6 ms·

International law does cover treatment of civilians during conflicts, but I'm afraid you are wrong - international law doesn't automatically class any and all c

International law does cover treatment of civilians during conflicts, but I'm afraid you are wrong - international law doesn't automatically class any and all civilian deaths as war crimes. This is pretty basic stuff.

mcantelon 16y ago
During "Collateral Murder", an Apache gunship shot up, with no warning, a civilian van that exhibited no aggression. Would this be legal under international law?
- Alex63 16y ago
  Article 5 of the 4th Geneva Convention states (in part): Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State. So your question comes down to whether the crew of that gunship suspected the van of containing persons who threatened the security of the Afghan state. I don't know the answer to that. Do you?
  - mcantelon 16y ago
    Watching that video, there doesn't seem to be a reason to suspect the van of being engaged in hostile activities. Your interpretation of that law would allow the military to kill any civilians they please, merely stating that they suspected them. I suspect this interpretation is incorrect.
    - Alex63 16y ago
      I'm sorry, in the interest of brevity I may have been unclear. I don't think that I'm "interpreting" the Geneva Conventions. I reported what the convention said, and explained that to know whether the US had violated the conventions, we would have to know whether there was "suspicion". It would be up to a court to determine this. While the video is one piece of evidence, we have no way of knowing what other information was available (e.g., did the daily intel briefing warn crews that Taliban forces were using white vans to transport fighters). My point was that the GC does not make all civilian deaths illegal.
      - mcantelon 16y ago
        My guess is a court would find "suspicion" unwarranted without reason for it. As the military hasn't cited any reason for the killing of the civilians in the van (no daily intel briefing warning of white vans was revealed in defense of the military), it would seem that there isn't one. Obviously civilians can be killed if there is a rational reason for it (i.e. aggression), but it's fairly certain that killing civilians without reason is not legal under international law otherwise death squads would be considerably more popular.
    - russell_h 16y ago
      What interpretation? Your disagreement seems to be with the Geneva Convention itself.
      - mcantelon 16y ago
        When a law allows certain activity based on "suspicion" it means reality-based suspicion, not suspicion based on an individuals hunches or psychic prowess.
        ErrantX 16y ago
        Given the wider context of the video it seems the suspicion could have been legitimate in good faith Anyway; the point of this aside was that legally the deaths could have been, well, legal. But they were certainly morally/ethically problematic. Which is the point about whistleblowers; they don;t necessarily just air illegal acts but morally wrong ones as well. This is probably not the thread to get back into the whole debate of "were those deaths illegal" :)
- fdschoeneman 16y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by a "civilian van." As if there are or were at the time insurgent vehicles that were clearly marked as "non-civilian." And if you actually watched the video you'll see that the US personnel believed the occupants of the van were removing weapons from the site. After action footage redeemed this view, and showed the presence of RPG's. Also, ask yourself, why was that van tooling around in the middle of a warzone with kids inside? If the driver was a "civilian" then he demonstrated very poor judgement at the least, and a willingness to use children as human shields at the worst. I'm inclined to believe it was the worst.
  - mcantelon 16y ago
    >if you actually watched the video you'll see that the US personnel believed the occupants of the van were removing weapons from the site. They can believe that the occupants are also Martians, but that doesn't qualify as a belief based on reason. >After action footage redeemed this view, and showed the presence of RPG's. The van was a civilian vehicle. There were no RPGs found originating from the van. >Also, ask yourself, why was that van tooling around in the middle of a warzone with kids inside? My guess is the citizens in the van were Iraqi, hence their proximity to the country. >If the driver was a "civilian" then he demonstrated very poor judgement at the least, and a willingness to use children as human shields at the worst. I'm open to evidence that the van was 1) an insurgent van and 2) using the children as human shields, but a belief without evidence isn't reasonable.
    - fdschoeneman 16y ago
      I'm glad you're open and reasonable. Now ask yourself some questions: 1) Did you see any other "civilian" vehicles or civilians on the street in the footage? No. Where do you think the "civilians" and their vehicles were? The answer is, they were at home, hunkered down, because they knew there was fighting going on. There had been fighting going on in this neighborhood for weeks. That's a "reasonable" reaction to living in a fucking war zone. That's what I'd do. That's probably what you'd do. And if I had kids, it sure as fuck is what I would do. The last thing I would do is put my kids in a car and drive around in it as some kind of a mobile aid station. Even if my best friend was sitting their in the street, bleeding out, I wouldn't risk my kids lives to pick him up in a war zone. Furthermore, if you watched the entire video, and I suspect you didn't, you'd find that the same Apache crew was tracking another black and unmarked "civilian" vehicle just a few minutes before they fired on the Reuters journalists and guess what? That other vehicile (which may have been the same one) dropped off armed insurgents into a firefight. So yes, Apache crew belief may have been incorrect -- though there is ample evidence to support that it was correct -- but it wasn't "unreasonable." Listen, I think you're angry about war. War sucks. It's terrible. And I'm glad most of the fighting seems to be over in Iraq and that we'll get the hell out of there soon. But Assange edited that video to make US forces look like murders, which isn't the truth. They are just normal guys doing a very, very difficult job, and who sometimes make mistakes. You want to be angry, get angry at Bush and Obama. Wikileaks got it wrong, intentionally.

mcantelon 16y ago

During "Collateral Murder", an Apache gunship shot up, with no warning, a civilian van that exhibited no aggression. Would this be legal under international law?

Alex63 16y ago
Article 5 of the 4th Geneva Convention states (in part): Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State. So your question comes down to whether the crew of that gunship suspected the van of containing persons who threatened the security of the Afghan state. I don't know the answer to that. Do you?
- mcantelon 16y ago
  Watching that video, there doesn't seem to be a reason to suspect the van of being engaged in hostile activities. Your interpretation of that law would allow the military to kill any civilians they please, merely stating that they suspected them. I suspect this interpretation is incorrect.
  - Alex63 16y ago
    I'm sorry, in the interest of brevity I may have been unclear. I don't think that I'm "interpreting" the Geneva Conventions. I reported what the convention said, and explained that to know whether the US had violated the conventions, we would have to know whether there was "suspicion". It would be up to a court to determine this. While the video is one piece of evidence, we have no way of knowing what other information was available (e.g., did the daily intel briefing warn crews that Taliban forces were using white vans to transport fighters). My point was that the GC does not make all civilian deaths illegal.
    - mcantelon 16y ago
      My guess is a court would find "suspicion" unwarranted without reason for it. As the military hasn't cited any reason for the killing of the civilians in the van (no daily intel briefing warning of white vans was revealed in defense of the military), it would seem that there isn't one. Obviously civilians can be killed if there is a rational reason for it (i.e. aggression), but it's fairly certain that killing civilians without reason is not legal under international law otherwise death squads would be considerably more popular.
  - russell_h 16y ago
    What interpretation? Your disagreement seems to be with the Geneva Convention itself.
    - mcantelon 16y ago
      When a law allows certain activity based on "suspicion" it means reality-based suspicion, not suspicion based on an individuals hunches or psychic prowess.
      - ErrantX 16y ago
        Given the wider context of the video it seems the suspicion could have been legitimate in good faith Anyway; the point of this aside was that legally the deaths could have been, well, legal. But they were certainly morally/ethically problematic. Which is the point about whistleblowers; they don;t necessarily just air illegal acts but morally wrong ones as well. This is probably not the thread to get back into the whole debate of "were those deaths illegal" :)
fdschoeneman 16y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by a "civilian van." As if there are or were at the time insurgent vehicles that were clearly marked as "non-civilian." And if you actually watched the video you'll see that the US personnel believed the occupants of the van were removing weapons from the site. After action footage redeemed this view, and showed the presence of RPG's. Also, ask yourself, why was that van tooling around in the middle of a warzone with kids inside? If the driver was a "civilian" then he demonstrated very poor judgement at the least, and a willingness to use children as human shields at the worst. I'm inclined to believe it was the worst.
- mcantelon 16y ago
  >if you actually watched the video you'll see that the US personnel believed the occupants of the van were removing weapons from the site. They can believe that the occupants are also Martians, but that doesn't qualify as a belief based on reason. >After action footage redeemed this view, and showed the presence of RPG's. The van was a civilian vehicle. There were no RPGs found originating from the van. >Also, ask yourself, why was that van tooling around in the middle of a warzone with kids inside? My guess is the citizens in the van were Iraqi, hence their proximity to the country. >If the driver was a "civilian" then he demonstrated very poor judgement at the least, and a willingness to use children as human shields at the worst. I'm open to evidence that the van was 1) an insurgent van and 2) using the children as human shields, but a belief without evidence isn't reasonable.
  - fdschoeneman 16y ago
    I'm glad you're open and reasonable. Now ask yourself some questions: 1) Did you see any other "civilian" vehicles or civilians on the street in the footage? No. Where do you think the "civilians" and their vehicles were? The answer is, they were at home, hunkered down, because they knew there was fighting going on. There had been fighting going on in this neighborhood for weeks. That's a "reasonable" reaction to living in a fucking war zone. That's what I'd do. That's probably what you'd do. And if I had kids, it sure as fuck is what I would do. The last thing I would do is put my kids in a car and drive around in it as some kind of a mobile aid station. Even if my best friend was sitting their in the street, bleeding out, I wouldn't risk my kids lives to pick him up in a war zone. Furthermore, if you watched the entire video, and I suspect you didn't, you'd find that the same Apache crew was tracking another black and unmarked "civilian" vehicle just a few minutes before they fired on the Reuters journalists and guess what? That other vehicile (which may have been the same one) dropped off armed insurgents into a firefight. So yes, Apache crew belief may have been incorrect -- though there is ample evidence to support that it was correct -- but it wasn't "unreasonable." Listen, I think you're angry about war. War sucks. It's terrible. And I'm glad most of the fighting seems to be over in Iraq and that we'll get the hell out of there soon. But Assange edited that video to make US forces look like murders, which isn't the truth. They are just normal guys doing a very, very difficult job, and who sometimes make mistakes. You want to be angry, get angry at Bush and Obama. Wikileaks got it wrong, intentionally.