War crimes have never been anything more than a way the west can punish its enemies. It’s hilarious people think this norm continuing is some refutation of the system as designed.

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mullingitover 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> War crimes have never been anything more than a way the west can punish its enemies.

They're the way winners can punish their enemies.

If Germany and Japan had won WWII, US/British/Russian military and political leaders absolutely would've been on trial.

At the same time, agreements between peer countries to follow basic rules have generally held. Note that neither side in the current conflict is using dirty bombs, or dropping nerve gas or bioweapons on civilians, etc.

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georgemcbay 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> War crimes have never been anything more than a way the west can punish its enemies

That's a fair point, the major change isn't that we suddenly started committing war crimes, it is that we've dropped all pretenses of trying to justify why what we did isn't one.

	▲	roenxi 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Isn't that an improvement? It seems better to have people who are honest about what they're doing, even when committing war crimes. At least then people can have an honest conversation about whether the policy is working. One of the most frustrating things about wars is people adopt policies that don't advance their objectives and then lie about what they're doing, what happened and why. This sets up an environment where militarys do things that aren't even in their own interests, let alone anyone else's, and the public discourse is busy arguing about some wild imaginary scenario that isn't related. Better to have people focused on the real world and accurately understanding both (1) what the policy was and (2) what the outcome of the policy was.