5 ms·

When war crimes rhetoric becomes battlefield reality

47 points by dogscatstrees 6mo ago

drivebyhooting 6mo ago
What’s the plan for opening transit through the strait? Let Iran hold it hostage and ransom tankers through? That seems absolutely unacceptable. How about each country sets up a blockade and demands their toll for safe passage? The only sensible strategy is to make IRGC capitulate.
- ekjhgkejhgk 6mo ago
  How about listening to their demands? This was triggered by the US and Israel, it's on them to fix this mess.
  - drivebyhooting 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
      Because the usa caused it.
    - defrost 6mo ago
      The US ignored all their own intelligence of decades, struck a country during negotiations, and the head of state and head of war are openly calling for war crimes while channeling all the worst aspects of former Air Force General Curtis LeMay without any of LeMay's experience.
      - drivebyhooting 6mo ago
        Yes it was a terrible decision. But now what? Do you have a suggestion for ending the conflict?
        defrost 6mo ago
        Get an experienced Trump whisperer in to back the silly old bugger out without feeling as though he lost. It's a mental health issue, and if you can't reel him in with gilded trinkets you'll need some cooler heads to remove him from issueing executive orders and immediately pass control to congress. The time for fixing the flaws in the US system was 20+ years past .. but if you can get that effort in now, it'll be appreciated.
        michaeljx 6mo ago
        Accept that you lost. Apologize for the mistake. Pay a few billions for repatriations, lift sanctions and open dialogue. But engaging into a multi-year trillion war is more likely, than accepting defeat upfront
    - shermozle 6mo ago
      You broke it, you bought it!
    - jjgreen 6mo ago
      Too late: https://archive.is/UpE2M https://archive.is/UpE2M
  - dlubarov 6mo ago
    Extorting an international waterway is effectively just piracy (we just don't typically use the word for state actors). We could try to end this piracy through negotiations, but letting states use piracy as a bargaining chip doesn't set a good precedent.
    - anonymous_user9 6mo ago
      > letting states use piracy as a bargaining chip doesn't set a good precedent. If piracy is bad, what precedent due the US and Israel's conduct set? Instead of tolling the strait, Iran should arrest leaders of their neighboring states, and try them for their crimes under Iranian law.
      - drivebyhooting 6mo ago
        There’s no point in arguing tit for tat or who has the moral high ground. No matter what grievance one side brings up the other will have a retort.
    - adrian_b 6mo ago
      You forget that USA has instituted a blockade of Cuba in February, before attacking Iran. USA has intercepted the oil tankers headed to Cuba, causing a very serious fuel shortage there, which has created a lot of problems for the ordinary Cuban citizens. It is USA who started practicing piracy in international waters and blocking the traffic of ships belonging to others. Therefore now it is really shameless for USA to criticize Iran for doing against USA and its allies, during a war started by USA, the same thing that USA has already been doing, and unlike Iran, USA has started doing this completely unprovoked. USA has already demonstrated in numerous occasions that they believe to have the right to break any international laws and treaties whenever they please. Therefore any other country also has the same right, whenever that is done against USA or its allies.
    - scotty79 6mo ago
      US physically confirmed Iran's ownership of the strait. Now everybody should just get off their lawn. US spits on international laws and institutions so why should anybody respect them?
- simonh 6mo ago
  And the way to make the broader million strong Iranian military fanatical religious death cult capitulate is....
  - drivebyhooting 6mo ago
    The civilian price will be terrible. But this could be one way: Destroy all power plants and desalination plants. Rations will be given out by “peace keepers” on the condition that IRGC members surrender and are taken prisoner. Missiles and drones can be exchanged for rations as well.
    - CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
      Iran depends on desalination for around 3% of its drinking water, and has said that any such attacks on its infrastructure will see the same to any country that has support the USA/Israel military actions. USA allies in the region will be largely uninhabitable, since they depend on power and desalination for their existence. Still, maybe that is what Trump, the crazy bastard, wants.
      - simonh 6mo ago
        Yeah, the amount of magical thinking about this conflict in the USA is disturbing. Iran is dry, but it's not just desert. The military will have backup generators and priority access to any generator infrastructure or repair capability. The ones that will suffer are the civilians, and the fanatics will just see that as martyrdom. You can't defeat religious fanatics that welcome pain just by inflicting pain, especially by inflicting it mainly on other people.
        CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
        Martyrdom is more like they are prepared to die for the cause, as long as they are remembered for their sacrifice, which is not fundamentally differen US or the religious fanatics that are Israeli troops They don't welcome pain any more than Buddha did when he sacrificed himself so the tigress could feed and raise her cubs.
- bjoli 6mo ago
  Iran doesnt have the defensive capabilities needed tomproperly defend their airspace, so their plan was to make it hurt if they were attacked. The fact that the US seemed surprised they shut down the strait is such an immense intelligence failure. If anyone by this point think there will be any meaningful change in Iranian society that won't be shoved down their throats imperialist style, they shouldn't be in politics or military intelligence. They should be selling pencils from a cup. Whatever aims the US had with this illegal war, we should all admit they are a lost cause. Unless the US allows for immense civilian suffering, I think Iran will outlast any US political patience for this war
  - scotty79 6mo ago
    > immense intelligence failure There's a singular failure point. Trump was properly informed and just said "nah, they are gonna collapse before they do it".
    - red-iron-pine 6mo ago
      it is almost certain that Trump never even saw the intelligence. it is also almost certain that Bannon or Stephen Miller or whoever his Trump's Russian handler -- wildly thought to be Melania until he got elected -- is also telling him what to think. given that it is reported he literally has off the record calls with Putin, it is entirely possible that his handler is literally Putin himself at this point
      - scotty79 6mo ago
        That would require presence of conspiracy (which I don't doubt) with coordination and consistency (which I totally doubt). While my explanation requires just one idiot who likes to disregard input. Which is self-evidently true.
CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
It's not the first time the USA has committed war crimes in its 222 to 230+ years of war, and it won't be the last either.
enjeyw 6mo ago
What I find tricky to reason about here is that whether destroying infrastructure comes down to "whether the military advantage outweighs the impact to civilians", and as far as I can tell, there's no robust way to assess this. Indeed, this seems to be what supporters of Trump are leaning on, as you can make the argument that _any_ bridge, or _any_ powerplant could hypothetically be used by the military, and that this conflict is sufficiently important for the livelihood of people in America/"The West" that doing anything that even slightly helps tips the odds is justifiable.
- globalnode 6mo ago
  exactly, they can argue forever that their point of view was justified.
- graemep 6mo ago
  Interesting requirement. Where does that leave a lot of other wars? Russia has been attacking Ukrainian infrastructure for a while. Ukraine has been attacking Russian oil production and ports, especially recently. I seem to recall a lot of infrastructure destroyed in the US invasion of Iraq. There have been a lot of wars since WW2 and I find it had to believe that those than involved bombing were all restricted to military targets. A lot of war is about economics and logistics. Edit: to add, what about Iran's threats to destroy water supplies?
  - spwa4 6mo ago
    The problem is also that the world has made it very clear that it doesn't believe in warcrimes. Warcrimes are what's defined as illegal in the convention of Geneve. The purpose, the idea behind warcrimes is that when warcrimes occur, the world would unite, in the security council, a mandate would be voted in, and the whole world would intervene, preventing warcrimes from occuring, or at least from repeating. Well, when it comes to Iranian and US warcrimes the UNSC, specifically France, Russia and China have declared there will be no consequence to any warcrime by either side. In France's case it's not that they don't think warcrimes are terrible crimes, it's that they don't want to help anyone. In Russia and China's case it's that they think this war destabilizes the west and that matters more to them than terrible crimes. Oh and the whole communist stick of "it's not warcrimes, it's internal matters", you know, when they do it to their population. So they have declared they will actively fight to prevent anything being done about warcrimes. Under those circumstances, of course, warcrimes effectively don't exist, and that's that. Or to put it another way: the world is perfectly happy for you to be discussing the finer points of international law and why this and that is or isn't "a crime". But the world is totally unwilling to do anything about warcrimes. I mean, let's be realistic. The world is unwilling to do anything about Iranian warcrimes, and perfectly certain the US won't commit any (the US will make mistakes, of course, but not actually commit real warcrimes). Whatever the outcome of your discussion on what is and isn't a heinous crime ... there will be no consequences.
globalnode 6mo ago
dont worry as soon as trump is gone americas sycophant allies will be clamouring to get back to some sort of pre-trump status quo, but i doubt we're ever going back to 100% pre-trump prices. whoops, was responding to someone but accidentally top levelled this comment, which id rather leave here even though it lacks context -- something about levies on ship transit, which isnt really that much different to global tariffs is it?
readthenotes1 6mo ago
I keep wondering what Iran planned to do with its 440kg of U-235 enriched to 60% when most nuclear reactors need only 5% and some needing only up to 20%. https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enriched-uranium-worth-bargaining-for/ https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri... https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-peace-or-for-weapons/ https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-peace-o...
- amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
  If they were smart, build a defensive nuclear arsenal. It certainly seems to have worked for North Korea.
  - karmakurtisaani 6mo ago
    A functional nuclear weapon would definitely have prevented the current war. Hard to blame them for trying.
    - votepaunchy 6mo ago
      Circular reasoning. The current war is only because Iran was building a “functional nuclear weapon”.
- scotty79 6mo ago
  You can definitely guess what are they gonna do with it now since the inept US attack obliterated every incentive there was to not do that.
- donkeybeer 6mo ago
  I don't care about hypotheticals, there is already a hyper violent belligerent country in the middle east with a few hundred "illegal" nukes. Their officials/thinkers have already stated insane things about using the nukes on eg innocent European capitals without anyone doing counter clarification or pushback. I'd worry much more about the nukes and fissile materials there.
noja 6mo ago
Loophole finding. Again.
Amirh14123 6mo ago
Iranian here, full internet blackout done here by the the Islamic state, connected through alot of efforts to read news and I came upon this. By our ideas, hitting power plants and such infra will not effect IRGC by any means, IRGC hates it's own people ( aka Iranians who uprised against them so many times, last being less than 2 months ago leading to 40k+ civilian deaths), it'll just make the economy many times worse for us than it is. IRGC will run it's infra even if it means full blackout of the civilians. At this point of time I'm getting ready to be laid off cuz our jobs are non existent now ( I am a fellow software engineer) For next couple of months, life's gonna be shit, either the strikes will end it, or the IRGC. Wonder what we gotta do.

47 points by dogscatstrees 6mo ago

What’s the plan for opening transit through the strait? Let Iran hold it hostage and ransom tankers through? That seems absolutely unacceptable. How about each country sets up a blockade and demands their toll for safe passage? The only sensible strategy is to make IRGC capitulate.

ekjhgkejhgk 6mo ago
How about listening to their demands? This was triggered by the US and Israel, it's on them to fix this mess.
- drivebyhooting 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
    Because the usa caused it.
  - defrost 6mo ago
    The US ignored all their own intelligence of decades, struck a country during negotiations, and the head of state and head of war are openly calling for war crimes while channeling all the worst aspects of former Air Force General Curtis LeMay without any of LeMay's experience.
    - drivebyhooting 6mo ago
      Yes it was a terrible decision. But now what? Do you have a suggestion for ending the conflict?
      - defrost 6mo ago
        Get an experienced Trump whisperer in to back the silly old bugger out without feeling as though he lost. It's a mental health issue, and if you can't reel him in with gilded trinkets you'll need some cooler heads to remove him from issueing executive orders and immediately pass control to congress. The time for fixing the flaws in the US system was 20+ years past .. but if you can get that effort in now, it'll be appreciated.
      - michaeljx 6mo ago
        Accept that you lost. Apologize for the mistake. Pay a few billions for repatriations, lift sanctions and open dialogue. But engaging into a multi-year trillion war is more likely, than accepting defeat upfront
  - shermozle 6mo ago
    You broke it, you bought it!
  - jjgreen 6mo ago
    Too late: https://archive.is/UpE2M https://archive.is/UpE2M
- dlubarov 6mo ago
  Extorting an international waterway is effectively just piracy (we just don't typically use the word for state actors). We could try to end this piracy through negotiations, but letting states use piracy as a bargaining chip doesn't set a good precedent.
  - anonymous_user9 6mo ago
    > letting states use piracy as a bargaining chip doesn't set a good precedent. If piracy is bad, what precedent due the US and Israel's conduct set? Instead of tolling the strait, Iran should arrest leaders of their neighboring states, and try them for their crimes under Iranian law.
    - drivebyhooting 6mo ago
      There’s no point in arguing tit for tat or who has the moral high ground. No matter what grievance one side brings up the other will have a retort.
  - adrian_b 6mo ago
    You forget that USA has instituted a blockade of Cuba in February, before attacking Iran. USA has intercepted the oil tankers headed to Cuba, causing a very serious fuel shortage there, which has created a lot of problems for the ordinary Cuban citizens. It is USA who started practicing piracy in international waters and blocking the traffic of ships belonging to others. Therefore now it is really shameless for USA to criticize Iran for doing against USA and its allies, during a war started by USA, the same thing that USA has already been doing, and unlike Iran, USA has started doing this completely unprovoked. USA has already demonstrated in numerous occasions that they believe to have the right to break any international laws and treaties whenever they please. Therefore any other country also has the same right, whenever that is done against USA or its allies.
  - scotty79 6mo ago
    US physically confirmed Iran's ownership of the strait. Now everybody should just get off their lawn. US spits on international laws and institutions so why should anybody respect them?
simonh 6mo ago
And the way to make the broader million strong Iranian military fanatical religious death cult capitulate is....
- drivebyhooting 6mo ago
  The civilian price will be terrible. But this could be one way: Destroy all power plants and desalination plants. Rations will be given out by “peace keepers” on the condition that IRGC members surrender and are taken prisoner. Missiles and drones can be exchanged for rations as well.
  - CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
    Iran depends on desalination for around 3% of its drinking water, and has said that any such attacks on its infrastructure will see the same to any country that has support the USA/Israel military actions. USA allies in the region will be largely uninhabitable, since they depend on power and desalination for their existence. Still, maybe that is what Trump, the crazy bastard, wants.
    - simonh 6mo ago
      Yeah, the amount of magical thinking about this conflict in the USA is disturbing. Iran is dry, but it's not just desert. The military will have backup generators and priority access to any generator infrastructure or repair capability. The ones that will suffer are the civilians, and the fanatics will just see that as martyrdom. You can't defeat religious fanatics that welcome pain just by inflicting pain, especially by inflicting it mainly on other people.
      - CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago
        Martyrdom is more like they are prepared to die for the cause, as long as they are remembered for their sacrifice, which is not fundamentally differen US or the religious fanatics that are Israeli troops They don't welcome pain any more than Buddha did when he sacrificed himself so the tigress could feed and raise her cubs.
bjoli 6mo ago
Iran doesnt have the defensive capabilities needed tomproperly defend their airspace, so their plan was to make it hurt if they were attacked. The fact that the US seemed surprised they shut down the strait is such an immense intelligence failure. If anyone by this point think there will be any meaningful change in Iranian society that won't be shoved down their throats imperialist style, they shouldn't be in politics or military intelligence. They should be selling pencils from a cup. Whatever aims the US had with this illegal war, we should all admit they are a lost cause. Unless the US allows for immense civilian suffering, I think Iran will outlast any US political patience for this war
- scotty79 6mo ago
  > immense intelligence failure There's a singular failure point. Trump was properly informed and just said "nah, they are gonna collapse before they do it".
  - red-iron-pine 6mo ago
    it is almost certain that Trump never even saw the intelligence. it is also almost certain that Bannon or Stephen Miller or whoever his Trump's Russian handler -- wildly thought to be Melania until he got elected -- is also telling him what to think. given that it is reported he literally has off the record calls with Putin, it is entirely possible that his handler is literally Putin himself at this point
    - scotty79 6mo ago
      That would require presence of conspiracy (which I don't doubt) with coordination and consistency (which I totally doubt). While my explanation requires just one idiot who likes to disregard input. Which is self-evidently true.

CrzyLngPwd 6mo ago

It's not the first time the USA has committed war crimes in its 222 to 230+ years of war, and it won't be the last either.

enjeyw 6mo ago

What I find tricky to reason about here is that whether destroying infrastructure comes down to "whether the military advantage outweighs the impact to civilians", and as far as I can tell, there's no robust way to assess this. Indeed, this seems to be what supporters of Trump are leaning on, as you can make the argument that _any_ bridge, or _any_ powerplant could hypothetically be used by the military, and that this conflict is sufficiently important for the livelihood of people in America/"The West" that doing anything that even slightly helps tips the odds is justifiable.

globalnode 6mo ago
exactly, they can argue forever that their point of view was justified.
graemep 6mo ago
Interesting requirement. Where does that leave a lot of other wars? Russia has been attacking Ukrainian infrastructure for a while. Ukraine has been attacking Russian oil production and ports, especially recently. I seem to recall a lot of infrastructure destroyed in the US invasion of Iraq. There have been a lot of wars since WW2 and I find it had to believe that those than involved bombing were all restricted to military targets. A lot of war is about economics and logistics. Edit: to add, what about Iran's threats to destroy water supplies?
- spwa4 6mo ago
  The problem is also that the world has made it very clear that it doesn't believe in warcrimes. Warcrimes are what's defined as illegal in the convention of Geneve. The purpose, the idea behind warcrimes is that when warcrimes occur, the world would unite, in the security council, a mandate would be voted in, and the whole world would intervene, preventing warcrimes from occuring, or at least from repeating. Well, when it comes to Iranian and US warcrimes the UNSC, specifically France, Russia and China have declared there will be no consequence to any warcrime by either side. In France's case it's not that they don't think warcrimes are terrible crimes, it's that they don't want to help anyone. In Russia and China's case it's that they think this war destabilizes the west and that matters more to them than terrible crimes. Oh and the whole communist stick of "it's not warcrimes, it's internal matters", you know, when they do it to their population. So they have declared they will actively fight to prevent anything being done about warcrimes. Under those circumstances, of course, warcrimes effectively don't exist, and that's that. Or to put it another way: the world is perfectly happy for you to be discussing the finer points of international law and why this and that is or isn't "a crime". But the world is totally unwilling to do anything about warcrimes. I mean, let's be realistic. The world is unwilling to do anything about Iranian warcrimes, and perfectly certain the US won't commit any (the US will make mistakes, of course, but not actually commit real warcrimes). Whatever the outcome of your discussion on what is and isn't a heinous crime ... there will be no consequences.

globalnode 6mo ago

dont worry as soon as trump is gone americas sycophant allies will be clamouring to get back to some sort of pre-trump status quo, but i doubt we're ever going back to 100% pre-trump prices. whoops, was responding to someone but accidentally top levelled this comment, which id rather leave here even though it lacks context -- something about levies on ship transit, which isnt really that much different to global tariffs is it?

readthenotes1 6mo ago

I keep wondering what Iran planned to do with its 440kg of U-235 enriched to 60% when most nuclear reactors need only 5% and some needing only up to 20%. https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enriched-uranium-worth-bargaining-for/ https://armscontrolcenter.org/irans-stockpile-of-highly-enri... https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-peace-or-for-weapons/ https://armscontrolcenter.org/uranium-enrichment-for-peace-o...

amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
If they were smart, build a defensive nuclear arsenal. It certainly seems to have worked for North Korea.
- karmakurtisaani 6mo ago
  A functional nuclear weapon would definitely have prevented the current war. Hard to blame them for trying.
  - votepaunchy 6mo ago
    Circular reasoning. The current war is only because Iran was building a “functional nuclear weapon”.
scotty79 6mo ago
You can definitely guess what are they gonna do with it now since the inept US attack obliterated every incentive there was to not do that.
donkeybeer 6mo ago
I don't care about hypotheticals, there is already a hyper violent belligerent country in the middle east with a few hundred "illegal" nukes. Their officials/thinkers have already stated insane things about using the nukes on eg innocent European capitals without anyone doing counter clarification or pushback. I'd worry much more about the nukes and fissile materials there.

noja 6mo ago

Loophole finding. Again.

Amirh14123 6mo ago

Iranian here, full internet blackout done here by the the Islamic state, connected through alot of efforts to read news and I came upon this. By our ideas, hitting power plants and such infra will not effect IRGC by any means, IRGC hates it's own people ( aka Iranians who uprised against them so many times, last being less than 2 months ago leading to 40k+ civilian deaths), it'll just make the economy many times worse for us than it is. IRGC will run it's infra even if it means full blackout of the civilians. At this point of time I'm getting ready to be laid off cuz our jobs are non existent now ( I am a fellow software engineer) For next couple of months, life's gonna be shit, either the strikes will end it, or the IRGC. Wonder what we gotta do.