[Comment under "With the new reports and information regarding Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, w hay are your thoughts on Trump's pardon?"]
im still for the pardon though my views are different from most. I disagree with the concept of war crimes entirely. I believe War should be where the ugliest side of mankind is shown. So ugly that people would refrain from ever engaging in it except as a last resort. When we sanitize war with all sorts of pretty rules we make it easier for countries to engage in it. As a result the default became a state of war and only periods of peace was the exception whereas in the past the default was peace with short brutal wars the exception.
edit: in order to preemptively answer questions yes genocides and everything else should be part of war. Both sides should know that they risk everything in war so they will peace out as fast as possible
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I disagree with the concept of war crimes entirely. I believe War should be where the ugliest side of mankind is shown. …yet you’d piss yourself and flee to Canada if the draft were reinstated
That’s what they though around 1910. Then WW I and Verdun happened.
BTW, capital punishment doesn’t work as a deterrent either, why should absolute war?
in order to preemptively answer questions yes genocides and everything else should be part of war There are those who - even if Donald Fart loses to the Democrat candidate later this year - want a Civil War. But hey OP, don't forget one thing:
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A Hellfire laser-guided missile launched from a pilotless Predator drone at you is not a War Crime. Who knows what the DoD's R&D departments have come up with, re. upgrades for such: with emphasis on the pilot less .
Remember what a certain reprogrammed T-800 said to Sarah & John Connor re. stealth bombers flying with a perfect operational record in "Terminator II"...?!
Quantum CPUs already exist. The likes of Apple & NVidia doing research into Machine Learning...! [/UCAV 'E.D.I.' in "Stealth"]
They’ve been saying the horror of war is it’s own deterrent and making it more horrible will increase that effect for years. Robert E. Lee said it. Alfred Nobel said it. Julius Robert Oppenheimer said it. And guess what? Not only do we just keep upping the ante when it comes to exterminating our fellow humans it doesn’t discourage warmongers at all. The ones not baying for blood from the comfort of their armchairs far from the realities of governance or conflict are giving orders from the back ranks, sending other people’s children to die, reading the numbers from field reports, pushing a button to make cities they’ll never visit desolated and possibly radioactive wastelands uninhabitable for decades they won’t live to see. And all they need to sell it to the public is to sell them the certainty that they’re going to be the ones that win.
There isn’t a consequence for them and thus they have no reason to hold back. To them consequences are for the masses to pay with only their enemy’s integrity to give them meaning. If neither side has any compunctions about the horror they inflict? The war simply doesn’t end until they’re literally out of people and resources. Normalizing such an attitude massively compounds the problem.
Working within limitations however? That more than anything seems to annoy the political powers that actually start the wars and give the troops the orders. Why do you think strongmen are so insistent such rules are for the weak but are still afraid of crossing the line as long as they’re there while blustering endlessly about how ineffective it all is and how much easier everything would be if there were no rules? When they can’t use the false promise of easy victory by mass destruction and gunning down noncombatant targets to wear down the combatants without having to directly face off with them or the fear of the enemy doing the same to them to “make the sale” so to speak to their populace they lose the all important commitment of people and resources. The fear of uniting an even greater force that might otherwise claim neutrality but are bound by treaty to step in when specific rules are broken gives them pause. Long reaching political and economic reprisals give them pause. The cost of continuing a war ends up being more than having live bodies to throw at it and blood to them is the only renewable currency and an all-or-nothing gamble is less viable when they don’t think losing entails bringing everyone else down with them to blunt the blow to their pride.
And that’s not even factoring in the lingering animosity atrocities breed. You might be able to fool yourself into thinking total genocide leaving no survivors would nip that in the bud but reality speaks different.
No, honey. The past had much more wars, and more horrible ones. The world is getting more and more peaceful. If it wasn’t for American corporations making lots and lots of money in wars, there would be VERY few of them today, indeed.
Sweden hasn’t been to war for 200 years (because we ducked out of WWII).
The people who are in a war are not the ones waging the war, dolt. Hitler and Mussolini and Churchill and Stalin weren’t on the fore-fronts. They were in bunkers, guiding the war, like they were playing a huge Reality Axis and Allies. They were the ones ordering the training and dehumanization of their people, making the war crimes possible.
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Beware; today’s Ultra-Right-Wing have started the dehumanization. Don’t let them get into YOUR head.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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