Don't dodge. Answer the question. Do you or do you not think it is acceptable for US forces to commit war crimes?
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F-22s vs Syrian Fencers
- Thread starter Uncle Fester
- Start date
We have a limited amount of funding and even less national will to prosecute an extended war.
You have $1 Trillion dollars. You can:
a) pay down the national debt
b) rebuild US infrastructure
c) insure retirement security
d) rearm and retrain the military to deter China and Russia
e) go to Mars and plant the flag
f) spend another trillion on Afghanistan since the first trillion got us nothing. If it works, then move on to the next failed state and spend 1 trillion and then the next failed state...
Who said anything about war crimes? What do you find wrong about using the weapons at your disposal to kill the enemy (or his will to fight)? Why else do you go to war in the first place?
There are limits to what our society in addition to the international community find acceptable in today's warfare, we don't carpet bomb cities anymore because we have the much more precise means to target enemies nowadays. In the same vein we don't use nukes either, it would be overkill anyways.
To win the hearts and minds... Or at least that's they keep saying the key to victory is... Not kill the bad guy, try not to get the populace mad at us.
Our military policy is bi polar... There's this really bad guy whose done all these awful things and is a threat to us but we can't kill him unless we can do it without shrapnel hitting a mud fence and we have to make sure the noise of the explosion doesn't wake the sleeping baby goats.
Dropping LGBs on empty pickup trucks but sparing the fighters who were employing it 5 minutes before makes a lot of sense as well.
I would argue we don't carpet bomb cities and/or use nukes because we're not engaged in a conflict which poses a remotely existential threat, nor one in which it is strategically or even tactically beneficial to obliterate the industrial capacity or completely break the national will of an enemy nation. I'm not one to argue in favor of war crimes, but I consider us to be morally fortunate to be engaged in a war where civilian casualties hurt our cause, against an enemy that is almost cartoonishly evil and yet poses no serious credible threat to our way of life in the long term.
Let me preface this by saying that I think I strongly agree with your overarching moral argument. But the reality is that almost all people and almost certainly all nations become utilitarians at some point. We obliterated German and Japanese cities with staggering levels of civilian casualties because we considered our victory the greater good. Faced with a similarly existential threat today, I can't honestly say I think we would fight much differently. Even against non-existential threats, our tolerance for collateral damage is not fixed - it fluctuates (very literally, as you and I have seen), with the cost in blood, treasure, time, influence, credibility, etc. and the tactical and strategic realities on the ground. And that's a best case scenario - it's not a difficult argument to make that it also fluctuates with how much our enemy looks, acts, or believes like us, and how much we are able and forced to see it on CNN.
My point was that the UCMJ exists mostly to enforce order on our own military so we can win wars. Punishing a PFC for killing his general has nothing to do with the LOAC.
As for Lee, he made the decision he thought was best for his army, himself, his state, his country, society, or something else in some order that I don't presume to know. The south wasn't going to be wiped out by losing.
This discussion got me thinking about LOAC a bit. It occurred to me, as some have already posted, that to a great extent, nations adhere to LOAC and the other international laws and norms of warfare because they have the luxury to do so. If you look at those nations/groups/actors who have disregarded these norms over the last 100 years or more, there tend to be significant asymmetries between belligerents, real existential consequences, or radical ideologies at work. They also seem to be predominantly non-western.
Case in point, I think we can all agree that WWII was the last time we faced the possibility of an existential threat (though that can be debated). That was also the last time we engaged in a form of warfare much closer to total war with unconditional surrender as the desired outcome and less constrained tactical/operational doctrines WRT LOAC. If we, or another western/allied nation were truly fighting with that much at stake, I believe the gloves would come off.
So is LOAC just a set of ideals that "civilized" belligerents adhere to in order to make the messy and morally ambiguous business of war easier for our collective conscience to bear until we start to feel really threatened, or is there more to it? Is it a means of moral and political concealment to appease the more pacifist segment of society by demonstrating a legal basis for conflict when the political bases aren't sufficiently persuasive?
Case in point, I think we can all agree that WWII was the last time we faced the possibility of an existential threat (though that can be debated). That was also the last time we engaged in a form of warfare much closer to total war with unconditional surrender as the desired outcome and less constrained tactical/operational doctrines WRT LOAC. If we, or another western/allied nation were truly fighting with that much at stake, I believe the gloves would come off.
So is LOAC just a set of ideals that "civilized" belligerents adhere to in order to make the messy and morally ambiguous business of war easier for our collective conscience to bear until we start to feel really threatened, or is there more to it? Is it a means of moral and political concealment to appease the more pacifist segment of society by demonstrating a legal basis for conflict when the political bases aren't sufficiently persuasive?
Or we could put that money in the bank to clean up and rebuild and compensate the victims' families after the next large-scale terrorist attack, that was hatched in the failed states where we didn't want to get involved.
Engagement and deterrence is more than just having a shit-ton of cool stuff. Pretending everyone will leave us alone if we leave them alone is not a strategy.
Taking a step back from most of the comments in this thread, let me recommend that several of you visit your local library or book store. Books... They're amazing things and allow you to explore, in varying degrees of detail, some of the ideas that you're trying to capture in bumper stickers.
Relevant to this particular conversation, allow me to recommend Rosa Brooks' new book, in particular Part III, chapter 11. For the amateur lawyers and ethicists in the crowd, it might prove thought provoking. The quote she closes the chapter with: "...law cannot fully tame war...but it can still serve as a signpost pointing us toward one future rather than another, and reminding us that we always have choices..."
For you @nittany03 might I recommend reading the story of young Drazen Erdemovic (the whole thing). How did all those high-minded ideas of law and justice work out for him? What would you tell him? What would say to the five justices that ruled the case?
Relevant to this particular conversation, allow me to recommend Rosa Brooks' new book, in particular Part III, chapter 11. For the amateur lawyers and ethicists in the crowd, it might prove thought provoking. The quote she closes the chapter with: "...law cannot fully tame war...but it can still serve as a signpost pointing us toward one future rather than another, and reminding us that we always have choices..."
For you @nittany03 might I recommend reading the story of young Drazen Erdemovic (the whole thing). How did all those high-minded ideas of law and justice work out for him? What would you tell him? What would say to the five justices that ruled the case?
wow
danpass
Well-Known Member
Yeah, more detail is better. I should have included a 'fully just' war and I was thinking more along the lines of the 'right conduct in war' theorem/doctrine vs the 'right to go to war'.