From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Sep 20 2001 - 12:45:17 MDT
"J. R. Molloy" wrote:
>
> Extropian principlesFrom: Smigrodzki, Rafal
> <<Precisely because a war is threatening to explode, moral principles are even
> more important to guide our behaviour when unrecoverable lives can much easier
> lost than in peacetime.>>
>
> Wrong. "Moral principles" are exactly what combatants hide behind to justify
> their grab for territory and resources. Morality derives from biology.
> See: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98apr/biomoral.htm
The abuse of moral principles. The Law of War, for instance, are moral
principles that divides combatant from non-combatant. The abuse of this,
where a combatant hides as a civilian among civilians, and the
acceptance by the civilians of this state to achieve their own goals,
strips the law of all meaning. In this case, the combatant is using the
civilian as a shield, a weapon, against the enemy that is two edged: if
the enemy does not attack the civilian to get to the combatant, the
combatant wins, and if the enemy does attack, the combatant wins via
propaganda and international sympathy. If the civilian accepts the
presence of combatants in civilian garb in their midst, they are
accepting the role of 'weapon/shield' and are therefore no longer
non-combatants.
The Laws of War forbid the wear of civilian garb by combatants. To do so
is a war crime.
The Laws of War forbid the placement of military assets among a civilian
population. To do so is a war crime. Combatants who violate these
precepts do so on the expectation that the world will not prosecute them
for these war crimes.
The Laws of War forbid civilians from taking up arms. Bearing arms in a
zone of conflict identifies you as a combatant and therefore a
legitimate target. Disarming an armed civilian who has been shot to make
it appear as if they were a noncombatant is also a war crime. This is
one that occurs with regularity in Palestine these days.
The Combatant who commits such war crimes does so because they expect to
die and are not afraid of any punishment they may receive.
The problem with these sort of war crimes is that they are so borderline
that they can easily be abused for propaganda purposes to great effect.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:10:51 MST