How are war crimes a thing?
Don't the two sort of cancel each other out?
I mean, if I'm being invaded and see hundreds of enemies parachuting into my territory, isn't it in my best interest to start unloading AA guns into their immediate area before they hit the ground and swarm like ants?
AA guns on paratroopers is a war crime?
Wat crimes try to limit the ruthlessness of war. Just observe ww2 each side had a constantly changing set of agreements with each side breaking them at times. Once a "pact" is broken it stays that way for both sides like bombing civilian targets, treatment of prisoners (east front vs west)
Consider that no side used chemical weapons and had that not been an agreed upon amd uheld standard for all sides the war was not as devastating as it otherwise would have been
>germans had best nerve agents
>v2 rockets or better yet v1s (buzzbombs)
t. american who never read Grotius.
War crime isn't about killing soldiers during a fight.
War crime is when you deliberately bomb a school full of children for the sake of it. On the other hand, it's not a war crime to bomb said school IF you think that the ennemy high ranking military staff are hidden in it, despite the presence of children. In other words, as long as your target is a soldier/military base it's ok to kill civilians as collateral damages.
According to the Geneva Convention, you can be tried in a military tribunal for firing on parachuting troops who haven't hit the ground yet.
>How are war crimes a thing?
When one side loses, they are on the hook for war crimes.
When one side wins, they prosecute the losers for their war crimes.
Nope. Parachuting troops and pilots and crew who bail out are not the same thing.
Damn, I wasn't thinking simple enough.
Good fucking point senpai
Shut up niggermountain
why are you idiots commenting on stipulations in the Geneva Convention when you don't even know what's in it? Under the Laws of Armed Conflict, specifically Article 42 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, it is a war crime to shoot at somebody descending in a parachute from an aircraft **IN DISTRESS**. this pertains to pilots and aircrew ejecting from a plane, not an invading force
There is still the principle of proportionality. Hypothetically you can't level a city district with thermobaric bombs just because there are 2 enemy soldiers there.
>t. autist
You probably slay mad puss right
What? Of course. That's common sense.
War is a crime. There's never been a legal war. Kill your aggressors.
Can confirm
Germans were really buthurt over our troops shooting their paratroopers over Crete or the locals waiting them on the landing points and beating them up with sticks because muh spawnkill
But you can level industrial capacities
And i dont think anyone gets prosecuted for terror bombing in a real total war scenario
This just seems like common sense of you can secure an lz you deserve to get fucked
I think he was asking more whats even the point of setting rules for war in a general sense. Thanks for clarifying what the rules actually are
Sure, but it still pretty large. You present an extreme case. Like I said, it's not a war crime to bomb a school full of children to hypothetically kill a general. Most of the people yelling "MUH WAR CRIMES" are those who complain about those acts.
Considering the fact that the opportunity won't really be assessed after ("How would the battle have gone if the artillery hidden in a residential area hadn't been bombed") only extreme cases would fail to pass the test of proportionality .
I think there is also a doctrine about "strike to kill not to maim"
Maiming is a superior option to killing due to the resources the enemy must now exert to keep them alive
So a standard had to be set to deincentivize it
Well you cant prove that someone "shot to maim" so its limited on appliance only on weapons (small anti personnel mines or hollow point bullets I believe)
So I guess using chemical weapons against a military emplacement isnt a warcrime.
No but you can bomb it and get the same result. I said that you have the right to kill them, the "how" is an another question which wasn't addressed because it is an another debate. There are specific conventions regarding the use (or more exactly the absence of use) of chemical weapons.
As a rule of thumb, it's ok to use what is designated to kill without causing unnecessary sufferings if everything go right (because even a bullet can cause unnecessary sufferings if things go south).