The Glade 4.0

Do you feel that the prosecution of individuals who committed war crimes should be pursued? If so, why?

This question stems from an article I read in my local paper today in the lunchroom. It basically talked about the prosecution of a man who, in his youth, was a guard at a Nazi death camp.

This got me to thinking: Is it really right for this man to be prosecuted? Whose authority grants the permission to even try this man? Is there really such a thing as a "crime" during wartime?

Put yourself in the average Nazi's shoes back in WW2: Your country was suddenly returned to power after being in the shitter for quite a while. You were serving under the rule of a charismatic, hypnotic, ruthless, and extremely intelligent man. Are you really going to defy him? Are you really going to even have the presence of mind and clarity of thought after being brainwashed to defy him? Do you think you will not be severely punished for doing so? Looking back, do you feel that most Nazis were even in their right frame of mind (kind of like an Imperius curse to use a modern metaphor)?

My biggest hang up on the trying of "war criminals" is the question of jurisdiction. Who set themselves up as judges, juries and executioners? The victors of the war? The remaining victims themselves? Their descendants (most of which are several decades removed)? Does being on the winning side make you and your agenda "right?"

The above may make it seem like I am siding with the Nazi agenda, but that is not true. Many atrocities were committed during WW2, but it was war. If anything, I see Nazis just as much of victims (of Hitler's mind control) as those they victimized.

Using D&D alignments as a real baseline here... It is possible this former soldier is not an evil man. You are in the military, you follow your lawful orders. You are lawful Neutral... good and evil mean nothing to you. You follow the orders you are given dutifully.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Yeah, and that's ultimately my point -- should a man who was following orders given to him by a superior with the control that Hitler had necessarily guilty of anything?

I myself think the answer is "no they should not" but I am a bit of a prick like that.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Orders are orders. If the soldier disagreed with them but still performed his duties, then his personal guilt is punishment enough for him.

If there is such a thing as war crimes, then those who commit them have no basis for complaining when they get prosecuted. Alternatively, if there isn't such a thing as a war crime, then those same people have no basis for complaining if the victors dispense with the trial altogether and just shoot everyone.

Where is the problem in that? It is war.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

There were quite a few U.S. judges who had serious problems with the Nuremberg Trials, because they violated the Constitution's prohibition of ex post facto laws. The Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court considered them a fraud.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

It gets to be a tricky question indeed.

Though Nazi Germany probably isn't the best example. The vast majority of the German military do fit your example. For example, my grandfather was held prisoner for a time near the end of the war, and while he and the others weren't mistreated they were rather neglected. I can see this falling under the "it's war" category -- I have no idea what position their captors were in to provide healthy meals and adequate warmth.

Some of the concentration camps weren't even trying to make a pretense at war, though. I can't imagine being a guard at a place like that. It wasn't an environment where you could just say "eh, think I'll pass on those orders, can I just go elsewhere". Some of the earliest stages of the Holocaust (though after the T4 program) were similarly straightforward and had to be conflicting for most of the soldiers involved.

There are firsthand accounts out there from some of those soldiers, though I suppose they have to be taken with a grain or two of salt.

That's an interesting tidbit. I'd have to agree with the good Chief Justice, except that we weren't trying citizens, or even people apprehended in the United States, so I don't know that they should have been entitled to that Constitutional protection.

The basic problem with the concept of war crimes is that they only get enforced on nations that want to enforce them on themselves, or on the losers. Then you get all kinds of people with an agenda trying to place anything they can into the war crimes category against which ever side they have a beef with.

I think the real mistake at Nurnburg was callign them "crimes against humanity" and the like. All it did was create a new type of crime that could be easily manipulated for propaganda. What we should have done was simply tried them all under the UCMJ (or rather some amalgamation of U.S., British, French, and Soviet military law) and simply made it clear "We're doing this because it's **** appalling and becuase we won. The only reason we're giving you a trial at all is to get the facts out and because a few of you may have been fingered by someone else who was going down anyhow. Don't anyone get the idea that this is going to be some new international standard; rather, this is what happens when you commit mass murder, invade all your neighbors, and then get the *** kicking that you not only richly deserve, but that you should have seen coming before you even got in this mess."

Of course, I'd have followed that up by either rejecting the whole U.N. idea or limiting it to nothing more than a forum or council to facilitate agreement between nations. No charter, no powers, none of what it has now except a building and offices.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Unsurprisingly, I believe that war crimes *should* be prosecuted and with great zeal. Being in a war does not excuse the horrors that people commit while at war.

If a soldier kicks down a door, murders a civilian, and rapes his wife, that soldier needs to stand trial. If a soldier knowingly murders a non combatant, they need to stand trial.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

War is heck?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Which doesn't excuse a war crime, in my opinion. In fact, I find that old canard to be a weak, pathetic excuse for dishonorable conduct in a theater of war. Plenty of soldiers are perfectly capable of keeping their honor in war, and of following the laws of war.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

^ This

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The manner in which war crimes are generally pursued are essentially over riding the cultural systems of the "country" in question with the morality of an outside group.

Same with crimes against humanity.

Should Hitler have been punished for the Holocaust... absolutely, as should several other high ranking, decision makers.

However, anything they were guilty of committing was already illegal in Germany and most if not all the other countries in which the crimes were carried.

Was it necessary to establish a new court, with new laws, to handle those transactions?

How does this new court and laws translate to cultures where the "crime" in question is not considered a crime?

If we did away with war crimes prosecution, I think you'd see a hole host of atrocities committed under the guise of following orders.

As problematic as war crimes prosecution can be, I think the ends more than justify the means. (which, of course, is the standard justification for the committing of war crimes)

"The Laws of War" is one of the most absurd groupings of words in language. War is war. War is the ultimate last resort, as a clash of incompatible philosophy or ideology. War means cruelty, horror and invasions. It means indiscriminate killing until one side is either annihilated or waves a white flag, and sometimes it means indiscriminate killing even after that flag is waved. There is no honor in war. There is kill or be killed. The point of war is not to foster good feelings, or to liberate. It is to win in such a way that your opponent and yourself never have to go to war again.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

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I always assumed war crime prosecution was to foster a groundswell of morality under an evil regime. The idea being that the people in charge of such a regime only possess what power their governed offer them, and that if asked to do something morally reprehensible (like, say, exterminate a race of people), that groundswell of opposition from the people tasked to actually carry out the orders would stop the orders and neuter the evil regime.

Of course, it generally fails on an individual level, but, y'know.

Rynar - Since the middle ages there have been rules associated with armed combat. From formal duels to the rules associated with taking ransom and keeping prisoners, there have always been rules in war. Everyone directly involved in the conflict has an interest in such rules. They may at some point be taken prisoner, or they may be defeated. The idea of total war, the idea of armed combat without any rules, is simply foolish. War is hell is not a legal justification for making war hell. We have always had rules in war, and for good reason. Those who break the rules are not excused for doing so because rules get broken in war. That's like saying that armed robbery should not be prosecuted because armed robbery is an ugly, violent act.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Selective prosecution was another big one. All the politicians got lined up against the wall and shot or hanged, but the engineers, physicists, and other learned individuals responsible for carrying out the war and mass murder all got free passes. Many of them were brought to the US/Britain and given lucrative jobs.

I find it interesting that people that normally place a high value on personal responsibility think that such responsibility is not essential to the soldier.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Bare assertion at worst, hasty generalization at best. In the middle ages it was common to raze villages, and torture captives. This doesn't even begin to speak to the vikings or the crusades. You have an wrong-headedly romanticized idea of what the midle ages were which has been fostered by your participation in the ren-faire/cos-play world. You should try reading history.



Neither of those things are war. Those are things that took place only amongst those of means and title, as a way of insulating themselves from the actual violence and consequence of wars they waged using up the lives and livelyhoods of their banner and liegemen, and the happless peasants unfortunate enough to be caught up in the affairs of their "betters".



Bare assertion.



This line of reasoning is an unfortunate attempt by your "betters" to lessen the actual implication of war, such that it can be as a political tool to farther their own interests as opposed to only being used as a last resort.



The idea of war is simply foolish, period. But it sometimes becomes nessacary. When forced into war, the objective should be to win at all costs, and to end the war as swiftly as possible with the least damage done to yourself. There are no rules when forced into the ultimate act of ugliness, which is the reason war should be avoided if at all possible.



War is not compatible with law. Law is about maintaining structure and order within a society, war is about the breakdown of reason and the failure of peacful solutions found within the saftey of law.



Argumentum ad nauseam



There are no rules in a civilized society surrounding the breakdown of rules in a civilized society.



Again, armed robbery happens with the structure and confines of law which is the foundation of a civilized society. War happens outside the stucture of law, and therefor outside of civilized society and it's protections.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

These aren't war crimes. These are crimes under the UCMJ whether a war is going on or not, and are crimes under the military law of every nation that I know of.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You don't get it. Justification has nothing to do with it. Rules of war only matter if you win; they cannot be enforced if you lose. As far as rules for treatment of people go, if you chose to follow them its in hope that the other guy will do the same out of concern for his own people. This course of action has a very poor history of actually working.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."