War Crimes

Americans Don’t Commit War Crimes

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Murder, rape, torture, assault and robbery are crimes. They are crimes all of the time, everywhere and regardless of circumstances. No person can pretend that any authority has granted them the power to do any of these things. They are wrong, as such – and anyone who does these things should be seriously punished, up to and including death in certain circumstances.

Why point this out? Because there is no justification for crime. But we have a bit of a debate going on right now – an accusation that Secretary of Defense committed a war crime. The accusation, of itself, appears to me to be false: that is, he didn’t do what he’s accused of doing. That is, order a second hit on a drug boat with the intent of killing survivors of the first hit. What has got me going here, however, is the assertion that if he gave such order, it amounts to a crime. It doesn’t. Not a crime, as such and, so, not a war crime.

In war, you fire until the enemy is destroyed. That’s it. Failure to do this means that the enemy may be able to fire on you, destroying you. Sure, in bizarre circumstances you’ll be able to take an enemy alive but in combat it goes on until one side runs up the white flag – that is, the leadership of the defeated side surrenders not himself, but the whole force under his command. The drug runners are invading the United States to sell poison to our people. They are enemies. They are armed. They are upon the high seas. We don’t have to give a warning. We don’t have to give a break. Indeed, the more ruthlessly we apply force the more likely it is that the enemy runs out of the means to invade.

And, of course, this whole thing will end the moment the druggies surrender. That is, stop trying to smuggle poison into the USA. This is not a big ask. We’re not asking them to give up anything on their side. They can remain free, alive and able to pursue whatever honest trade appeals to them. All we’re saying is that if you’re trying to invade us with poison, you’re going to die whenever we can get you.

The real problem here is that many of us – including many on the Right – have internalized a Leftwing lie about the United States: that is, we commit war crimes. That we are even capable of committing war crimes. That American soldiers would lend themselves to such a monstrosity. It all started to brew early in the Cold War, specifically during the Korean War when the Communist world started to accuse our soldiers of all manner of war crimes. To this day, Leftwing voices around the world assert these crimes happened even though they didn’t. It was, of course, just a means to an end – to make the American military odious and so cover up the crimes of the Communists. “Look at that American bastard!” was the shout…by a Soviet Red Army which massacred Poles at Katyn and pretty much raped every German woman they could get their hands on in 1945. “See the American crimes!” shouted the Chinese Communists who were at the start of 70 million political murders.

The real gift to the Left here was My Lai – the quite horrible massacre by US troops of hundreds of Vietnamese. Of course, a bit of context is good here: this was in the immediate aftermath of Tet and our Army had suffered a lot of losses including from supposed civilians who revealed themselves as enemies only by the act of killing Americans. Also should be pointed out that it took place just a couple weeks after the Battle of Hue where the Communists had murdered more than ten times the number killed at My Lai…without anyone winning a Pulitizer Prize for covering it. Because it was hardly covered at all in the Western press. Didn’t fit the Narrative. My Lai did – savage Americans!

The reality of My Lai is that a unit of the American army, under gigantic stress from severe combat, went off its head and murdered hundreds. But this wasn’t US policy. A company commander gave harsh yet vague orders to his troops which some of them – not all – interpreted as a license to do evil. The policy of the US government was to go soft on Vietnamese civilians in an effort to win them over to our side. That the carrying out of this policy was, at times, downright stupid is neither here nor there – the crucial aspect is that our Army wasn’t in Vietnam to conquer, murder, rape, loot and torture. The desired goal was an independent and free Vietnam. In this is the crucial difference and what makes My Lai – a horrid crime – not a war crime.

Meanwhile, as noted, over in Hue – just 75 miles away from My Lai (you could drive it in a couple hours) – the Communists murdered as many as 6,000 people (the most commonly stated death toll is just around 4,000 but strong evidence indicates it goes to 6,000). The victims were anyone perceived as being favorable to the South Vietnamese government and/or the USA. They were rounded up, bound, tortured and murdered. Some were beaten to death. Some were buried alive. This was not done by a small section of the Communist force in defiance of policy – it was done as a carefully crafted policy. The Communists had developed lists of people to murder prior to taking over Hue. Had they remained in control of Hue for a longer time, more would have been murdered. What happened at Hue was a war crime. There’s no other way to interpret it.

But it is we Americans are the bad guys! Our whole Army was evil because of one company commander….but the NVA was just peachy even though they murdered vastly more. Keep in mind that what happened in Hue was just Communist policy writ large…all throughout the war the Communists were murdering noncombatants (as well as looting and raping women) as a matter of policy. And after the war they just put that practice on steroids. The Boat People didn’t happen for no reason. A million people fled Vietnam for their lives. 200,000 of them died trying. You don’t get into a leaky, wooden boat and set out into the high seas over mild policy disagreements…you do that because you’ll be dead if you don’t.

In my view – and I defy anyone to refute me on this – a war crime can only be the systematic application of criminal means for national policy ends. That is, it has to be policy. Now, this policy can be overt (written orders and such) or implied – but it has to be a policy. A pattern of behavior. A clear desire for a certain outcome. A soldier who murders a man is a murderer. A unit that massacres one village and then proceeds on to the next for a massacre is a war crime. This is not a difficult distinction to make but it seems impossible for many. I can only say this is because they don’t think it through and, also, they’re afraid that if they don’t mindlessly repeat the Narrative then people will get mad at them (lies always require a massive amount of cowardice to succeed).

The reason it must be my definition is because if you say that any crime committed by any military personnel during war is a war crime then you are indicting the entire military organization. To say My Lai was a war crime is to accuse the United States Army of being no different than the Waffen-SS. It is simply unjust to do that unless you have proof that the military organism is a criminal organization…as we found regarding the Waffen-SS. Our people doing evil isn’t inherent to our military system. And keep in mind that My Lai came to public notice because American soldiers made sure it did. And while the punishments meted out for My Lai do not fit the scale of the crimes, there was punishment and acknowledgement that it happened and it was wrong…and orders were issued to work against any possibility of a repeat. The NVA commander at Hue was given a medal.

The main point for us to make here is that we have to stop following the Leftist Narrative here – it isn’t designed to stop crime, but to hamstring the USA. The reason we have JAG lawyers second-guessing our combat troops is because we listened to Leftists when they accused our boys of being war criminals. Really gotta stop that.

War is cruelty and you can’t refine it. The purpose is to kill. To do this, you have to take men – and these days, women – who are not by nature violent and turn them into killers. Not murderers, but killers. People who will fire on a panicked and routed enemy, gunning them down as they flee in terror until the order to ceasefire is given or the enemy commander runs up the white flag. It has to be this way because that is how you win battles.

War is also a thing of massive stress. Those who encounter combat are forever changed. And it is no surprise that especially after long and arduous combat duty, some people break. And that breakdown can be permanent or temporary and it could cause suicide, or murder. The real lesson here is to avoid war – but if it is considered a necessity and we send our people out to kill, then we have a duty to care for them, to be merciful to them, to try and bind up their wounds physical and mental. You don’t go calling them war criminals because they went off their heads. You might have to punish them. You might even have to punish them quite severely. But you still try to understand what they went through – because you told them to go through it. You, too, bear moral responsibility…you weren’t down in the mud and blood and you didn’t pull the trigger of that soldier who murdered that civilian, but you still played your part in making it happen. You aren’t innocent. So, have a little care here before you cast judgement. Don’t award yourself a Morality Medal because you condemned a poor slob who went wrong under the stress of war.

Like any people, Americans can do wrong things. It is part of human nature. But it has never been the policy of any American government to be criminal. That is, to use criminal means to obtain national policy ends – and especially criminal national policy ends. This is why I say Americans don’t commit war crimes. It isn’t in us. We’re not like that. We might be wrong – and even at times quite fabulously wrong – but we do wish for the good of everyone. Peace for all. Prosperity for all. Freedom for all. We raise armies to defend these things and we at times send those armies to war. And, at times, some of our soldiers fall short of the standards we set for them. That is tragic – but it isn’t a war crime.

War: it Really is Kinda Hell

Mark Noonan15 Comments

There is a video out there showing a Ukrainian drone slamming into a Russian high rise – and it does evoke memories of 9/11…and everyone is jumping on the Ukrainians for doing it, whether deliberately or accidentally. I am very much “meh” about it. Russia started this war without any justifiable cause. And this incident has been tossed into the War Crimes pile…that is where everyone involved in a conflict accuses the other of being war criminals.

And that is why I have dispensed with the whole concept of war crimes: there is just no point in it.

To this day, there is still argument going on about what the Germans did in Belgium during World War One – both in the immediate invasion of August, 1914 and throughout the war. That Germans did rape, murder and loot from Day One on is not in dispute…but there are still people trying to argue that this or that particular incident didn’t happen or was itself justified. It is all such a drivel argument – the war crime, if such exists, was the German invasion. The Germans had no cause to attack Belgium – a small, weak and entirely inoffensive nation which would never have dreamed of challenging German power. If not a single Belgian had been killed, it still would have been a crime. So, people trying to twist themselves into knots saying, “well, when this village was burned and inhabitants massacred, it might well have been in response to a Belgian taking a pot-shot with the farm’s shotgun”. As if that mattered – there wasn’t supposed to be a German to take a pot-shot at.

This is why I’m only interested in who fires the first shot or who sets conditions upon which firing must commence. That is, who started it? After that, all wrong is the fault of the person who started it – nothing the aggressor does can possibly make it better or worse, and nothing the victim does in response is wrong. You open fire, you take your chances…and as far as I’m concerned, if you’re the aggressor and end up losing, count yourself lucky if every last one of you isn’t killed by the victor. What any nation should do in war – and especially my nation – is based entirely upon expediency…what will bring us victory the quickest and at least cost? This is moral because the faster you end a war the less costly it is going to be – and the force used to end a war is always morally proportionate to need, proof being that it ended the war (lots of theological people try to tie themselves in knots over this as part of the Just War Doctrine…mostly so they can hate on the USA for using atomic bombs…but the bottom line is that as long as the force is proportionate to needs, it is legitimate…and that means whatever force you can bring is legitimate).

Sure, I’d prefer a world where there were fully established rules for war and everyone tried to adhere to them. But it isn’t going to happen. It can’t happen when, in modern times, the combatants don’t even agree on what is right and wrong. That’s the real failure of all the peace and arms-control treaties…they have words on them and the contracting parties don’t even agree on the meanings of words. Back when it was two deeply Christian powers in conflict you could make rules…because both sides were working off the same ultimate rule book. But between, say, Catholic me and Communist enemy, where is there any meeting of mind? When I say “justice” is means just about the opposite of what the Communist means. I can’t make a deal with him – can’t have agreed upon rules of conflict. I can only, when pressed to it, fight him with every available means lest he kill me and all I hold dear.

Just my two cents on that particular modern debate. Fight if you want. You’d better win if you decide to fight. If you decide to fight and lose, I don’t care what happens to you.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

That quake in Turkey looks really bad. Don’t forget to say some prayers for them.

Saw another one of those articles accusing Putin of war crimes – this on the basis of recruiting soldiers from occupied Ukrainian territory. This is, indeed, a direct violation of the Geneva Convention and other international treaties.

Its also worth about a fart in a hurricane.

One of the most baleful things of the past century was the Nuremburg trials is this misbegotten drivel that there is such a thing as international law or that there can be a neutral tribunal provided for a defeated enemy. It just doesn’t work that way. It only seemed that way after WWII because the enemy powers were utterly defeated and occupied. Absent that, just how are you going to serve your warrant for Putin’s arrest? Unless a Ukrainian or other non-Russian army arrives in Moscow, it just isn’t going to happen.

But even in the unique circumstances of World War Two, the trials were an absurdity. We put on trial Hans Fritzsche as a major war criminal – he was in the same dock as Goering. Of course you’ve never heard of him – he was a radio broadcaster. Sure, he broadcast Nazi lies – that was his job. But if we’re to charge everyone who broadcasts a lie as a war criminal, we’re going to be busy for a bit. We hung Alfred Jodl who didn’t really do that much to order or carry out war crimes but only passed out 12 years to Alfried Krupp who ran the sickest slave labor empire in Nazi Germany; and then we let him out after 3 and gave him all his money back. The Russians made a serious effort to pin the Katyn Massacre on the Germans and have it as one of the counts at Nuremberg – they didn’t succeed but the bottom line here is that both FDR and Churchill were advised early on that it was the Soviets who carried out that massacre and they killed the story so as to not offend Stalin. With, you know, the truth…but then we set up trials with the Soviets helping us judge Germans guilty of carrying out massacres.

This is not to say that the Nazis should have skated. As I’ve noted before, Churchill once mused that the best thing to do would be to haul out the Nazis one fine morning and just shoot them. That would have been just – and of far more moral worth than a charade trial which included a mass murderer among the judges.

But, it happened – and now pinheads are forever asking for a repeat. As if it would do anything. War is about power – who has the most and who can apply that power most effectively. If you want Putin in the dock, then you better gather a lot of power and march on Moscow. Good luck to you. If you get him, go ahead and hang him, if that makes you feel better about it. I’ve no complaint about someone who starts a war getting shot for putting the world to the trouble. But don’t preach international law at me: it doesn’t exist. If you do catch Putin then the trial you hold for him will be garbage – because there can’t be other than a guilty verdict and you’ll be charging him not with being evil, but with losing. International law is whatever the strong choose to enforce at any given time. And that is how it should be: if you defeat your enemy, he is at your disposal. Shoot him or make a deal with him, as you desire. But don’t pretend you caught a bank robber and that a trial will somehow right the scales of justice in the world.

The news report is from 2021 but I first heard it yesterday: the Orwell Estate has given permission for a re-write of 1984 from a feminist perspective. Think about it: the premier book about totalitarian propaganda is going to be re-written to fit current propaganda. And you just watch: once this new one comes out, the original will be condemned and removed from libraries. The Left hates 1984…because they know it is all about them.

They apparently had some sick, bizarre Satanist musical number at the Emmy’s. I didn’t watch it because why would any sane person watch drivel like an award show? But I guess some people are upset. Can’t say that I am – of course these nimrods are glorifying evil. Some of them are just evil, others are too stupid to realize the evil. The few pop culture people who do see through it all usually end up making really good art that doesn’t get a lot of play. Look for those gems – I’ve even found some fairly recent pop music which is darned good and interesting…gotta hunt for it, but it’s there. It isn’t the stuff that tops the charts for the most part. And some of it does make me suspect that pop culture has its secret dissidents from the Leftist Narrative.

Pudding Brain is going to do his SOTU and they’ve put the fences back up around the Capital. Because our government hates the American people.

DeSantis is pulling the plug on Disney’s private empire in Florida. Among the other benefits Disney was given in the 1960’s is that they can take property via eminent domain! Old Walt must have had one heck of a lobbyist back in the day! Anyway, that’s all over with now – a five person board appointed by the governor will look after things; the board being the method by which a Leftist local government is cut out of the process. RDS seems to really get the point: it is all about power and you don’t leave any of it lying around for the Left to use.