Rules of War Quotes

The Seminole Wars were one of the low points in American military behavior. With the specific permission of Commanding General Jesup, the soldiers were to loot the homes and personal possessions of the enemy civilians as well as fighters, but he favored extermination and there were many atrocities. He even seized the Seminole Leaders who had been invited for Peace Talks.

This quotation has been used by many criticizing the policy of massive bombing of Japanese Cities towards the end of the war. At first it appears that there was a racist disregard for Japanese Civilian lives. However there was legal logic. The Japanese had already bombed cities throughout Asia and did not adhere to the rules of war. The Japanese government “invited” all Japanese to join the military to defend the homeland to the death in the coming invasion. All adult civilians were mobilized. There were no adult civilians left in Japan. Perhaps more important was the industrial organization of Japan which exists in large part to this day. There were tens of thousands of small & tiny factories distributed throughout all the Japanese cities. These were distributed in civilian areas & in many cases were actually in homes to take advantage of available labor and not have to transport people. There was no way to bomb the munitions factories without bombing civilian neighborhoods.

He was commenting on Lord Castlereagh's use of bribery to pass the Irish Act of Union. His observation of the immorality of politics was dramatic in that he observed that it was similar to the immorality of war.

The source was in the form of an autobiography but was written later by someone unknown. Prior to WWII and the German killing of over 25 million people, Tamerlane was responsible for more killings than any other ruler in the world. 17 million is generally given as the number if one analyses the Persian, Indian and other literature. He controlled the Middle East, the Ottoman States, a part of Russia and Eastern Europe, Persia and much of China and India. Although he himself was a Muslim he warred against other Muslim states and warlords defeating them all. Muslim nations are historically very ambivalent about Tamerlane. Pride as a conqueror is eclipsed by this excessive rapine and murder. In one case, the Persian city of Isfahan, he actually built a giant pyramid of 70,000 decapitated heads of prisoners. Also, the fact that he attacked and defeated major Muslim empires violates a current Muslim notion that there is a unity of Islam. He attacked, conquered and butchered the Ottomans, Syria, Iraq, Persia and the Muslim (Mugal) states of India.

At this point, there had hardly been any fighting and no outrages or war crimes were yet committed by either side. These would come later—more on the Confederate side as they did not want to take the limited resources they had from their troops to fulfil abstract obligations to prisoners of war or to civilians. A few deliberately chose to use terror tactics. The Union troops also at various points in the war got out of hand and looted personal property of civilians. But at this point, this proclamation was just lies and propaganda.

Lawrence of Arabia. In the Middle East, Lawrence led a small Arab army against the Turks and the Germans. In a battle near Tafas, the captured 250 Turkish and German soldiers as prisoners. They them shot them all in cold blood with their Hotchkiss machine gun. What makes this quotation so significant is that one of the great British heroes of WWI was actually guilty of War Crimes. An American journalist gave Lawrence and his exploits great publicity without mentioning the atrocities. The British chain of command also ignored the transgression of one of the most fundamental rules of war even though the clear evidence was in basic battle report files. However, the British never removed the report from the files or destroyed it. The Turks and the Germans while they respected the rules of war with the English, French, and most allies, treated the Arabs much more harshly and murdered Arab prisoners on many occasions. In part this atrocity at Tafas was an act of vengeance and retaliation. But Lawrence never even tried to explain it.

The Hamas leadership of the Gaza strip had fired thousands of rockets into Israel which their charter states should be eliminated. The Israelis after many being hit by more than a thousand rockets, used their military to attack (via the air) the Hamas leadership. However, Hamas had stored their rockets and their armaments in or very near civilian facilities including hospitals, schools, mosques and even UN humanitarian facilities. The Hamas leaders thereby made civilian facilities legitimate military targets under the Rules of War of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. So the Gaza leadership, instead of their military protecting their own civilians, used the civilians to protect the military and their weapons in the midst of war. The Secretary General also was referring to the Hamas leadership who had rejected at that point 5 different cease fires that had been proposed by the Egyptians, Americans, The Arab League and others. Israeli accepted them all.

Americans General William Hull had crossed the Canadian border with 2500 men announcing his intention to invade. Fearing the military tactics of the Indians, he issued an edict stating that Indians (and whites fighting alongside Indians) would be shot rather than taken prisoner.

The President had earlier threatened to execute Confederate prisoners, if the South implemented its threat to execute any Union Negro soldiers they captured. The threat seems to have worked. See Lincoln.

In the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars the U. S. government was much criticized for not treating captured Taliban and others as prisoners war. This Article is their main justification. The Taliban and Al Quida did not meet most of the criteria and therefore the convention did not apply to them.

Although this may seem obvious to most, there has been, in recent years, an attempt by some to introduce the concept of proportionality into the war equation and definition of war crime. Defense after attack many argue should be proportional to the attack. So if Nation A shoots down a plane of Nation B, according to this logic Nation B is not supposed to invade nation A. Brecher points out the absurdity of the concept from a war point of view. It is however used by many to criticize the defenses against terrorism where modern weapons are used against terrorists and those that harbor them.

These three conditions appear in virtually every convention on war and are basic to international law on the subject. For years they stood unquestioned, but in the latter half of the 20th century, guerilla warfare and revolutions began to pressure the definitions which were most strained in the War on Terrorism at the beginning of the 21st century. Starting with the Taliban in Afghanistan and then including Al Quada, the question of who was a combatant was debated anew. Using the classic definitions, the “foreign fighters” were not combatants and the Al Quada cells also met none of the three conditions. They could have been executed as spies as they were not in uniform according to some legal interpretations; others argued that they should be tried by civil courts; others, that they had no legal status offering any protections and it was in the discretion of their captors.

During the Seminole War, Ross, as a very respected Cherokee Chief and leader, had been asked to persuade some if the Seminole Chief’s to come to a conference to discuss and negotiate a settlement to the conflict. Ross was successful . Seminole Chief Micanopy, twelve other chieftains, and a number of Seminole warriors accompanied the Cherokee deputation to the headquarters of the United States Army at Fort Mellon, where they were to discuss the matter. When they arrived General Thomas Jesup arrested the Seminoles instead of negotiating. Ross, a very educated man who was literate in English, o the Secretary of War. Jesup in retrospect was one of the disgraces in the history of the U. S. Army was admired, not for his fighting or his lack of ethics, but for his management and logistics as the Quartermaster General. For more quotations showing Jesup’s character, see quotations 643611 and 643612.

Lieber was assigned by President Lincoln to study the then international laws of war and prepare a manual for the guidance of union troops in the Civil War. Lincoln then issued the document as a general order. This particular article is particularly relevant to the modern war on terrorism where there is criticism of the treatment of captured terrorists. There are some who argue that they should be treated as prisoners of war. However, under the principles of this article, they specifically ought not to be so treated. Incidentally, highway robbers and pirates at the time were hanged.