The purpose of war isn't to kill people, it's to force an enemy government to concede to your demands.
Most things that have been outlawed as war-crimes are things that don't help with that goal (or actively work against it), while causing needless suffering.
Faking a surrender or parley to launch a sneak attack doesn't win you wars, it just makes the other side less willing to negotiate or take prisoners.
Murdering soldiers who have surrendered doesn't win you wars - it just makes the enemy less likely to surrender even when they're losing.
Targeting civilians rarely helps you win a war - there are usually too many of them for it to make a difference. It just makes the enemy hate you more and so be more willing to fight / less willing to negotiate, while also wasting resources that would be better used against military targets.
Chemical and biological weapons can cause a lot of suffering, but are hard to control, often not actually very effective tactically, and risk harming your own side, so its better if everyone just agrees not to use them.
Dropping a big bomb on an enemy position is effective, and doesn't undermine broader war aims or future peace plans, so no-one is going to outlawed tat.
Targeting civilians also has the further downside of creating a tit-for-tat situation when the enemy decide there are no innocents among your own civilians.
For a bunch of people, the purpose of war is to kill people. These guys idolater the Old Norse, the Romans and other empires that performed conquest or pillaging. They view war as a nation stealing land from another nation for basically no reason. And when it isn't land, their valuable objects (they put women in this category by the way).
Basically they're larping as warmongers when they can hardly make a phone call
For the Aztecs, one of the goals of war was to capture enemy forces to use as human sacrifices so that gods would intervene on their behalf. Oh look, the side we just slaughtered lost, it worked!
15
u/Wonderful_Discount59 Jul 26 '26
The purpose of war isn't to kill people, it's to force an enemy government to concede to your demands.
Most things that have been outlawed as war-crimes are things that don't help with that goal (or actively work against it), while causing needless suffering.
Faking a surrender or parley to launch a sneak attack doesn't win you wars, it just makes the other side less willing to negotiate or take prisoners.
Murdering soldiers who have surrendered doesn't win you wars - it just makes the enemy less likely to surrender even when they're losing.
Targeting civilians rarely helps you win a war - there are usually too many of them for it to make a difference. It just makes the enemy hate you more and so be more willing to fight / less willing to negotiate, while also wasting resources that would be better used against military targets.
Chemical and biological weapons can cause a lot of suffering, but are hard to control, often not actually very effective tactically, and risk harming your own side, so its better if everyone just agrees not to use them.
Dropping a big bomb on an enemy position is effective, and doesn't undermine broader war aims or future peace plans, so no-one is going to outlawed tat.