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Curzon
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Curzon

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November 1st, 2005

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On War Crimes Part II; or “The Americans have you on their list!”

In yesterday’s war crimes post (thanks for so many great comments), I suggested that war crimes tribunals could be counterproductive to ending war:

The threat of war crimes trials could even encourage violence, or a stubborn refusal to surrender, if the leaders know they will be tried, executed, and relegated to perpetual historical infamy if they lose.

The film Hotel Rwanda suggests otherwise, at least in regard to the boots on the ground in control of the situation.

In the scene, hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina is in the process of bribing a general and must return to his hotel to be with his family and more than 1,200 refugees he is hiding. The general is reluctant—he wants to get to his headquarters and hide until the chaos dies down. He’s neither a war criminal nor a hero, just a military man in a position of power who doesn’t want to stick his neck out.

Rusesabagina hands the last of his whiskey to bribe the general, only to see him have second thoughts. Let’s just go to my headquarters, he says. Rusesabagina has nothing left to bargain with and is at the mercy of this general. Desperate, he tells him the only thing that will scare him into action:

You are a marked man, sir… You are on a list. The Americans have you on their list as a war criminal… Are you stupid, General? How do you think these people operate? You sit here with five stars on your chest. Who do you think they are coming after?

The threatened general is a cosmopolitan man who enjoys real malt whiskey, European travel, and golf on the highlands of Scotland. The threat of war crimes prosecution genuinely terrified him, and helped keep Rusesabagina alive, along with his family and more than a thousand refugees.

To keep that fear real and effective, perhaps it really is necessary to prosecute the Tojos, Milosovichs, and Saddams of this world.

Comments to this entry

Gabriel Mihalache
November 1, 2005
8:27 pm
I think that the prosecution of criminals is the cornerstone of any desirable civilization. A lean, aggressive, ruthless justice system that singles-out and efficiently prosecutes crimes could be single-handed responsible for making new and unimaginable levels of wealth and personal safety possible.

If we are to argue on consequentialist grounds, the utility provided by such a social form will outweigh any short-term (and, dare I say, short-sighted) gains which we might receive from not prosecuting certain crimes. (The crimes are real, and no amount of linguistics gymnastic will make them otherwise. The only thing we must chose is our attitude toward them.)
We must prosecute.

If we are to argue on principle, first of all I'd have to ask you for a definite criteria according to which I would be able to decide when and if I should excuse a mass murderer from prosecution and when I shouldn't. If a clear criteria can't be given then we can't say we act on principle, but rather we're in the consequentialist case above.
We must prosecute.

If such a criteria could be given, then I would doubt that any such principle would be compatible with the rest of our desired form of life. We want to live in a certain way (e.g. keeping kids safe, trade fair and life sacred) but we can't do that if we have principles which allow for this kind of people to escape prosecution.
We must prosecute.
Chirol
November 1, 2005
8:58 pm
Curzon: The argument goes both ways. It may deter small fries who have little to do with what's happening, but those who the laws are really made against, the Mugabe's, Hitler's, Milosevic's and so forth won't let silly international laws stop them. The best such laws can hope for is occasional deterrence of "lesser includeds" in the chain of command, but the deterrence implies they must be damn sure that their actions will be stopped by international forces and that the prosecution and its consequences would be real, not the joke they are today.

National laws against murder, rape and so forth don't deter crime, why should international ones be different?
Pavlov3
November 2, 2005
12:16 am
Why didn't he say "The UN, or the ____ " insert country other than the US, "has you on their list"? Makes you think huh?
Paul H.
November 2, 2005
4:40 am
It's been pointed out that the overflight of a bomber and the dropping of a precision guided bomb to destroy the AM radio station in the capital of Rwanda might have saved tens or hundreds of thousands of lives (Rwanda total death count around 800,000?)

I understand that broadcasts from this radio station were essential to coordinate the execution campaigns (contrary to the idea that the killing of 800,000 can just happen spontaneously; in fact took a lot of coordination and effort to make it happen). Haven't seen the movie so don't know if this is portrayed in the film or not.

All it would have taken was some political courage on the part of world political leaders (to include the US President, too bad for Rwanda that he couldn't find it).

Oh well, at least he apologized later.
Pavlov3
November 2, 2005
5:04 am
I seriously doubt that people content to hack 800,000 people to death with axes, knives, and machetes would be seriously thwarted by a single B2 bomber strike.
On the contrary, I can see the headlines now "US bomber destroys civilian peace-oriented radio station, thousands feared dead, Rwanda demands IHRC action!"
shakuhachi
November 2, 2005
6:09 am
It could go both ways. If rebels or rogue governments know they could be put on trial once they made peace, then they might fight to the death. On the otherhand, the threat of justice could prevent these things from happening in the first place.

I would be more worried about how fairly this justice will be applied. I suspect it will not be applied fairly at all.
Simon
November 2, 2005
8:04 am
There's a simpler reason for such tribunals: because they are the right thing to do. Plenty of war criminals have hidden behind national sovereignty or worse. An analogy is in order: we have punishments for homicide that are either long prison sentences or in some barbaric countries (including Japan and the USA) the death penalty. So when committing a murder, does the murderer also sometimes try to eliminate eyewitnesses and make some more prone to extreme violence given they know the consequences will be dire? Yes, perhaps. But in return how can we measure the number that have been deterred from committing such a crime because of their fear of the consequences? It is immeasurable, but I imagine a far greater number.

In the gruesome calculus that is justice, that makes such a deterrant a desirable outcome, even if there are exceptions who make a mockery of it. What it really requires is to be an effective deterrant. That's why I supported the Iraq invasion - the UN would otherwise be exposed as worthless and I imagine that Syria would consider yesterday's resolution in a different light. To deter means to have the possibility of reprisal in whatever form is necessary to make the deterrance effective, believable and credible. Like game theorists will tell us, if it is not then the deterrance is worse than nothing, because it exposes the hypocricy of those providing the deterrance.

Likewise the world needs to fully go after war criminals, even if they are heads of state. That's why South Africa is a disgrace in its dealings with Mugabe; why Crotia should not join the EU until they hand over their suspected war criminals, and why the leading nations of the world must be prepared to put their money and boots where their mouth is. Sometimes realpolitik needs to stand aside for greater principles, because otherwise what's the point of politics at all?
Grendel
November 2, 2005
10:32 am
There's a simpler reason for such tribunals: because they are the right thing to do.

hear, hear
Humans are simple. Nullum ius sine actione.
Kushibo
November 2, 2005
11:37 am
The threat of war crimes trials could even encourage violence, or a stubborn refusal to surrender, if the leaders know they will be tried, executed, and relegated to perpetual historical infamy if they lose.

I support the idea of bringing people to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity. I think it can be a deterrence.

But the option of the death penalty as the resulting punishment undermines the deterrence factor: why not fight it out to the end if there's even a small chance you'll succeed if giving up means a likely death anyway?

It looks like from that statement above that you've come around to my point of view.
Grendel
November 2, 2005
1:05 pm
Why didn't he say "The UN, or the "Â? insert country other than the US, "has you on their list"Â?? Makes you think huh?

No, not at all, since the reason is quite clear. The US are known for not supporting the UN as much as their own interest, which of course weakens the international body. The UN is not a supranational organization as the EU, but international. No membership activity&support, no UN activity&efficiency at all. On the other hand, no other country has as many military units stationed internationally and is using them as actively (unilaterally or within international frameworks). It'd be different if the US supported the ICCJ, but won't see that happen too soon.
Curzon
November 2, 2005
2:11 pm
Kushibo: You misunderstand me. Both these "war crimes" posts are designed to get us thinking and talking. Both those movies make great points. Violence is necessary to end war; that violence can be excessive yet will not be punished. Thus, war crimes target those who lose; but sometimes they can deter. The war crimes dynamic is complex with no one right answer.
Kushibo
November 2, 2005
2:19 pm
I'm not so sure that I misunderstood you; I did get those points.

I'm just saying (and maybe I wasn't making this clear) that the war crimes dynamic is already complex enough without making it more so by throwing the anachronistic death penalty into the mix.

I stand by my contention that it would be a mistake we will pay for in the future if Saddam Hussein is executed instead of imprisoned for the rest of his life.

Not to say he doesn't deserve a painful death.
sun bin
November 2, 2005
5:26 pm
i think kushibo has a great point, and it leads to another topic of debate.

should people like marcos, pinochet, park jong-hee be punished?
or instead, should we pardon their sin to encourage smooth transition.

I am partial to the Korean way, i.e. forgiving.

however, the mechanism and court should be there. forgiving is made at discretion.
i.e. saddam could be sentenced to death, but it is the court's (and the people's) discretion to forgive him and imprison him for life.
i think the koreans did a great job in doing so.
but it is not easy to be accepted by many other cultures.
Curzon
November 2, 2005
5:38 pm
Koreans are great at forgiving and forgeting transgressions... as long as the transgressor is Korean. If not, watch out.
sun bin
November 2, 2005
5:54 pm
hehe.....right.
there is one 'realist' element in it.
Without arguing about intention,
Park and Roh cannot hurt Korean people again.
But Japan has the ability to.
Paul H.
November 2, 2005
9:04 pm
"...I seriously doubt that people content to hack 800,000 people to death with axes, knives, and machetes would be seriously thwarted by a single B2 bomber strike..."

No, such people would still have the will but their efforts could not have been coordinated over the radio and as a result a lot fewer of their victims would have died "in the big picture".

Himmler spent some time studying this and came to some conclusions (on the "operational" side). Even the toughest SS trooper began to get demoralized after shooting too many personally, thus the importance of making such extraordinary efforts to come up with "depersonalized" but large scale and efficient methods of gassing and incinerating thousands at a time.

The Rwandan method was coordinated massed crowds of hacking machetes, thus taking away a feeling of individual responsiblity from the crowd members. Crematoria not needed of course just leave them where they lay for the vegetation to cover, I suppose simplicity is always a virtue.

Also, recall the post WWII recriminations from many over why the Allies didn't use heavy bomber attacks on the death camps to destroy the gas chambers, the crematoria, and the rail lines leading to them.

The analogy between this and the Rwandan radio station is so clear to me I'm amazed you don't see it.

As far as Saddam's imprisonment goes, you guys who want life for him will need to specify where he is to be incarcerated and what measures (extraordinary ones) will need to be taken to make sure he isn't "sprung" by a large and well-planned guerrilla attack, to once again return to Iraq and "do his thing". I can't imagine any other country will want this burden and I can't see the new Iraqi government wanting him in one of their jails for the next 15 years or so until he dies naturally.

But maybe I'm wrong about this and Iraq will be willing to incarcerate him long term. But if so they'll also have to guard him closely from "insiders" who want to take personal revenge, also quite a burden.

I think he only went outside Iraq once in his whole life (as a young man "on the lam", to Egypt?) I suppose we could bring him to America and put him in a cell with Noriega, maybe that would broaden his horizons as he could learn a little Spanish and some voodoo rituals, he should take right to it.
Joe
November 2, 2005
9:09 pm
From Wikipedia:

A year after Saddam had joined the Ba'ath party, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew Faisal II of Iraq. The Ba'athists opposed the new government, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Syria, from where he later moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death, in absentia. In exile he attended the Cairo University School of Law.

Also:

[Saddam] made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with some French business and conservative political circles.

Hmmm...
Alfred Russel Wallace
November 2, 2005
10:27 pm
Simon Seabag Montefiore claims that Saddam visited all of Stalin's palaces in the USSR....

But Sadam a lawyer........
Anonymous Coward
November 3, 2005
9:56 am
_Park and Roh cannot hurt Korean people again.
But Japan has the ability to._

nationalist BS

_Saddam] made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with some French business and conservative political circles.

Hmmm"¦_

That was before or after he got WMD (chemical weapons) from the US of A, or precisely: Rumsfeld? I remember this wonderful chummy picture taken from him and Saddam a few decades ago, handshaking and best pals ever. How time can change, surprising isnt it?
Curzon
November 3, 2005
12:22 pm
Anonymous Coward: long time no see! Good to have you commenting again. Sun Bin is not Korean, but his concerns over Japan get the better of him.

As for Rumsfeld, would you equally criticize our conduct during and after World War II when we were chummy with Stalin?

!http://www.cominganarchy.com/wordpress/wp-content/old_uploads/rs2.jpg!
!http://www.cominganarchy.com/wordpress/wp-content/old_uploads/rs4.jpg!
heirabbit
November 3, 2005
2:54 pm
There's the H word again. After the war in Yugoslavia, official reports from Germany and Spain confirmed that there were no mass graves. Only about two thousand misc. bodies were discovered, most of which were determined to be the victims of random violence. Putting Milosevic in the same sentence with Hitler is pretty funny. It's like you believe in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The mass graves were Clinton's excuse to bomb Serbia (and then Belgrade). I don't pretend to know much about Milosevic, just that a Serbian violinist I know thought of him as a jerk.
sun bin
November 3, 2005
5:33 pm
No. I believe the chance of Japan being aggressive is extremely small.
sun bin
November 3, 2005
5:36 pm
i was not even saying that it is right or wrong.

i was merely pointing out the factual difference. roh/park did not have an amry or a police force to command, nor a country to tax.

japan has.

that is the difference.

there is nothing about morality or rightness. purely logical difference. why do you have to label a factual comparison 'nationalistic'?
Solomon
November 3, 2005
7:16 pm
I'm late on this. I think the idea that the threat of punishment for War Crimes is most effective against the "lesser included" figures. It might encourage Hitler or Stalin to fight it out to the end, but the big guys need lots of cooperative underlings to do what they want to do - particularly in carrying out massacres. That's why part of the propaganda effort in WW2 was directed by broadcast and leafleting to warn the Nazis and their allies against participating in "attrocities." Even the big-wigs at the Wannsee conference feared the possibilities of the future enough to disguise their true intentions even in their own record of the event.

An equally interesting snip from the film would have been the part where they are listening to Dee Dee Myers, Clinton's Press Secretary, dance and weasle around using the word "genocide" to describe the Rwandan events. Why? Because, as a signatory to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the US, and many other nations would have been compelled to act once they determined a "genocide" was ongoing. How do you get around that? Simple. It's not a "genocide" it's a "mass killing" or "attrocity" or "something real, real bad" going on.

Which brings the other problem into play -- not only do you need the statute, but you need the political will to enforce it.

Haj Amin Al Husseini was certainly a Nazi war criminal, but he need never have feared since post-war politics protected him. Hamas, Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, hell, the PA itself and most of the Arab countries of the Middle East have overtly genocidal goals (the President of Iran announced his!), but no one points out the obvious, because then they'd have to act.
Eddie
November 11, 2005
3:40 pm
Am I bloodthirsty for suggesting we make it our policy, in the face of a genocide (ala Darfur, Rwanda) or a serious regime effort to slaughter a significant group of people (dissidents, minorities, as we see now in Zimbabwe and have seen in places like East Timor and Iraq), to hunt down and kill those responsible?
The chances of getting the UNSC to agree to set up a war crimes tribunal with any real power are slim to none these days; witness the current impotence of the tribunal trying to punish those responsible for the slaughter in Darfur.
It should be the policy of the US to utilize precise bombing, special forces insertion and coordinated assassination attempts to eliminate those who believe they can get away scot-free with crimes like this. Some crimes, like terrorism and mass murder, defy logic and diplomacy, and as such can only really be stopped by deliberate force.
Ron Patterson
November 11, 2005
8:33 pm
The way that the words war crime and warcriminal are being bandied about in the media seem to be changing the meaning of the words. NacArthur is now officially a "war criminal"in South Korea. So the use of the words are becoming 'stretched" by use. Not every battlefield incident is a war crime. Dear Anonymous coward Not every visit to a Leader of an important energy producing nation is evidence of selling WMD. Please tell me exactly what WMD Rumsfeld sold Saddam. I believe you are confusing Rumsfeld with some French and German leaders. Why is death sentence anachronistic? How about counseling for gassing villages and perhaps a removal of driving privlidbes for murder of children.
tdaxp
December 23, 2005
4:21 am
Media Roundup


Hotel Rwanda, courtesy Amir Ezati

I watched Hotel Rwanda tonight. A very good movie -- think The Killing Fields, but set in 1990s Africa. Rent it from GreenCine, buy it from Amazon, or read what Curzon thinks.

Mark of ZenPundit notes that Dr....
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Hotel Rwanda II
April 6, 2006
10:13 am
[...] Hilarious (!?) new 9/11 movieOn War Crimes Part II; or “The Americans have you on their list!”Terror in JordanKaplan Alert: Wapo Book ReviewThe Ryugong to be completed! [...]
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Hutu Impotence
April 11, 2006
9:35 am
[...] Even though Germany only seems to worry about war crimes and international justice when it hits them in the face, they nevertheless have made an important move recently. [...]