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Thread/rant: 1. Started reading a recently released book by a well-known and respected US military strategy expert yesterday and I just cannot get out of my head how appalling I find this rediculous, arrogant and deeply ignorant statement in the first chapter...
2. “The Law of Armed Conflict is equally charming but ineffectual. As any veteran will tell you, the laws of war are a marvelous fiction... No one can legislate combat, or regulate it, and it is hubris to try. Kindhearted solutions to war just get people killed.”
3. The sneering dismissal of intl humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, Rome statutes, would be less scary if this wasn’t so main stream. That people now believe the laws of war, built largely from the horrors of the World Wars, are impediments to ‘winning’. Winning what?
4. THE LAWS OF WAR MATTER because - among other things - civilians deserve to be protected. Yes, institutions like the ICC and UN are deeply flawed, but they are built on principles that were created from the horror that is war. From the recognition we must strive for better.
5. Here’s the rub: Western militaries are far too used to fighting wars thousands of miles away from their loved ones. Thousands of miles from their sleeping babies, their parents, their villages, their communities. Don’t let anyone ever tell you there is a ‘theater of war’.
6. I have spent years in the field watching and reporting on the impact of the degradation of the respect of the the laws of war on human beings. The growing apathy to this in the west is alarming. And it’s taking us in a very dark direction.
What book is it?
Perhaps a Georgetown professor?
Yes. I follow US discussions on fp and while theorists of various positions can post their views, the reactions of many commentators reveal this & similar opinions: "sneering" at international law is exactly right. It's all "might is right" and "we do what we like because we can"
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