|
[Previous entry: "Better late than never"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Press corps, meet stepladder - part II"] 08 April 2003: "So you think you know what a war crime is..."
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has been quick to condemn US forces for the deaths of journalists during fighting around the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (AFP on Yahoo! and BBC): 5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: [...]Emphasis in bold mine. In rough terms, this means levelling the hotel with artillery or an airstrike to nail a few snipers would be a war crime, unless you were absolutely certain there were no non-combatants in the building, but firing a tank shell into the spot where you think the enemy is holed up is not illegal. The ignorance on the IFJ's part is illustrated by this pasage: At the same time the IFJ condemns what appears to be Iraqi tactics of using civilians and journalists as a "human shield" against attack. "The Baghdad authorities are just as culpable with their reckless disregard for civilian lives," said White.In that regard, White is spot-on; paragraph 7 of the same article of the Protocol states: 7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.Where White is severely mistaken is in thinking that he can have it both ways. The purpose of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Protocols Additional is not to force one side to fight at a disadvantage because the other side is breaking the rules; if this interpretation were correct, it would encourage the rules to be violated, since it presents the offender with a win-win situation in that the opponent is forced to fight at a disadvantage, lest he make himself guilty of war crimes as well. A comparison may be made with the various conventions and protocols concerning cultural property (religious sites, museums, libraries, monuments, etc.) in armed conflict: it is forbidden to attack (in the sense defined in the Geneva Conventions) such sites, unless the opponent is using them for military purposes. The classic example is if an artillery observer is directing fire from a church tower, or a sniper or machinegun crew is firing from the tower. Normally, a religious site should be spared, but when the enemy is using one to gain a combat advantage, it's entirely permissible to pump a few rounds of high explosive into it. By throwing the term "war crime" around like this, White demonstrates that he does not actually know what does—and equally important, does not—constitute a war crime. Don't get me wrong, I think the death of the correspondents involved is tragic, but the American action is not a war crime. White's indiscriminate, incorrect usage of the term "war crime" trivialises it, and that makes me extremely angry, and the situation is not helped by the distinct impression I get that the IFJ thinks that the lives of journalists are somehow worth more than those of anyone else. While I'm on this tear anyway, I become extremely irritated by the uninformed slinging around of the term "war crime" that seems to have gained currency with anti-war commentators to refer to just about every action that takes place in the course of armed conflict that they don't like (the usual criterium is "performed by American troops"). Grauniad* contributors like George Monbiot and Arundhati Roy are prime examples, as well as the truly execrable Robert Fisk and John Pilger, though they are by no means the only ones. As a former soldier, and as someone who worked on genuine war crimes for several years, let me express a heartfelt Okay, that'll do. I'm going to go and play with the neighbours' puppy. (His name is Sleater, and he's really cute.) * - The nickname Grauniad derives from the high incidence of typographical errors the Guardian used to suffer from. We're talking the 1970s here, but hey, I'm old enough to remember this. |
Navigation: home archives backgrounder Blogs:
au currant Miscellanea:
Care to contribute |
