Humanitarian Law Quotes
He was echoing proposals that he made in the Delhi Emergency Committee that had been called to cope with the butchery and murder when the Hindus and Sikhs were trying to leave the areas that were to be part of Pakistan under the Partition and the retaliations against the Delhi Muslims who were trying to flee to the new Pakistan. Unfortunately, the Muslim leadership did not want such a truce as while the land had been partitioned, Indian Money, military equipment, and other resources were yet to be divided and the Muslim leaders who had been so successful playing the violence card to gain and independent Pakistan, did not want to give up that option in the remainder of the division of India. Also, it was not at all clear that the Muslim political leaders could even then control the mobs who they had already whipped up to violence.
This is true. There never has been any International law that made a belligerent responsible for civilian damages and deaths that were the result of collateral damage. However, the United States over the years, more so than any other country. Provided huge amount of aid to the citizens of the enemy nations although there was no legal obligation to do so.
Many cultures and nations, even after a century will not admit to the human rights violations that previous governments might have committed. Most dramatic is the Turkish government's not even allowing studies or discussions about the organized government mass murders of citizens of Armenian extraction—–the so called "Armenian Genocide ", but even in his native Poland there was and has been little admission of those Poles who collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis in the murder of millions of polish citizens and stole the residences, farms and other properties of Jews and other Poles who the Germans sent to concentration camps and even for the few who survived threatened them with death when they returned to reclaim their own property. Most modern societies have great difficulty coming to grips with police brutality and often denying that it is an endemic problem as opposed to one or two "bad apples".
The United States Senate must ratify all treaties before they can become effective. The Senate has been very reluctant to ratify treaties where the U. S. government or any of its citizens could come under the jurisdiction of any legal entity which did not abide by all the rights citizens are guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution. As a result, we do not recognize the World Court and the Treaty of Rome for example. The latter is the one that gives the World Court jurisdiction over a high level official who commits war crimes even in his own country. The result is that many dictators who do not want to be constrained by international law, do not sign the treaty fending off any pressure to do so by pointing to the United States. But Rothkopf and others who agree with him have not yet been able to come up with a mechanism that will assure American Constitutional rights to Americans who might be involved with the World Court and allow the court to punish the dictators who abuse their own population. The French would like their laws and constitution to control. The Russians, theirs. The Chinese, theirs. Every American public official takes an oath to defend The Constitution. That is their primary duty. Foreign policy and punishing international war criminals must take a lower priority.
When TR came to office, the U. S. was in the midst of war with Philippine insurgents who were fighting an asymmetric , guerrilla war against the U. S. Army. The war had become very brutal with the insurgents using terror and atrocities and some Army units executing prisoners and torturing captives. Roosevelt, actually fired the General who was in charge of the field troops rather than just discipline lower level officers as usually has happened.
In the American democracy the tradeoff between military activity and respect for human rights has always been an issue.
