I was recently exposed to the phrase "war crime." What an odd phrase that is.
War is the business of using resources, both in terms of human lives and materials, to damage beyond use and repair enough of an opposing force's resources that they have no choice but to submit.
People inevitably die in wars, on both sides. The leaders of countries, those who start these wars, are well aware of this. So are their citizens, possibly none more justifiably so than the United States, which has seen a war for each and every generation of Americans ever born. In some cases, a generation has lived long enough to see multiple wars. A World War II veteran, for instance, would have witnessed WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan. But I digress.
The leaders send out soldiers with weapons, lots of them. They send them out with vehicles armed with weapons. They fire weapons from jets in the sky and boats on the water. These weapons are intended to kill, or at least wound, people. There's no getting around that: they are not intended to just destroy buildings. These weapons kill people.
But! We put arbitrary limits on what weapons we can use. Land mines, for instance. What? Is this weapon, that waits like a coiled snake, for someone, ANYONE, to come along and blow them apart, just a step too far? Or take using white phosphorus, or using child soldiers.
No, these things are a step too far. Killing people, even children, is just fine and dandy. But HOW you kill or injure them apparently counts. We call these "war crimes." We like to put ourselves above the fray at that point. Aren't we just so smug, away in our ivory towers, randomly calling this killing a necessary part of the war, but that killing a war crime?
CHILD SOLDIERS! I hear you exclaim. Do you mean to advocate the use of children in war, thou villain!
Rest assured, certainly not! But how can I rectify in my mind not allowing a child to war but allowing another fellow human being to go into harm's way? Whatever innocence that still exists within the heart of a soldier, of any age, will be stripped away by the horrors of war. Shall I be comforted knowing that the innocence and future of a person being stripped from him was offset by the years allowed to have those things? Perhaps others can; I cannot. There is no justification to send any person, of ANY age, into war.
When will we ever learn that the entire business of war is a crime? The psychotic breakdown of logic that leads us there in the first place is what we need to avoid.
But what, you say, of Hitler? Qadaffi, even? The violence that ended the reign of these men surely must be justified, if distasteful!
I must agree that it was right that the reign of these men was shortened. Alas! dear reader, that political assassinations, such as that which would have killed Qadaffi or that which might kill, say, Ahmadinejad or even Castro, are considered war crimes. How strange it seems to me, that these leaders send off others by the score to kill and die for them, but so many laws exist that protect their own lives. After all, leaders are often but one. How valuable is the life of that leader that it should be traded for so many others?
Isn't it strange that so many wars seem to end near the time of death of one of those that led us to war? But not in America! No, our wars do not end when the terms of office expire for any given Commander-in-Chief. Other countries know that our bloody war machine marches on without regard to what warm body might inhabit that office.
There is nothing in war, in my view, that is not a crime. It is only by sophistry, by selfish justification and release of our own humanity, that we arrive at the idea that there is some aspect that is not a crime.
There are no winners. There is no glory. In the end there is only the lingering pain and suffering of the minds and bodies of those subjected to it.
It occurs to me that perhaps a math symbol is simply missing from the phrase:
WAR = CRIME