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The Fog of War Crime Who’s to blame when “just following orders” means murder? The Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Convention were designed as the basis for military conduct in times of war. Three central principles govern armed conflict: Military necessity, distinction (soldiers must engage only valid military targets) and proportionality (the loss of civilian lives and property damage must not outweigh the military advantage sought). Among other things, the Geneva Conventions identify grave breaches of international law as the “willful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; willful causing of great suffering; and extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully or wantonly.” “You stop war crimes by coming down on the ranking officer,” says Ian Cuthbertson, a military historian and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute. “All armies in all wars at all times have committed war crimes,” he continues. ‘The question is: Does command authority condone or stop them? You just can’t give an 18-year-old an automatic weapon and tell him, ‘Don’t shoot prisoners in the head.’ You need an officer to rein him in. The officer needs to feel as though his own neck is on the line.”. . . Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a former marine who chairs the Subcommittee on Defense in the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters in May 2006 that the investigation would reveal that “our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.” . . . But soldiers are not supposed to kill in cold blood. “War is not a license,” wrote Telford Taylor, a lead prosecutor at Nuremberg, in Vietnam, an American Tragedy. “It does not countenance the infliction of suffering for its own sake or for revenge.” . . . The scales of justice are tipped toward scapegoating the convenient foils. They have committed awful and criminal acts, but their guilt cannot be separated from the war’s architects.” Frida Berrigan |