What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
The WSJ today reports that a United Nations court has convicted a Croatian general of war crimes and crimes against humanity for engaging in what seemingly appears to be normal wartime activity:
THE HAGUE, Netherland—A commander hailed by Croats as a hero of the Balkan conflict was convicted of war crimes by a United Nations court Friday and sentenced to 24 years in prison for a campaign of shelling, shootings and expulsions aimed at driving Serbs out of a Croatian border region in 1995.
The conviction of Gen. Ante Gotovina was a blow to the Croatian view of its wartime generals as national heroes who reclaimed Croatian land from a more powerful Serb force.
"This is a verdict against the Croatian state," said Branko Borkovic, a former Croatian army commander. "All of us have been convicted, including the Republic of Croatia."
Mr. Gotovina was convicted of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, deportation, persecution and inhuman acts, during and immediately after a lightning campaign called Operation Storm that seized back land along Croatia's eastern border taken over by rebel Serbs early in the Balkan wars. Dozens of Serbs were killed and tens of thousands forced to flee their homes.
We on the editorial staff have been puzzling over what to make of this news -- there are a few pieces of the picture that really just don't make sense. How is General Gotovina's shelling and shooting any different from historical wartime practices (e.g. the firebombing of Dresden, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)? How does international law distinguish between a legitimate act of war and a war crime?
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May '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
I have a problem with any sort of "war crimes" activity. War is a horrible thing. Horrible things happen. Singling out people for "war crimes" for shelling is stupid. But this is the UN, so I am being redundant.
Jun '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
A war crime is anything the winners say it is. As for Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki among others, war is as much a financial and economic exercise as it is a military exercise, which means that your enemy's productive capacity (productive capacity = capital + labour + resources + transportation.) is a potential target.
Dec '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
International law, the very idea of international law is a joke. I understand and approve of treaties between countries, but the idea of a citizen from country A being convicted by country C for something done to country B is ridiculous. There is no shared history of law, of ideas, values, or even basic social norms among the different countries of this world. How is any international law -that doesn't have its basis in treaties signed by the countries under the law - to be regarded as anything but an attack on a countries sovereignty?
Edited on Apr 15, 2011 at 10:42amJul '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
There are several good points already. I'd just add that in the list of crimes I'd guess that "deportation" is a key motivation for the prosecution. What they're talking around is ethnic cleansing.
Dec '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Not to mention preventing the spread of further bloodshed that might occur in the absence of decisive action. Attacks against Hiroshima & Nagasaki helped to conclude not prolong the war. For anyone interested, read "Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire" Quite the eye opener for anyone of the left.
Jun '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Johannes, what never gets discussed is the casualty estimates that Truman was getting on his desk when the military thought they might have to invade Japan. If memory serves these estimates were running at over one million dead. So the roughly 160,000 dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a relatively light butcher's bill.
Nov '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Some info on the man here.
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Thanks for this. I wonder what exactly this entails, since it seems to be the crux of the charges against him:
Jan '11
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Civilians suffer from collateral damage during war.
Soldiers suffer from collateral damage during peace.
Jul '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
While I agree with the endpoint of some of the above comments, I think that in your underlying philosphy a lot of y'all are not only cynical, but are no better than a bunch of French Jacobins.
War might be terrible, but it has rules. Warriors might not understand that, but soldiers do. Philosopher and Marine Keith Pavlischek has an excellent essay that in part focuses on this. An extract, that begins with a dialogue from Patrick O'Brien's The Wine Dark Sea:
'But where is your commission, or letter of marque?'
'I have no commission or letter of marque, sir,' replied Dutourd, shaking his head and smiling a bit. "...Is it looked upon as a necessary formality?'
'Very much so."
'...You will not think me impertinent if I observe that our countries, alas, are in a state of war.'
'So I understand. But wars are conducted according to certain forms. They are not wild riots in which anyone may join and seize whatever he can overpower; and I fear...you must be hanged as a pirate.'
Sep '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
One nit to pick on "winners", many of these conflicts don't have clear winners and losers and the Balkan wars were a good example (although I have generally considered the Serbs as the losers).
150 civilians is a slow month in many Central African Countries where are the trials there? I think these folks are targeted for war crimes because they have little political clout internationally and thus are an easy target. If they still had Soviet sponsorship would it be the same?
And perhaps more importantly they are culturally European. This means that they can be held to standards that will never be applied to "Palestinian freedom fighters". Croatians just are not good victims. Perhaps that is something they can work on.
Jul '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Keith goes on to add, in part:
"Absent a commission or a letter of marque from a recognized member of the community of nations the private citizen Dutourd [was] no more authorized to take "prizes" (attacking ships on the high seas) than were mere criminals (pirates) who did it for private gain. Indeed, they were in a moral sense worse than pirates seeking private gain, for they undermined the authority (in terms of the jus ad bellum, the criteria of right authority) by which war could be waged. By doing so, the otherwise benevolent Dutourd was assaulting the laws and customs of war and undermining the just war tradition's insistence that "wars are conducted according to certain forms" and are not "wild riots" which anyone can join.
... Civilization, even in times of war, rests on certain forms and behaviors. That letter of marque distinguished what was owed to honorable combatants and what was not owed to proto-terrorists like Dutourd."
Exactly. I cannot comment on the Croatian General; but follow your logic to the end, and Osama Bin Laden gets a pass, as does Blackbeard, for being just like Patton, or George Washington.
Feb '11
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
As a student of Serbian history, particularly of their recent wars, I share a fascination with these international prosecutions of "war crimes." If you are really interested in knowing how the international community separates war crimes from war the only answer is, political convenience (i.e., subjectivity). Just look at the justification for intervening in the wars in the Balkans in the 90's, they claimed what was occurring was genocide rather than civil war, and the only evidence is people of separate ethnicities were killing each other; however they were of the same nation. If one finds intervention appropriate in these wars, and prosecution appropriate for the execution of these wars, then by this logic had the international community intervened in the (successfully) American Civil War, it would have then been appropriate to try Lincoln for the execution of the war (i.e. committing war crimes).
Dec '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Not that I want to support Qaddafi, but I am always puzzled when it is pointed out that his troops are killing his own people. We killed a whole bunch of our own people in the Civil war.
Nov '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Perhaps the tribunal will next conduct a thorough examination of Wesley Clark's record in Kosovo.
Jun '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Nyadnar17: International law, the very idea of international law is a joke. I understand and approve of treaties between countries, but the idea of a citizen from country A being convicted by country C for something done to country B is ridiculous. There is no shared history of law, of ideas, values, or even basic social norms among the different countries of this world. How is any international law -that doesn't have its basis in treaties signed by the countries under the law - to be regarded as anything but an attack on a countries sovereignty? · Apr 15 at 10:39am
Edited on Apr 15 at 10:42 am
Is sovereignty absolute? I don't think so, I believe sovereignty is limited by natural rights. This was after all the basis for the American Revolution, that the legitimate sovereign authority of the King over these colonies did not extend to violating certain unalienable rights. This was also the basis for the Nuremberg Trials: the idea that even if the Holocaust was completely legal under German law no sovereign authority has the right to commit such unspeakable crimes.
Oct '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
When the UN starts to bring their own sterling members to trail for Human Rights Violations of peoples...They can claim some measure of validity...
Jun '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
The difference between a war and a war crime is pretty straightforward in my book. If the people you are killing are armed enemy soldiers fighting back, that's war. If you round up and murder unarmed civilians, that's a war crime.
Speaking of the Civil War, at its conclusion General Robert E. Lee was not charged with any crimes, despite killing thousands of Union soldiers in battle, because he was a general leading an army fighting by the agreed rules of war. On the other hand Captain Henry Wirz was tried, convicted, and executed for war crimes because he was in charge of Andersonville prison, where nearly 13,000 Union POWs died of starvation and disease. Killing men in battle is honorable, killing them in prisons or concentration camps is criminal. There's a clear, objective, moral difference.
Jun '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
This guy and Milosevic (had he remained alive) probably deserve some punishment.
My problem is that any trial held in "The Hague" has the odor of European political correctness about it.
Dec '10
Re: What's the Difference Between War and War Crimes?
Bush-Hitler and Cheney-Haliburton, as a reward for their liberation of 30 million Mohammedans, Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds, from the deliberate afflictions of a totalitarian megalomaniac, face the wrath of vengeance from universal jurisdiction leftists who have put them on a most wanted list for detention and punishment.
Leftists use donations to their non-profits to develop schemes for bringing charges of war crimes against the leaders of the country practicing the most avuncular benevolence of all of history’s hegemons which also protects them and their prominent downtown offices decorated with a portrait of Che on their wall, mementos from Fidel on their desk, and Mao’s little Red Book in their bookshelf.
Because power is the opiate of the leftists.