From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Aug 28 2002 - 15:34:12 MDT
--- Avatar Polymorph <avatarpolymorph@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Extropian discussion on Winston Churchill:
>
> Avatar Polymorph comments...
>
> Clearly war crimes encompass the deliberate bombing of civilians en
> masse regardless of the cultural parameters. In this regard, both
> Hitler and Churchill are war criminals. So too are Truman, Kissinger
and Nixon.
Sorry, it doesn't wash. If you are going to blatantly use terms like
'war crimes' which have an accepted legal definition, then you ought to
at least go and read what the laws of war say before you spout off.
First off, any civilian population or facilities within which military
assets are hidden, i.e. using one's own citizens as 'human shields',
are themselves legitimate targets because they become combatants due to
their status as shields, and those forcing them to do so are the war
criminals, not those who bomb them.
When a war effort becomes such an overwhelming majority of the
economic/industrial activity of a national population, such as was the
case in North Vietnam, any individual is considered a 'war asset'. The
laws of war were written at a time when the military component of a
national economy was a rather small fraction of the whole. For
instance, I believe that the average military share of the US (northern
states) economy at the time of the Civil War was around 10-12%.
European powers, similarly, used small condottier armies to play their
'game of kings'.
While this contrast between limited or low intinsity conflicts and all
out Total War may indicate a need for revision of the laws of war, they
are as they are today as they were decades ago.
WWII was essentially a war of industry vs industry where the
destruction of armaments in actual combat was nothing more than a means
of accounting for the quantity and quality of the industrial capacity
of the respective combatant powers in a game of competetive fitness.
In terms of actual combative recognition of the laws of war, the allies
recognised them rather punctiliously until Hitler proved that he gave
no care for their observance, that he believed that victors held war
crimes trials for the vanquished and that he would be a victor.
The laws of war provide for their restrictions to be tossed out the
window when one side decides to do so.
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