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[hector13]

No, targeting medics is verboten because they’re non-combatants, as likely are the wounded (or dead) they are transporting.

Yet both were deployed into a war zone to assist the war effort. They aren't strictly civilians, being in uniform. They're even given weapons that, if wielded, removes their protected status.

Where do you draw the line with “helping win the war”?

The Geneva Convention is a good guideline. However, if you're shooting at medics, your side clearly doesn't draw the line there. Why would your own medics be different? You're sending them into combat while loudly proclaiming that medics are to be shot. It's understood that your medics are effectively considered soldiers.

Certain lines tend to be a bit more obvious. Mistreating POWs actually does the opposite of helping you win, for example. Not only were they already out of the fight and useful as a bargaining chip; now your enemy is less likely to surrender.

Crimes against humanity is a very clear distinction. The Geneva Convention already separates these above war crimes.

Your argument for justifying the non-against humanity war crimes can also be applied to the really bad ones. Just because that’s your line in the sand doesn’t mean everybody on your side shares that, whether they think it’s too far or not far enough.

Indeed, what do you do if your enemy goes over the line? You’ve already justified that it’s okay to commit light war crimes, what’s taking an extra step going to change really? Or when you commit a light war crime because you were told your enemy did and later find out they didn’t?

As to the rest though, fighting to the death isn’t the only option. You don’t even need to kill someone to take them out of the fight, or even do a job of psychological warfare without firing a shot. People desert in the face of an enemy that will either kill you, or capture you, torture you, then kill you. That works even better than killing them because they’re still alive to tell everyone why they ran away, and you can paint your enemy as cowards for it.

It’s almost as though the Geneva Convention and its like were brought to bear in order to prevent the victor of every war essentially being decided in a race to the bottom to see which side can out atrocity the other(s).

Written by the victors, of course, who were willing to engage in much of the same until the war ended in their favor.

So your position here is to not do what hypocrites say?

Why follow any laws ever?

Oh wait, you’re a libertarian, you think laws are there to limit freedoms.

I don’t think I equated them? I mean sure they’d both be branded war criminals, but Stephen Bradbury is a gold medal Olympian, not really on the same level as… pfft, let’s say Michael Phelps, is he?

And some war crimes are more justifiable than others. (Provided the Rubicon has been crossed, they're still crimes, etc.)

That’s your opinion. I would consider modeling behaviour on the worst examples (or the worst examples that aren’t you know, really really bad because you have standards lol) to be a self-defeating position.

Justifying war crimes because they have been the committed against you can just as easily be justified because they might be committed against you.

Ah, did they give the same warning to the three Israeli hostages they shot, who they were there ostensibly to rescue? You know, the ones that came out shirtless with a white flag (surely I don’t have to remind you what the international symbol of surrender is?) with Hebrew writing on it while also shouting in Hebrew? Avoiding shit like this is why things like perfidy and not shooting on medics are war crimes.

Is that Israel's policy towards hostages, or did a group of IDF soldiers get trigger happy after Hamas kept using recordings of hostages to do that perfidy thing and lure IDF into ambushes?

Two soldiers, who couldn’t see well enough to identify whether the hostages were a threat, and shot anyway, then apparently didn’t hear the order for the hostage to come out (15 minutes later) and shot again.

The IDF’s investigation said something along the lines of the presence of hostages not being accounted for as a reason for the incident.

So, to answer the question I imagine you thought was really clever, despite rescuing the hostages being one of the reasons they went to war in the first place, they apparently didn’t have a policy in place for dealing with encountering hostages in the field.

I guess it’s better to look incompetent than murderous, huh?

I’m also glad we can agree that Strongpoint was advocating for war crimes. The caveats might mean something to you, they don’t to me.

[Strongpoint]

  on the one hand solidly claim you’re cool with Ukrainians committing war crimes (so long as Russia does them too)

Yet another craftily disguised half-truth to present me as a monster. The definition of a war crime is loose one. Making any picture of a captured soldier with your smartphone is a war crime by Geneva's standard

Yes, I am fine with Ukrainian forces breaking Geneva Convention rules that, by mutual agreement, limit certain very effective tactics (like targeting enemy medical forces), furthermore, I would call our commanders total idiots and traitors if they tried to enforce Geneva limitations once it became clear that Russia won't limit itself in this way.


I never was fine with ACTUAL war crimes which are crimes according to basic humanist morality:  torture, rape, genocide, using civilians as meatshields, and any other actions that bring unnecessary or excessive suffering. With stuff that would be widely considered criminal even by people of medieval ages and before. Those are not fine because the other side does it. BTW, the losing side usually doesn't have many opportunities to commit most of those.

It is exactly why I am not on the Palestinian side in this war, they commit way more horrendous war crimes than Israel. Note that supporting and gleefully celebrating war crimes of this kind is almost the same as committing them with your own hands. The only reason they don't commit even more is them being weaker than Israel. If they could get a degree of victory over Israel like Israel got over them there would be no Jew alive in Palestine.

[Starver]

It is exactly why I am not on the Palestinian side in this war, they commit way more horrendous war crimes than Israel.

...how many points are you allocating for various acts? I wouldn't even know how to add up the relative culpabilities (and when to starting counting[1]), but suspect it's nowhere near "way more", but a quite strong tally 'earned' both ways. (Gleeful support of both sides' extremes, andvdefinite "no <foo> left alive in 'our' territory" attitudes.)

It's a big darn mess of violence-begets-violence, assymetrical only in the undertaking.



[1] Forget 'biblical' precedent. There's potentially a whole heap of possible history before that.

[hector13]

Don’t start on half truths man, you’re still pussyfooting around about calling me an anti-Semite.

You said you think some war crimes are justifiable, not me. You failing to understand why that’s a problem is also not my fault.

For example, taking pictures of POWs isn’t explicitly banned by the GC, but PoWs are meant to be protected from public curiosity, and things like intimidation and humiliation, which could include, for example, publishing photos of shirtless and blindfolded detainees on the internet or media.

The idea is to stop them being dehumanized. Why is dehumanizing someone a possible war crime? See: the holocaust.

If you can’t see that the GC is there to prevent things like that, and thus why allowing light war crimes could lead toward that, that’s also not my fault.

[MorleyDev]

If targetting civilians because some of the civilians celebrated war crimes but are not active combatants is justified, then Russia targetting Ukrainian Civilians since there are those who would celebrate Ukrainian War Crimes is justified.

Their personal beliefs or politics don't matter, a civilian is a civilian. To believe otherwise is to make the meaning of civilian and combatant a meaningless distinction.

[Bumber]

Indeed, what do you do if your enemy goes over the line? You’ve already justified that it’s okay to commit light war crimes, what’s taking an extra step going to change really? Or when you commit a light war crime because you were told your enemy did and later find out they didn’t?

The question is if you're okay with those war crimes being committed against you, waiving any right of indignation. It's clear that things like rape should be considered abhorrent by everyone, but the world can't actually agree on cluster bombs as a war crime despite knowing that they can maim and kill civilians after the war. War crimes don't exist without some kind of agreement on them. As the line is drawn by humans, any answer of where the line is drawn, or how far is too far, is going to be arbitrary.

What if you start a war based on false info of an imminent attack? That's kind of worse, but avoids being a war crime?

As to the rest though, fighting to the death isn’t the only option. You don’t even need to kill someone to take them out of the fight, or even do a job of psychological warfare without firing a shot. People desert in the face of an enemy that will either kill you, or capture you, torture you, then kill you. That works even better than killing them because they’re still alive to tell everyone why they ran away, and you can paint your enemy as cowards for it.

Except it's considered more of a crime to torture and let live than to just shoot them dead. Better incentive to kill. Don't have to waste resources keeping them alive either. Just don't try surrendering after that, obviously. You won't have to worry about your enemy delivering you to the Hague.

Justifying war crimes because they have been the committed against you can just as easily be justified because they might be committed against you.

Disagree. You own the escalation for being the first to do so.

So, to answer the question I imagine you thought was really clever, despite rescuing the hostages being one of the reasons they went to war in the first place, they apparently didn’t have a policy in place for dealing with encountering hostages in the field.

I guess it’s better to look incompetent than murderous, huh?

I'm not sure what you thought your point was. IDF deliberately shot their own people rather than take a PR win for their invasion? Hamas-negotiated hostages only, please!

Well, incompetence isn't a war crime, at least?

Things may become 'messy', in wartime, but there are hard and fast obligations to punish grave violations (which go well beyond accidents, carelessness or misunderstandings).

Tell us more about how Russia is being punished hard and fast for its violations.

[Strongpoint]

If targetting civilians because some of the civilians celebrated war crimes but are not active combatants is justified, then Russia targetting Ukrainian Civilians since there are those who would celebrate Ukrainian War Crimes is justified.

Their personal beliefs or politics don't matter, a civilian is a civilian. To believe otherwise is to make the meaning of civilian and combatant a meaningless distinction.

It is tiresome...


1) I am not saying that intentionally targeting random civilians is OK. (targeting non-random civilians is usually also not OK but there are many borderline cases and outright exceptions, especially in the case of asymmetric warfare against occupiers)
Killing random civilians for real or perceived crimes of a nation is the logic of progressive pro-Palestinians who chant stuff like "Globalize the intifada". Guess what Intifada is?

2) We will send a person to prison for rape but we will not send this person's friend to the same place after that will say that the rape was correct and justified and that bitch deserved it anyway. But the difference between those two is not that huge because in different circumstances the other one would do the same and they may have even assisted the rape we just don't have evidence of that. It is not a good enough reason to send to a prison, it is a good enough reason to have almost the same opinion about the two.

3) Committing war crimes against war criminals is also wrong. Committing war crimes against anyone for any reason is wrong, no matter what their guilt is. This is why they are crimes. (again, we are not talking about stuff like landmines or targeting military medics or cluster munitions against military targets and other deadly\destrctive military tactics that countries try to agree to not use)

4) While there is certain excessive hate in Ukrainian society I hope to never live to see a day when Ukrainians will drag a half-naked body of a likely raped to death Russian woman over the streets of some Ukrainian city with crowds celebrating a bloody raid into a Russian city. If I do, I'll consider a different self-identification. Don't compare my nation to... those people with a culture of institutionalized hate.

[bloop_bleep]

To argue about "light war crimes" (for "military necessity") in this context is also a complete red herring here, because Israel is committing those along with the pretty big kinda inexcusable ones, which are not responses in kind or possessing any military necessity, like flattening the entirety of the Gaza strip, or refusing to let almost any food through -- which, if we forget the pedantries for a moment, is transparently in the process of starving people, what other outcome do you expect?

Are those not those "actual" war crimes, like rape and mass murder, which are always inexcusable you mentioned? Or if they are still somehow the "light war crimes" that are justified in context -- where is the military necessity, or reciprocal reasoning for those? When have Hamas ever done or realistically threatened starving 2 million Israelis or wiping Israel off the map? That "Hamas would do it if they could" is meaningless, because Hamas can't and they don't. The situation does not exist. There is no threat, no history of the other side doing it, no military necessity. It's almost like it's:

ACTUAL war crimes which are crimes according to basic humanist morality:  torture, rape, genocide, using civilians as meatshields, and any other actions that bring unnecessary or excessive suffering. With stuff that would be widely considered criminal even by people of medieval ages and before. Those are not fine because the other side does it. BTW, the losing side usually doesn't have many opportunities to commit most of those.

I mean, truly -- what is the justification for starving everyone in the Gaza strip, whether it's happening now or later? That doesn't rise to the level of big boy war crimes for you? Do you think that blocking all food is not gonna starve people? Do you think Israel is just kidding and will stop the blockade at the last moment on their own? They don't seem to want to stop on their own. They seem like they want to "finish it" forever, if I'm being completely honest.

[Bumber]

To argue about "light war crimes" (for "military necessity") in this context is also a complete red herring here, because Israel is committing those along with the pretty big kinda inexcusable ones

You assert.

Just to address the starvation one, could Israel really stop a UN food convoy that was determined to get through? Are they going to start a war against the UN to prevent it? Seems like there's more than just an IDF checkpoint standing in the way of food relief.

[bloop_bleep]

I'm sorry, this is insane -- are you faulting the UN for not barging food trucks through Israeli checkpoints like the Fast and the Furious so they can get shot to death?

[hector13]

Bumber, I don’t know why you feel the need to move the goalposts by reframing questions and ignoring points, and I’m unwilling to speculate.

Your initial support of Strongpoint was predicated on his assertion that light war crimes are effective means of winning a war and thus justifiable, even if you want to draw a line at committing “more serious” war crimes. However, you can’t then suggest that an enemy doing worse things is less justifiable because they are also, presumably as an active participant, trying to win the war.

You can’t commit crimes then get upset someone else is committing crimes to the same end.

To argue about "light war crimes" (for "military necessity") in this context is also a complete red herring here, because Israel is committing those along with the pretty big kinda inexcusable ones

You assert.

Just to address the starvation one, could Israel really stop a UN food convoy that was determined to get through? Are they going to start a war against the UN to prevent it? Seems like there's more than just an IDF checkpoint standing in the way of food relief.

I hope you’re not this stupid.

You understand that a military controlled checkpoint is unlikely to allow an unchecked vehicle to get through without stopping, yes? Not to mention the UN possibly also having to drive through Israeli protesters who sometimes try to block the convoys, too. Also the fact they are funded by the global community, which I imagine would stop right quick if they broke the law, any law.

Much in the same way Israel has alienated their allies, actually.

Israel isn’t allowing the international media into Gaza, and the Israeli Supreme Court has supported that decision. Stopping aid convoys is nothing.

[Bumber]

I'm sorry, this is insane -- are you faulting the UN for not barging food trucks through Israeli checkpoints like the Fast and the Furious so they can get shot to death?

No, the UN can tell Israel that they will be letting the trucks through. It's just, maybe they're slightly concerned that the truck is going to be hit by artillery shells, etc., in an active war zone. Or raided by Hamas. (You know, that other participant in the war.)

[bloop_bleep]

There is no "war against the UN" that can happen and Israel already routinely ignores what the UN says. If the UN said that and tried anything, Israel would simply shoot at food trucks trying to force their way through the checkpoints, and then certain people would say that it's completely justified, because they tried to force themselves through the checkpoints. Tell me you wouldn't be saying exactly that, Bumber.

[Bumber]

Bumber, I don’t know why you feel the need to move the goalposts by reframing questions and ignoring points, and I’m unwilling to speculate.

It's hard to keep track of what anyone's point actually is here, TBH. If I've ignored a point, I probably thought it was irrelevant or would be wasting time agreeing to disagree. The posts get long enough as is.

Your initial support of Strongpoint was predicated on his assertion that light war crimes are effective means of winning a war and thus justifiable, even if you want to draw a line at committing “more serious” war crimes. However, you can’t then suggest that an enemy doing worse things is less justifiable because they are also, presumably as an active participant, trying to win the war.

The worse the crime, the less justifiable. Is that not simple?

You can’t commit crimes then get upset someone else is committing crimes to the same end.

Yeah, exactly. So don't commit war crimes and don't get war crimed.

There is no "war against the UN" that can happen and Israel already routinely ignores what the UN says. If the UN said that and tried anything, Israel would simply shoot at food trucks trying to force their way through the checkpoints, and then certain people would say that it's completely justified, because they tried to force themselves through the checkpoints. Tell me you wouldn't be saying exactly that, Bumber.

I mean, the UN has the right to return fire? Or they could bring tanks to escort the convoy and force Israel to back down.

Edit: Look, it's not like the UN can just go through El Sisi's Mexico instead. Gaza's completely land-locked by Israel.

[hector13]

Yeah, exactly. So don't commit war crimes and don't get war crimed.

He says, while justifying war crimes…

We’re just going round in circles son.