 standard for minimizing civilian casualties? (Not that they shouldn't be, but the legal case may not be as cut and dry as Richter hopes.)

In giving a nod to counterarguments, though, Richter concedes too much ground:

There were questions raised about whether the Geneva conventions applied to the pilots, since there had been no formal declaration of war by the U.S. against the Hanoi regime - and the Geneva rules presumably are only in force in a “declared” war.

If this was true then, it certainly isn't now. The rules are understood to apply in "situations of armed conflict" declared or not.

That Corrupt United Nations

If anyone still thinks that "the United Nations" calls the shots on anything without the consent of member states, note that against his wishes, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has just agreed to retain Rwandan Maj Gen Emmanuel Karake Karenzi as the second highest-ranking commander for its Sudan peacekeeping force, despite the fact that Karenzi has been indicted by a Spanish court on war crimes charges for his slaughter of Hutu civilians in 1994, as the Rwandan Patriotic Front put an end to the genocide against Tutsis.

Ban Ki-Moon had insisted on Karenzi's resignation, but changed his mind when Rwanda, the biggest troop contributor to the Darfur mission, threatened to pull out its entire contingent if Karenzi's contract were not renewed. And, presumably, no other members states were willing to step in and provide the troop replacements that would have enabled the UN Secretariat to call Rwanda's bluff. Indeed, the US just shrugged its shoulders, saying, there is " no conclusive evidence that Maj Gen Karenzi had engaged in human rights abuses." Right. That evidence would have to come out, if at all, in the trial that he's not going to have anytime soon now.

Protection of Civilians 2.0

The following video is circulating on the YouTube and was publicized yesterday by the Associated Press. It is said to be cell phone footage taken of the civilian victims of "stray" US bombs in Azizabad, Afghanistan. If genuine (it was reportedly filmed by a local doctor) the film would appear to weigh in on the side of the Afghan government's claim that scores of civilians were killed in the attack, and refute the US argument that only 7 civilians and 35 "militants" died.



Some quick thoughts. First, does being "militant" make a person a legitimate military target? This appears to be another semantic construction in the Bush Administration's GWOT discourse. I wonder if it means that any military-age male suspected of involvement with the insurgency is a military objective at all times. This would fly of course in the face of the laws of war: you battle those who are actually armed and fighting back, not just anyone who supports a movement.

On the other hand, if these were actual fighters their location would have constituted a valid military objective. The question then is whether the military weighed the expected collateral damage against the military necessity of hitting that target then. Considering that the civilians killed were apparently attending a funeral service in the vicinity, this is unlikely. While their deaths wouldn't constitute war crimes unless they were intentional, failing to take measures to avoid collateral damage is still a violation of the laws of war - determining whether many civilians are massed together for a funeral and waiting until they dissipate would be an example of the type of command decision that is expected of US military officers in such an instance. Another terrible possibility is that the deaths actually weren't wholly unintentional. While the US generally has an excellent record all told when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties, there are famous examples where soldiers go haywire - often in circumstances very similar to the events of that day, which included an ambush on the Special Forces in the area.

At any rate, when the USG denies and attempts to quash an investigation, that is usually a sign that someone really screwed up in authorizing a course of action (or worse), that they know it, and that they hope to do damage control. (They have now cut their losses in light of emerging evidence.)

Hamdan Verdict

Boy, that was quick. The New York Times reports that Salim Hamdan has been found guilty in a split verdict.

Daniel Graeber at War Crimes Blog has more, though he seems to think this trial was the first since WW2, which we know is wrong. The Moderate Voice has a great round-up of other blog responses to this story here.

John McCain says the verdict "proves the system is working." To see how wrong he is, don't miss Kevin Heller's post at Opinio Juris explaining why the charges in Hamdan make no sense at all in the context of existing treaty law on armed conflict, to which McCain has claimed to be committed. In brief:

"There is no question that the military commissions have jurisdiction over the crime of “murder in violation of the law of war,” defined by the Manual for Military Commissions as “intentionally kill[ing] one or more persons, including lawful combatants, in violation of the law of war.” That war crime only exists, however, in the imagination of the United States: it is not a war crime under IHL for a unprivileged belligerent — the correct label for the mythic “enemy combatant” — to kill a soldier.

Under IHL, in other words, an unprivileged belligerent can only be prosecuted (1) for a domestic crime if his act would have been legal for a privileged belligerent, such as killing a soldier; or (2) for a war crime if his act would have been illegal even for a privileged belligerent, such as killing a civilian. What he cannot be prosecuted for is (3) a “war crime” whose underlying act would not have been a war crime if committed by a privileged combatant."

'Nuf said 'bout that.

When is a War a War?

One of the first things you learn about the Geneva Conventions is that they only apply in situations of armed conflict. The problem is that "armed conflict" isn't really defined in treaty law, and this is one of the reasons that some have proposed updating or clarifying the rules of war to take account of new types of war.

On this point, it will be important to keep an eye on the Salim Hamdan trial in Guantanamo, Cuba and third parties' reactions to it. Hamdan's prosecution as a "war criminal" will depend on the prosecution arguing al-Qaeda and the US were engaged in an armed conflict during the period of his active involvement with bin Laden. Human Rights First reports on opposing views presented at Hamdan's trial:. The prosecution argues that the laws of war applied as soon as al-Qaeda declared war on the United States, as early as 1996, therefore Hamdan's work with al-Qaeda prior to 9/11 constitutes war crimes:

"On Monday, the prosecution debuted “The al Qaeda Plan” – a made-to-order compilation of al Qaeda propaganda videos found on the Internet and narrated by the government’s counterterrorism expert, Evan Kohlmann. The movie was made, among other reasons, in order to prove the government’s theory of when the armed conflict with al Qaeda began. The seven-part, ninety-minute video, which the government apparently plans to use in many Guantánamo prosecutions, narrates the story of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets (although it excludes any reference to U.S. support of the jihad against the Soviets), bin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan and Sudan, the USS Cole bombing, the Kenya Embassy bombings, and the September 11 attacks."

The defense argues that the start of an "armed conflict" depends on the response by a government - in short, that the Geneva Conventions would apply only after the US declared war on al-Qaeda in return, on September 12, 2001.

"Hostile acts, including terrorist attacks that take place in a non-international armed conflict (i.e., a conflict not involving two or more nations), do not automatically trigger application of the laws of war. Defense expert Geoffrey Corn, a retired Army judge advocate, former Pentagon law of war expert and now a law professor, testified that, under the laws of war, one of the critical factors that determine whether an armed conflict has begun is the response by a government to a particular attack... Corn testified that the United States’ reaction in September-October 2001 to the 9/11 attacks triggered the application of a law of war framework, and the United States thus was in armed conflict at that point with the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan."

Both these lines of argument are a distraction, I think, since they suggest that a) the "war on terror" is definitely an armed conflict, we just don't know when it started (but this is actually a topic of debate among international lawyers); and that b) if an armed conflict is occuring, Hamdan must be a war criminal. Not at all clear to me if this makes sense - Hitler's driver wasn't prosecuted at Nuremberg, he was called as a witness.

The real irony is that a government who has spent years trying to pretend the laws of war don't apply to this conflict is now trying to use them against its enemies. Perhaps the real goal is to confuse people entirely about what the laws of war are.

ICTY's Most Wanted Now in Dock

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Serbia yesterday. Karadzic was the President of the Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb breakaway statelet, during the war in the former Yugoslavia; he stands accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, particularly for his connection to the massacre at Srebrenica. Since his indictment, Karadzic had foiled attempts by NATO and the Serbian government to capture him for thirteen years. His capture is significant not only for international justice, but also for Serbia's prospects of acceding to the European Union.

There is good coverage of his capture in the mainstream media and also at War Crimes Blog. However, one of the best sources is a blog entitled "Finding Karadzic" which has covered the manhunt for the past several years.

With Karadzic in the dock, only Ratko Mladic, the General who oversaw the massacre of approximately 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica, remains at large in Serbia. Will he be next?

High Crimes

A great leap forward in international criminal law: Omar Bashir, President of Sudan, has become the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court.

At the Jurist, law professor Michael Kelly explains why this step constitutes one more helpful chink in the armor of sovereign immunity... but he also explains why Bashir is unlikely to be apprehended anytime soon.

In other words, a great leap forward for international law (as a set of rules) does not necessarily translate into a political or legal victory in practical terms. Quite the contrary, in some cases.

For this reason, the Wall Street Journal joins China in opposing the action - but for different reasons. China seeks to protect the sovereign right of governments to do as they damn well please. The WSJ bloggers recall how international judicial mechanisms served as a substitute, during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, for military action which could have stopped the bloodshed.

But a non-state actor (this time not a corporation but rather the human rights organization Avaaz) has an idea:

"Al Bashir knows that he will be caught only if other governments, especially Arab and African governments, agree to help the International Criminal Court. To make sure this happens, Avaaz is launching a large regional ad campaign, urging the leaders of these nations to save Darfur by helping the ICC."

Click here to donate.

Unsurprisingly, so far African nations are looking askance at the move. Will an ad campaign change their minds? Stay tuned.

Turning Against the Dark Side

Next week, Doubleday Press will publish Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. Friday, the Washington Post reported that the book includes citations to a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross' stating that the CIA's treatment of al-Qaida detainees constituted war crimes.

The newsworthiness of this may not seem obvious to anyone who has followed the US' conduct in the "war on terror." But since the involvement of top government officials has long been cast in doubt by the administration, and since the ICRC is the closest thing outside of an international tribunal to an authoritative voice on international humanitarian law, a document with such far-reaching language is of political and legal significance - even if the document was addressed to the US Government, rather than intended for public consumption or legal precedent.

At Crooks and Liars, there is an extensive discussion of this story in the comments which warrants a close look in itself. In particular, several commenters debate the appropriate response of US citizens in such a context. One of my favorite comments:

"yes, i have hit the pavement in protest, and yes, i have written dozens of letters to government officials, but i have continued to pay my taxes and submit to the authority of a criminal government . . . there is no difference between me and the average german citizen during hitler’s rule...this situation calls for civil disobedience on a massive scale . . . anything less is acquiescence. We probably could just stop paying taxes on a massive scale, but like I said before, I doubt we’re coordinated enough. But I will tell you, as a former IRS employee, if even a few million of us stopped paying taxes, it would cause significant havoc and the IRS doesn’t have the resources to come after that many tax protesters. Truth be told, our taxes don’t really go to pay for government anyway, it goes to pay interest on the debt. Our government is bought on credit through the central banks. We stop paying taxes, then interests is no longer paid, then the central banks will refuse to lend more credit by not being able to sell enough treasury debt to foreign countries to make their reserves. Unfortunately, the value of the dollar would plummet to a little better than gravel, but maybe thats the sort of wake up call this country really needs?...On the other hand, like Hitler’s Germany, some dictator demagogue could come along and unify the huddled masses and make the situation even worse than it is now. But that’s the gamble you take when you’re making history…" -Jo

Read the entire forum here.

Killing Civilians Is Good For You

Apologies for the lapse - like most academics trained in international relations theory, I spent last week in San Francisco attending the Annual Conference of the International Studies Association .

Of the papers I heard presented, one sticks out: Alexander Downes of Duke University has done a quantitative analysis comparing civilian targeting in inter-state wars to the likelihood that a state will win, as well as to the number of military casualties they absorb vis-a-vis their enemy. Downes finds that killing civilians has historically been strongly correlated with winning. But, he also found this has changed over time, and that since about 1941 killing civilians has been more and more counterproductive to war efforts. He doesn't explain why.

At least one influential book - Caleb Carr's The Lessons of Terror finds the opposite - but admittedly Carr's analysis is a historian's account rather than a statistical analysis.

I couldn't find the paper in the ISA 2008 archive, but Downes has apparently expanded on his argument in a new book, Targeting Civilians in War, which I'll have to read before I report on my impression of his data.

So What's Up With the USMC Anyway?

It's awfully interesting what provokes people. News of the day is a video (now pulled from YouTube) filmed by a Marine of his buddy tossing a puppy off a cliff. Considering we have recently heard accusations of US Marines killing civilians in front of their children, raping little girls, even raping and murdering their pregnant comrades, this comes as no great shock to my system.

(Then again, teenagers do mean things to animals for fun in all sorts of contexts, and no branch of any military has a monopoly on rape, torture, murder or general meanness. So let's not lose our perspective.)

Here's what does surprise me: this story made headlines fast and stuck. Compare this to videos circulated on the Internet in 2004 of US Marines raping Iraqi women in detention. No huge media frenzy there. Hmm. As Webscout at the LA Times puts it:

"There's a debate to be had about where the death of a puppy lies along the spectrum of war horrors, and why a video like this can gain wide online attention when other outrageous footage -- say, involving the death of humans -- is only rarely circulated."

Indeed.

Another surprise: the swift and categorical action taken by the Corps. In a statement released today, the Corps referred to the video as "shocking and deplorable," and launched an investigation.

All fine and well, but isn't this is the same institution that covered up the massacre of civilians at Haditha for months, and sat on the Abu Ghraib photographs for almost a year. (Excellent discussion of this history in a recent Frontline.)

So, what's up with the Marines? And what's up with popular sentiment? The same American public that is now deploring all soldiers as "puppy killers" hemmed and hawed when news of My Lai broke. I'm not defending the puppy-pitcher. I'd just like to see the same kind of black-listing when our soldiers commit actual war crimes.

Fuzzy Logic?

This letter, supposedly from a Corpsman in Iraq, has been making the rounds on military blogs for a bit. Interesting read.

"...It's a safety issue, pure and simple. After assaulting through a target, we put a security round in everybody's head. Sorry al-Reuters, there's no paddy wagon rolling around Fallujah picking up 'prisoners' and offering them a hot cup o' Joe, falafel, and a blanket. There's no time to dick around on the target. You clear the space, dump the chumps, and move on.

Are Corpsmen expected to treat wounded terrorists? Negative. Hey Libs, worried about the defense budget? Well, it would be waste, fraud, and abuse for a Corpsman to expend one man-minute or a battle dressing on a terrorist. It's much cheaper to just spend the $.02 on a 5.56mm FMJ. By the way, in our view, terrorists who chop off civilian's heads are not prisoners, they are carcasses. Chopping off a civilian's head is another reason why these idiots are known as 'unlawful combatants.' It seems that most of the world's journalists have forgotten that fact.

Let me be very clear about this issue. I have looked around the web, and many people get this concept, but there are some stragglers. Here is your typical
Marine sitrep (situation report): You just took fire from unlawful combatants (no uniform - breaking every Geneva Convention rule there is) shooting from a religious building, attempting to use the sanctuary status of their position as protection. But you're in Fallujah now, and the Marine Corps has decided that they're not playing that game this time. That was Najaf.

So you set the mosque on fire and you hose down the terrorists with small arms, launch some AT-4s ( Rockets ), some 40MM grenades into the building and things quiet down. So you run over there, and find some tangos (bad guys) wounded and pretending to be dead. You are aware that suicide martyrdom is like really popular with these idiots, and they think taking some Marines with them would be really cool. So you can risk your life and your fire team's lives by having them cover you while you bend down and search a guy that you think is pretending to be dead for some reason. Most of the time these are the guys with the grenade or a vest made of explosives. Also, you don't know who or what is in the next room.

You're already speaking English to the rest of your fire team or squad, which lets the terrorist know you are there and you are his enemy. You are speaking loud because your hearing is poor from shooting people for several days. So you know that there are many other rooms to enter, and that if anyone is still alive in those rooms, they know that Americans are in the mosque. Meanwhile (3 seconds later), you still have this terrorist (that was just shooting at you from a mosque) playing possum. What do you do? You double tap his head, and you go to the next room, that's what!

What about the Geneva Convention and all that 'Law of Land Warfare' stuff? What about it? Without even addressing the issues at hand, your first thought should be, 'I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.'

Bear in mind that this tactic of double tapping a fallen terrorist is a perpetual mindset that is reinforced by experience on a minute by minute basis. Secondly, you are fighting an unlawful combatant in a Sanctuary, which is a double No-No on his part. Third, tactically you are in no position to take 'prisoners' because there are more rooms to search and clear, and the behavior of said terrorist indicates that he is up to no good. No good in Fallujah is a very large place and the low e nd of no good and the high end of no good are fundamentally the same ... Marines end up getting hurt or die. So there is no compelling reason for you to do anything but double tap this idiot and get on with the mission.

If you are a veteran, then everything I have just written is self evident. If you are not a veteran, at least try to put yourself in the situation. Remember, in Fallujah there is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, there is only now, Right NOW. Have you ever lived in NOW for a week? It is really, really not easy. If you have never lived in NOW for longer than it takes to finish the big roller coaster at Six Flags, then shut your mouth about putting Marines in jail for 'War Crimes.'

Semper fi. From A Marine."

Discuss.

Don't Laugh Yet.

Sorry, but I can't help directing you to this story from the Rutland Herald:

"Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont."

OpEd News asserts:

"This has been well thought out, is connected with well grounded legal theory, and is consistent with the duty of Americans to defend the US Constitution from domestic enemies. Congressional inaction on impeachment does not oblige We the People to remain silent or do nothing about alleged war crimes and the President’s alleged criminal conduct."

The rationale for such efforts, being undertaken not just in Vermont but in Massachusetts and Kentucky, is the 10th amendment to the US Constitution, which reads:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Interesting. Also, very gutsy.

"War is Hard Enough Without Worrying About Being Held Accountable When You Slaughter Civilians"

So USMC Staff Sargeant Frank Wuterich had his charges reduced from murder to voluntary manslaughter this week, after leading three other US Marines in the massacre of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha, Iraq in 2005.

He doesn’t even deny it. But the military court that has investigated the killings has determined that they don’t amount to murder, because they were carried out “in the heat of passion.”

Well, given that this was not a premeditated massacre but a situation in which a small group of Marines followed their leader on a rampage after their comrade was killed by an IED, there may be something to be said for this verdict.

However, I would have liked to see Wuterich get the murder charge anyway, because he is completely remorseless about the incident. In an interview on 60 Minutes last year, Wuterich told the world he’d done nothing wrong – in other words, he actually believes with hindsight that the rules of engagement in a counterinsurgency operation include barging into civilian homes with guns blazing and shooting until all inside are dead. If only because he has had the gall to behave publicly as if this is / should be standard operating procedure for the US military, the military should have made a prime example of him.

Retired Major General Walter Hoffman, Former Army Judge Advocate General, disagrees with me. He discussed the decision on the McNeil News Hour, and put it in these words:

“War is difficult enough without having to look over your shoulder to see if someone is going to file charges against you for making an error, when people around you are dying, and bullets are flying in the air, and explosions are going off.”

No sir. War is difficult enough without wondering whether anyone is looking over your commander’s shoulder, expecting you to expect him to expect you to behave like a warrior, instead of behaving like a berserker.

Genocide and the Crime of War...

The doomed are transported in rickety boxcars. Though they must know in their minds what awaits them at the end, they do not rebel against the small cadre of grim-faced officers armed with pistols who oversee them. The trains arrive; the walking dead are disembarked, formed in to orderly groups, and marched off. It is still night; by the time the dawn breaks, they are arrayed in neat lines in front of the machineguns. The graves that many will occupy have already been dug in the muddy ground. The order is given. A whistle blows. The first rank clambers onto the killing field. At first they maintain their order, walking slowly. The machineguns begin to cut men down with short, ordered bursts. The rest begin to run. The machineguns fire faster. Over 5000 will die here today; but tomorrow is another day, and one can only bury so many bodies in one place.

Genocide scholars (and I shall deal with this lot in a later post) spend a great deal of time focused on the 5 million European Jews that died at the hands of the Nazis. What one never hears discussed is the OTHER 5 million German citizens who were sent to their deaths by the German government.

I speak, of course, of the German army; conscripted, forced by their own government to endure conditions that, imposed in any other setting than war, would be considered the height of cruelty- Starvation, exposure to extreme heat and cold, the mental torment of repeated bombardments; the mercy of death, when it came (as it did to 30% of these unfortunates) tended not to be surgical or methodical in nature. A bullet in the back of the head or a dose of VX sounds like a walk in the park compared to being shot in the guts and left to writhe for a few hours, being crushed to death by the tank treads, burned alive by a flamethrower, or being literally dismembered by a high-explosive artillery shell.

Of course, Germany was not alone, in World War II, or throughout history, in sending its citizens to a certain (and certainly horrific) death. Consider the spectacle described in the begininng of this piece; that was the British 8th Division on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

As Leon Trotsky wrote: "An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the command has the death penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements — the animals that we call men — will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear."

One can make no excuses for the "volunteer" armies of today, except to say that to call them "mercenary armies" may be more accurate; a $40,000 bonus for 4 years of work is a prettier penny than Rome paid her barbarian mercenaries before the Fall of the Empire.

But most countries still maintain it is their sovereign right to impress men into service (the dubious service of killing and being killed) at their whim; I should propose that the root of all war crimes, and in fact the crime against humanity that is war itself is the notion that any State has the sovereign right to make war, either against it's own citizens, or the citizens of other States.

As long as the world at large accepts this foolishness, it's no use decrying the cruel depradations of war and all that goes along with it (including the narrowly-defined genocide term over which so many likes to wail and gnash their teeth, but so few are willing to act).

Anyone foolish enough to live in a State which they have acknowledged has the right to imprison or kill its own citizens (we call this Law) or the citizens of other States, (we call this War) deserves what they get, and would be well advise to situate themselves in a position of wealth, power, and authority, so that when the time comes for the strong to do what they will, and the weak to suffer what they must, they can hand out the medicine rather than take it.