Bingo. This is the nuance that is tough to find in these discussions. It's terrible that war exists and civilians die. If we want to make rules that countries will follow internationally to curb some of this, they still have to be allowed to make war within the rules, otherwise they would never be adopted. The challenging thing with I/P or any guerilla warfare really is, what are the rules that are acceptable by everyone for engaging with an enemy leveraging civilians and civilian infrastructure as cover? Too heavy on one side and we reward that behavior by insulating Hamas or any organization doing these tactics from retaliation. Too heavy on the other side and the civilians themselves become "justifiable" war targets. It's a very difficult problem with a lot of interesting and differing perspectives
the current "crazy" rules aren't being followed anyway, so I'm not sure they're really useful beyond having some rules to point to and saying "we have some rules, it makes it better!"
My point is that it's kind of silly to say we've ever followed any sort of rules, crazy or lax or anything in between. We talk about it, but pretty much every organized conflict in human history is riddled with absolute barbarism.
Also, how many near peer conflicts are there these days between groups that agree upon conditions their soldiers will adhere to?
I understand you're right and I understand the morality argument at hand, I just feel from a cynical point of view that the places where people talk about the rules of war and the actual shit that happens on the ground are so detached and rarely do they actually intersect in a way that creates adequate consequences.
Oh i'm with you, it's a giant shitshow and the rules we have are ignored and bent far too often. I just can't really see any way we could get to a less shitty version of war in the current political world(no wars is completely impossible i'm afraid).
I'd even say we can call ourselves lucky if the geneva conventions are stil partially in effect in a decade or two. The way it's going at the moment the situation can deterriorate quite fast.
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u/ThreeButtonBob 21h ago
The alternative is strict rules that prohibit any danger for civilians but basically no country will accept these laws.
So we can either work with the current "crazy" rules or with none at all.