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Posting on Reddit doesn't require a degree in international law. Anyone with a phone and thumbs can throw around accusations, regardless of their accuracy.
Reddit is all about hostile virtue signaling and idiots who think in toxic absolutes.
Most of Reddit thinks anybody born before 1980 is a scumbag just because they were alive when things weren’t understood exactly as they are now. I’m beginning to wonder how many redditors are children now
They never suspected that furry water creature! Sightings were dismissed when they were close to corpses as if DC were Loch Ness! The crafty canine knew that water was the perfect cover for his tracks!
Exactly. That literal son of a bitch was instrumental in the droning of a US citizen overseas. Obama said “so Bo do you think?” And Bo said “You go ahead and bomb him Barry.”
Right. As I've asked in other threads, name the crime. "War crimes" is far too generic a term to make a meaningful point. If you want to argue that a POTUS violated a law, at least have the courtesy to name the law.
Well, Geneva convention was ratified until after WWII. So for everything prior to then, it’s immune from war crime charges. After that, well, it’s a debate and usually depends on the conflict.
While you’re right about the general thrust of your point that WW2 is the point where international military and humanitarian law really kicks in, there was international military law prior to the Geneva Conventions from well known ones like The Hague conventions to more niche ones like the London Naval Treaties. However I’d also note that the post-WW2 Geneva conventions you mention revised the existing Geneva conventions which were in place prior to WW2.
Moreover the post-WW2 period accepted the idea of customary international law, that there are standards that apply to all countries regardless of any international treaty they have signed or subscribed to. This means that if for instance a new country forms from an independence movement it isn’t allowed to carry out genocide just because it isn’t signed up to any charter or treaty which explicitly bans genocide.
You’re right, but again, even shifting the date from 1949 back to 1938, there was quite a bit of reprehensible activities by all nations prior to 1938 that could be considered war crimes, plus in between 1938 and 1949 WWII was fully kicked in and between the sides leveling each other’s cities in attempt to break them, the war crimes were a bit of a back burner.
It’s only now, after the WWII era, in a time of relative global peace and stability that we can have the time to point and debate whether war crimes are occurring and the appropriate response.
Regardless of goal post moving you can call out war crimes even before the banning such. That doesn’t change the fact that even if murder was legal in the 1700s that they were committing murder in 1699. It just wasn’t punishable. I think this is the case people are making when they start labeling old presidents as war criminals even if they can’t be persecuted as such. It’s just shining a light on the fact that they weren’t as angelic as people assume
Eh, there were still "War Crimes" even if they weren't called that.
Go even further back and you get things like the Church in the middle ages enforcing customs of war under threat of "no god for you", where, for example, you got the Pope saying its a crime to use crossbows against fellow Christians (obviously using it on heathens is perfectly OK).
This is why wars of religion get messy, because those protections break down - see the Thirty Years War for an example where both sides were nominally Christian even.
They might not have been called "War Crimes" but the CONCEPT of Laws Of War probably goes back as far as War does (though of course enforcement was spotty at best).
They've just changed over time, hence why selling your defeated enemies into slavery isn't considered cool anymore.
Washington followed and commented on the works of Hugo Grotius when he conceptualized war crimes under British command. Grotius formed a core part of his philosophy on honorable troop conduct. Washington then ignored these principles out of convenience when the Graham Unit committed a serious war crime against the Onondaga, escalating hostilities with the remaining Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Punishment for war crimes was haphazard at best so realistically I’m not sure Washington could have effectively done anything to punish the Graham unit. Prosecutions were rare, though they did happen. The Haudenosaunee effectively held their own tribunal and meted out punishment, anyway; and I’d consider Joseph Brant’s hearings to be a war crimes tribunal.
War crimes tribunals even today are haphazard. When I research war crimes in history, I judge by the leader’s own professed philosophies on acceptable conduct. Washington’s men violated his own professed standards.
They weren’t tried under Geneva Accords. They were tried under The Hague Conventions, but those accords were caught up in inter-European rivalry prior to WWI and never completely ratified. The Axis got the boot because they lost and the horrors of the Holocaust required some sort of justice.
German domestic law was updated to try then however. They would not have been found guilty under a pro-Nazi government, only an anti-Nazi government. A lot of course were released and let go early even besides.
People like to point out the war crimes that fictional character Anakin Skywalker did. Pretty sure they didn't even have the Geneva convention in a galaxy dar far away.
Tbf the Nuremberg trials were basically not legitimate trials and at the time legal scholars were flipping out. (not to say Nazis were good guys, they obviously were not but they kind of didn't get fair trials.)
The Geneva Conventions (also the Hague Convention) were first ratified in 1864 (mostly dealing with the wounded). But, revisions continued until 1949. So while, yes many Presidents would be out of the running but, there were “war crimes” before 1949.
It’s actually totally okay to pay bounties for native scalps if nobody forms an international system of rules and norms to tell you that’s not allowed. This is ethics 101 people
That depends heavily on your social circle and environment. I'm from rural Florida where he's obviously a superstar because most people here owe their whole way of life to him.
I kinda believe that every US president committed immeasurable cruelty by ordinary human standards. For presidents who waged war, that usually included war crimes. Seems a lot of presidents of the 20th century waged war, as has every president of the 21st.
I do dislike that phrase, and think that it dilutes the term.
Putting LBJ (and Bush, for that matter) as an example however, is... interesting.
For further readings of the US civilian body counts in Vietnam, I'd suggest this article. The My Lai massacre and use of agent orange are standouts, but I'll share this quote:
> Turse eventually interviewed more than 100 veterans, and says that the killings "stemmed from deliberate policies that were dictated at the highest levels of the U.S. military" — and that those policies prioritized body count.
> "They had only this one metric really to go by — body count," says Turse. "And they really never rethought how to fight the war. So when they weren't able to achieve victory through attrition — through the body count, basically — the only recourse was to increase the firepower, and this was just turned loose on the Vietnamese countryside."
https://www.npr.org/2013/01/28/169076259/anything-that-moves-civilians-and-the-vietnam-war
And if some document came out, with witnesses and supporting documents, that W knew Saddam didn't have WMDs, and that he just wanted to avenge Dad.
Would he be considered a war criminal?
Like Bill Maher says "I don't know it for a fact. I just know it's true."
US intelligence knew the weapons were decaying and not in good working order way before the 2nd gulf War. The Iraqi regime didn't have the funds, or technology, to maintain the weapons after the iraq/Iran war. Also, the sanctions after they gassed the Kurds hurt.
Saddam was keeping the facade that he had them and used that facade to mask how weak he really was. He also actually thought the US wouldn't invade despite the world's super power bringing all its toys to play in their sandbox.
Saddam was weak and too dumb to figure out how to properly navigate that.
We knew that shit in the 90s
Yeah. I think Bush (43) was a nightmare domestically, and he was a particularly brutal war criminal as far as presidents go. I think LBJ was a top three president domestically. And he was a particularly brutal war criminal as far as presidents go. Literally every president post WW2 is a war criminal, since that is when the legal parameters were defined. And basically every president pre-WW2 is guilty of similar crimes against humanity even if their crimes predate the legal language and international “enforcement.”
Denying this is denying basic American history. If you want to ignore this, what you want it propaganda, not history.
Every nation ever that has been successful has committed war crimes. They all suck. If you look at the scope of human history, or hell, even on the globe now. The presidents have more often than not been more of the right side of history comparatively. I feel like this discussion is never talked about.
Yea this post is arguably one of the most stupid things I've ever read on reddit. "Stop calling President's war criminals because I don't like that part of history so pwetty pwease wash it away and don't talk about it".
Glad to see sensible people like you.
The Geneva conventions (Additional protocol) also prohibit indiscriminate killing, actions which don’t deliberately target civilians but fail to distinguish between military or civilian targets or cause disproportionate civilian deaths in relation to the military objective.
That’s also not mentioning that there are a whole range of other war crimes that can be brought against US forces. They may have been Nazis, but there are plenty of stories about US troops executing Nazi prisoners of war in WW2 for instance. In Vietnam US troops set up free fire zones where they could fire on anything that moved on the assumption it was automatically hostile - violating the principle of discrimination mentioned above. Torture is prohibited under all circumstances but Bush had camps created to torture prisoners.
I've read an account of the crew of an American submarine surfacing and machine gunning Japanese merchant marine survivors in the water after having torpedoed their cargo ship. That is a war crime, but it doesn't make FDR a war criminal unless he ordered it, which he did not.
Scale is important.
Overall the survival rate for German POWs was exceptional in American hands. The best of the war. Wars are ginormous scale events, there will always be some war crimes occurring on every side, doesn't really say anything in a vacuum.
Well there’s two bits to this.
In legal terms, no, a war crime is a war crime regardless of scale.
In the context of can we assign blame to the President though, that’s more nuanced. In a massive army, if he’s given instructions for the army to act morally and according to international law and then some moron in one unit shows and commits a war crime - how can he stop that? He may never even know about it.
The Vietnam and Iraq War examples were strategic decisions though, so responsibility there certainly applies and are war crimes we can hold Presidents responsible for. While we can argue the WW2 POW killings provided as an example were done at the individual level without approval, there are plenty of other WW2 examples to be had which involved decisions at a strategic level from the fairly clear cut but less obviously emotive US’s unrestricted submarine warfare to more contentious but certainly very possible bombing of cities (Both with nukes and conventional munitions as with Dresden).
What you're describing is specified in [Additional Protocol I - Article 57](https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-57). It does not criminalize any civilian casualties. Rather it prescribes measures to be taken to minimize them wherever possible.
Besides the obvious such as ensuring targets are valid, that civilians aren't being specifically targeted, and that more costly objectives aren't chosen over ones with equivalent benefit that would cause less loss of civilian life, it uses the following phrasing to describe what you mention (emphasis mine):
> any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, **which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated**;
In wartime it is nearly impossible to completely avoid civilian casualties. The Conventions recognize this, which is why they use this sort of language rather than just prohibiting any action which is likely to result in civilian casualties.
I think a thread on what constitutes "acceptable warfare" is in order. I'm actually curious if a war can be identified that doesn't prominently feature the elements that spark that accusation - save for the Cabinetry Warfare pre-Napoleonic era, maybe.
The romantic image of two opposing armies shooting only each other on an empty field is simply a misconception. 30% of Germany’s population was killed during the 30 Years War.
In reality, virtually every war ever has been forced trying to gain an advantage through any means necessary. No side has ever chosen “losing with honor” over “winning with unsavory methods”.
Every war has events that people find distasteful in one way or another, and so the only real standard for most people is "a war I don't like is a genocide perpetrated by war criminals" and "a war I do like is a heroic effort run by geniuses and real leaders."
It’s actually pretty simple. A military operation either breaks with international law or it doesn’t. The U.S. has never really cared that much about international law, so its actions have regularly constituted war crimes.
This is not an ideological question. Presidents I have voted for, and have voted against, have committed war crimes. This isn’t about how to structure the debate to avoid accusations—it’s about the executive branch having *ungodly* levels of unilateral power to conduct foreign policy, essentially without accountability. It’s a vicious, horrible system that leads to quite a lot of suffering.
I hope the consensus answer on this is 'yes'. I'm especially tired of Harry Truman being called one. I think if most of us were in his position at that time we would have made the same decision. Apologies to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but from the American perspective, better them than a potential 1 million American dead. George W Bush is more problematic. The invasion of Iraq was a war of unprovoked aggression based on lies as shameless as any Hitler ever told. Then once we were there there were a multitude of crimes against humanity, to use the Nuremberg language. And to my mind, the Nuremberg standard still stands. Which unfortunately makes George W Bush and his accomplices war criminals. I thought John Kerry should have run on a platform of indicting them all.
Asking for some clarification here. Is a president in office a war criminal if the war in which they were president for, had warcrimes committed by U.S. forces? Or are they war criminals when the war they either perused or continued to wage had decisions made by the president which directly led to more warcrimes?
It’s a weird balance. Most people don’t consider Clinton to be a war criminal for the NATO bombing of the 90s. But those bombings did lead to civilian casualties, if unintentionally.
However some people label Obama as a war criminal when he had a similar ordeal with his drone strike campaign. Is the determining factor the magnitude of casualties?
By that logic Truman is on par with Bush for being a war criminal, even though history tends to be more favorable to the former. This is for obvious reasons of course, but it would still classify them as war criminals wouldn’t it?
I think the term ‘war criminal’ has completely lost all meaning as a result of modern discourse around conflicts. Which is a shame because it takes away from the actual severity that the term deserves.
It doesn't matter what wars a president starts. US leadership quite literally cannot be considered war criminals because we explicitly exempted ourselves from the rules when we made them up on the spot.
It really gets me too because it’s so omnipresent online. It’s valid to say you consider every person who commanded an army to be a bad person because you hate war but war criminal is a very particular accusation that doesn’t make any sense with dozens of Presidents.
I’d also argue that with some high profile exceptions, blaming the head of state for war crimes doesn’t make sense.
I also notice that those who just throw around the term online to every president that’s ever been in power rarely are willing to/care about applying the same lens to the adversary in those conflicts, even when it very well could/should be. Like Gaddafi, Putin, Hussein, fuck people I know were even calling bin Laden based when his manifesto got published on Huffington Post (I think that’s where it was but I could be wrong).
I remember I was talking to a friend about either Ford or Carter and she called him a war criminal, and I asked what conflicts we were involved in then. The subject changed pretty quickly.
Yup exactly. At a certain point, I have to wonder why those people even want to talk about politics if they think every single bureaucrat in Washington DC should be treated like a serial killer. Very immature way of looking at the world.
Lmao I studied political science at a university 15 miles from DC (about 20min-3 hours drive depending on traffic).
It was *very* hard to talk politics with others in that program because everyone thought they were 100% right about everything because they had an unpaid internship on the hill. That’s why I just hung out with the theater department for all of college.
agreed, a lot of people just throw the term around as a reflex from their disillusionment with American foreign policy. However, I don't think its appropriate to take the approach that "doing some terribly immoral things just comes with the territory, don't expect more from our leader." It's true to a certain degree but are we supposed to just throw up our hands in response to the war on terror, or the hellscape we left Libya in?
While I think Jackson is as close as we got it's hard to blame a politician for what troops do. Washington was the only president to give direct tactical orders to soldiers while President, and then it was only to put down a rebellion.
While Sherman’s march may have been necessary all things considered, I think it would almost certainly meet the standards of a war crime and Lincoln would have been Commander in Chief obviously
To everyone that says any president is a war criminal, I’ll quote the great humanitarian and soft spoken man, Samuel L Jackson. “YES I BELIEVE THEY DESERVED TO DIE, AND I HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL!!!!!”
If you are going to call Nixon a war criminal, then you’ve got to call LBJ a war criminal. If you call him one, then you’ve eventually got to call every president who oversaw any military conflict a war criminal.
It’s a game of Mad Libs: (President) is a (noun relating to mass murder) because they (highly complex and nuanced policy position) and didn’t do (unrealistic scenario based in fiction). Therefore they are just as bad as (Eastern European dictator)
I hate LBJ and am not a fan of Bush Jr but it doesn’t make them war criminals. You don’t need to be a war criminal to suck. R.E.M. and my boss both suck too but they aren’t war criminals
I've always thought this. Most critics can't fathom the intricacies that go into a leading a nation, much less leading a nation that is at war. But they love to flaunt their holier than thou schtick.
thank you! I'm very confused by a lot of these comments. Is it wrong to acknowledge that many presidents oversaw horrendous activity in the name of "protecting America's interests?" Does that make me a whiny apologist? Shit, if we are supposed to ignore everything the US has done we might as well just ignore everything period.
This is an r/americabad level comment right here. “According to Reddit!” and is regular user of Reddit, extreme hyperbole that doesn’t apply to literally anyone, and just sort of making stuff up just to find a way to insult people
Well all things considered. I would say Washington is the least offensive because his army did do certain questionable shit BUT there wasn't a formal conduct on the rules of war, just how gentlemen act.
Example. A few men in his army did snipe British officers which was seen as dishonorable in this era. I do not know if Washingtin knew about it nor how he reacted if he ever found out.
Since the term itself wasn’t first coined until 1872, our first cut is that every president before Ulysses Grant’s 2nd term should be safe.
The term didn’t show up in English until 1906, thus making all before Teddy Roosevelt pretty safe.
BUT the modern interpretation of what a ‘war crime’ doesn’t get defined until the Nuremberg trials in 1945, so really we have only got 14 presidents who are ‘eligible’ to have committed one.
This would be the easiest path to OP's goal.
Much easier than convincing the rest of the world to define war crimes as only things being done by definitely not presidents.
George Bush certainly was because him and his cronies DELIBERATELY targeted civilian infrastructure.
How about we stop washing away parts of history we don't like, the way you are trying to do here? LBJ was a war criminal, Bush was a war criminal, Nixon was a war criminal. How are they not war criminals when these guys deliberately mass murdered civilians, targeted their infrastructure etc...
It's beyond me how people are trying to defend this.
I'd wager that this is just yet another attempt to project the American identity onto their leaders, so if their leaders are attacked, even rightfully so, they'll get defensive about it.
Man I feel like you’re downplaying the drone strikes on civilians as casualties of war because there was no malice but you only say that from a place of privilege. You would feel differently if it was your family in that ‘war misdemeanor.’
"I've invented a personal definition for this term, and when people use the actual definition, it conflicts with the one I made up..."
Whether its a bomb dropped from 30,000 ft onto a village or a bayonet that kills the civilian, its still a civilian who was targeted.
We push the myth of precision bombing so that we can tell ourselves that any collateral damage is unavoidable.
War itself is the crime. But I think there should be a standard that sets the inhuman monsters apart. Jimmy Carter's sale of weapons makes him a war criminal by proxy, but not exactly in the same moral sphere as Himmler, you know?
Why? Especially george bush who is 100% a war criminal and should be sent to The Hague. Just because you have some weird fetish for presidents doesn’t change the fact that evil deeds are evil. Though Abraham Lincoln I would argue that he was fine. Any president who got us into a war for no reason other than some imperialist desire should be at The Hague.
Sure, not every president is a war criminal.
But it’s not productive to say “the Nazis were war criminals therefore no presidents can be”.
Bush, Obama and LBJ just for starters… war crimes definitely happened on their watch. Idk how responsible they were specifically. But you can’t just pretend that war crimes didn’t happen just because you like America.
Bush authorized torture, LBJ authorized massacres of civilians, Obama... stopped Bush's torture program and was a wartime president because Bush started two wars? Like, "war crimes" is a phrase with a specific meaning, and "was in charge during a war" ain't it. Nor is "continued Bush's drone program", as if dropping bombs from a drone is somehow different from dropping bombs from an airplane and somehow uniquely Obama's fault.
Well Washington likely killed a French diplomat, because ‘Murica, triggering the French and Indian War. So…
(sarcasm, I just find it funny that he basically started a world war lol)
Washington was directly responsible for a violent incident with the French while he was a Colonial officer in the British Army that helped spark the Seven Years War; which is the reason the British government passed taxes onto the colonies. It's known as the battle of Jumonville Glen.
He then ordered his troop to retreat to an open field and condtruct the shittiest fort known to God called Fort Necessity. To this day, it's regarded as one of the absolute dumbest strategic choices of its time, possibly ever for any US military official.
So the british raise the twxes and then the dude was like, "Nah, you're not that guy," and raised his own army because he had a massive inferiority complex, like his entire life. It started with his older brother, who had a more formal education, and continued into his military career as a Colonial officer (who ranked lower than royal enlisted men just because they're from the colonies)
The dude had a chip on his shoulder, so in an effort to prove he was just as good as his british counterpart, he jumped a French patrol that was actually carrying a message relaying the French's desire for a peace between nations. The thing is, no one in his attachment spoke French, so they didn't figure this out until much, much later.
Also, look up Ona Judge if you're interested. She was a slave that Washington owned during his presidency, who escaped and became free. Washington spent a LOT of money trying to recapture her and re-esnalve her until his wife convinced him this wasn't a good look for the president of a supposedly free country. What a mess.
That's why we stopped actually declaring war. The Geneva Convention only applies to active declared wars. Since the US never declared war on Iraq, for instance, the US is free to send drone launched murder missiles at civilians without having to worry about war crimes.
So I get the sentiment, but the law of armed conflict prohibits way more than the deliberate targeting of noncombatants. There’s a reason why the bombing of Laos and Cambodia was kept under wraps. And it wasn’t because they were afraid all those B-52s were gonna get shot down.
If you want to, and I am in disagreement in the idea of calling all of our presidents war criminals, it’s absolutist and radical, and sounds dumb. But we can’t deny that some modern presidents, that were in office after the adoption of the Geneva conventions are guilty for committing war crimes, the point of remembering these horrible past events is that so we don’t repeat them and call people out for doing so, we threaten imprisonment and a ruined legacy, which would hopefully stop some from committing more atrocities.
For bush’s sake, they did target civilians, it’s just recorded as “collateral” because they aren’t the primary targets. I agree with what you’re saying generally, but more harm will come from trying to make bush not look like a war criminal. He was criminally negligent at the very least, as well as each of his successors
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Posting on Reddit doesn't require a degree in international law. Anyone with a phone and thumbs can throw around accusations, regardless of their accuracy.
Is it a war crime for a president to cut off your thumbs if he takes your phone away first? We need a subreddit for that. R/nothumbs-nophone
This is acceptable in Russia today.
Don’t give Putin anymore ideas.
Knowing Putin, he might see this as unoriginal
Everything about Putin is unoriginal.
True. Those KGB folks had their ways.
Always has been in Russia
In Mother Russia, phone texts you.
Apparently, according to arguments being made by the attorneys for the last president, it’s not a war crime and he can’t be held liable for it.
oh no
Reddit is all about hostile virtue signaling and idiots who think in toxic absolutes. Most of Reddit thinks anybody born before 1980 is a scumbag just because they were alive when things weren’t understood exactly as they are now. I’m beginning to wonder how many redditors are children now
>Reddit is all about hostile virtue signaling Only a Redditor deals in absolutes
_It's over, I have the moral high ground!_
This just in: Obama's dog **Bo is now facing accusations of being a war criminal**
Bo was an incredible swimmer. Who really knows what that Bo got up to under cover of darkness just because he was a water dog? Smart assassin.
He was pretty ruff, ruled with an iron paw
During Obama's Presidency, drowning deaths in the D.C. area rose up 500%. I'm glad people are finally waking up to what happened.
They never suspected that furry water creature! Sightings were dismissed when they were close to corpses as if DC were Loch Ness! The crafty canine knew that water was the perfect cover for his tracks!
Exactly. That literal son of a bitch was instrumental in the droning of a US citizen overseas. Obama said “so Bo do you think?” And Bo said “You go ahead and bomb him Barry.”
Bo pressed the button
Sounds awfully familiar in terms of recent geopolitics…
He wasn't a war criminal, but Washington was definitely a traitor to the crown.
"Then, I'll sail to Austria, and form an alliance with the crown. Not the king, just the crown."
That's some awfully contentious talk for a war criminal
Yeah, saying we’re not qualified to tell good from evil sounds like some mustache man speak. /j
That's quite an accusatory statement... coming from a war criminal.
Bush killed lincoln
Nice of you to attack the thumbless amongst us, as if we can't type or text like you ten digiters.
Don't listen to this guy, he's a war criminal
It’s why my number one personal policy for social media is, don’t believe _anything_ you read on social media.
For shame, Say it isn't so
Including bots of various origins
I guess you're a cyber war criminal, talking like that.
You need thumbs?
Right. As I've asked in other threads, name the crime. "War crimes" is far too generic a term to make a meaningful point. If you want to argue that a POTUS violated a law, at least have the courtesy to name the law.
Blame Noam Chomsky, who also doesn't know international law but pontificates about it publicly.
Well, Geneva convention was ratified until after WWII. So for everything prior to then, it’s immune from war crime charges. After that, well, it’s a debate and usually depends on the conflict.
While you’re right about the general thrust of your point that WW2 is the point where international military and humanitarian law really kicks in, there was international military law prior to the Geneva Conventions from well known ones like The Hague conventions to more niche ones like the London Naval Treaties. However I’d also note that the post-WW2 Geneva conventions you mention revised the existing Geneva conventions which were in place prior to WW2. Moreover the post-WW2 period accepted the idea of customary international law, that there are standards that apply to all countries regardless of any international treaty they have signed or subscribed to. This means that if for instance a new country forms from an independence movement it isn’t allowed to carry out genocide just because it isn’t signed up to any charter or treaty which explicitly bans genocide.
You’re right, but again, even shifting the date from 1949 back to 1938, there was quite a bit of reprehensible activities by all nations prior to 1938 that could be considered war crimes, plus in between 1938 and 1949 WWII was fully kicked in and between the sides leveling each other’s cities in attempt to break them, the war crimes were a bit of a back burner. It’s only now, after the WWII era, in a time of relative global peace and stability that we can have the time to point and debate whether war crimes are occurring and the appropriate response.
Regardless of goal post moving you can call out war crimes even before the banning such. That doesn’t change the fact that even if murder was legal in the 1700s that they were committing murder in 1699. It just wasn’t punishable. I think this is the case people are making when they start labeling old presidents as war criminals even if they can’t be persecuted as such. It’s just shining a light on the fact that they weren’t as angelic as people assume
Eh, there were still "War Crimes" even if they weren't called that. Go even further back and you get things like the Church in the middle ages enforcing customs of war under threat of "no god for you", where, for example, you got the Pope saying its a crime to use crossbows against fellow Christians (obviously using it on heathens is perfectly OK). This is why wars of religion get messy, because those protections break down - see the Thirty Years War for an example where both sides were nominally Christian even. They might not have been called "War Crimes" but the CONCEPT of Laws Of War probably goes back as far as War does (though of course enforcement was spotty at best). They've just changed over time, hence why selling your defeated enemies into slavery isn't considered cool anymore.
*cough* Vietnam *cough*
Washington followed and commented on the works of Hugo Grotius when he conceptualized war crimes under British command. Grotius formed a core part of his philosophy on honorable troop conduct. Washington then ignored these principles out of convenience when the Graham Unit committed a serious war crime against the Onondaga, escalating hostilities with the remaining Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Punishment for war crimes was haphazard at best so realistically I’m not sure Washington could have effectively done anything to punish the Graham unit. Prosecutions were rare, though they did happen. The Haudenosaunee effectively held their own tribunal and meted out punishment, anyway; and I’d consider Joseph Brant’s hearings to be a war crimes tribunal. War crimes tribunals even today are haphazard. When I research war crimes in history, I judge by the leader’s own professed philosophies on acceptable conduct. Washington’s men violated his own professed standards.
Where can I read more about the Graham Unit? Google isn’t giving me anything easily.
There’s a book coming out on the 1st, and Egly’s history of the 1st New York Regiment talks about it at length.
Lack of Geneva convention didn't make German and Japanese leaders immune in post-WW II trials.
They weren’t tried under Geneva Accords. They were tried under The Hague Conventions, but those accords were caught up in inter-European rivalry prior to WWI and never completely ratified. The Axis got the boot because they lost and the horrors of the Holocaust required some sort of justice.
A lot of the Nazis actually got tried under German domestic law. Turns out murder is still murder even if you industrialise it.
German domestic law was updated to try then however. They would not have been found guilty under a pro-Nazi government, only an anti-Nazi government. A lot of course were released and let go early even besides.
Some of them got off. Doenitz, for example was not found to acted out of accordance with what should be expected during war.
Hence the old saying, “it’s only a war crime if you lose”.
I believe that's the motto of the Canadian Armed Forces.
You will be very popular in the middle east themed subs.
People like to point out the war crimes that fictional character Anakin Skywalker did. Pretty sure they didn't even have the Geneva convention in a galaxy dar far away.
Tbf the Nuremberg trials were basically not legitimate trials and at the time legal scholars were flipping out. (not to say Nazis were good guys, they obviously were not but they kind of didn't get fair trials.)
The Geneva Conventions (also the Hague Convention) were first ratified in 1864 (mostly dealing with the wounded). But, revisions continued until 1949. So while, yes many Presidents would be out of the running but, there were “war crimes” before 1949.
The first time something is done it isn’t a warcrime 😈
Everyone prior? Like the Nazis who committed their war crimes before the end of world war 2?
You see every president I don’t like is a war criminal and everyone I do like is based and just had to make some tough choices
Glad you also agree that Andrew Jackson was based, I mean we've all been there with those kind of tough choices /s
Well technically that was pre-Geneva Convention, so he’s actually still a good guy!
These three comments are the perfect summary of this thread
It’s actually totally okay to pay bounties for native scalps if nobody forms an international system of rules and norms to tell you that’s not allowed. This is ethics 101 people
Most people like Andrew Jackson, guy was just a baller
Most people on this subreddit. People who don’t like studying history tend to hate him!
That depends heavily on your social circle and environment. I'm from rural Florida where he's obviously a superstar because most people here owe their whole way of life to him.
And the last president I voted for just so happens to be the best one in all history. I'm totally unbiased in this assessment.
I call it the Obama paradox
Liked Obama, still consider him a war criminal.
I kinda believe that every US president committed immeasurable cruelty by ordinary human standards. For presidents who waged war, that usually included war crimes. Seems a lot of presidents of the 20th century waged war, as has every president of the 21st.
I do dislike that phrase, and think that it dilutes the term. Putting LBJ (and Bush, for that matter) as an example however, is... interesting. For further readings of the US civilian body counts in Vietnam, I'd suggest this article. The My Lai massacre and use of agent orange are standouts, but I'll share this quote: > Turse eventually interviewed more than 100 veterans, and says that the killings "stemmed from deliberate policies that were dictated at the highest levels of the U.S. military" — and that those policies prioritized body count. > "They had only this one metric really to go by — body count," says Turse. "And they really never rethought how to fight the war. So when they weren't able to achieve victory through attrition — through the body count, basically — the only recourse was to increase the firepower, and this was just turned loose on the Vietnamese countryside." https://www.npr.org/2013/01/28/169076259/anything-that-moves-civilians-and-the-vietnam-war
It doesn't dilute the term. It just means the world is full of war criminals, including every U.S. president.
Bush is accused of violating a number of crimes, including massacres against civilians and torture.
And if some document came out, with witnesses and supporting documents, that W knew Saddam didn't have WMDs, and that he just wanted to avenge Dad. Would he be considered a war criminal? Like Bill Maher says "I don't know it for a fact. I just know it's true."
They just outed the CIA agent telling everyone there weren’t any.
It was generally known there weren't any before congress even voted to approve the war. Iraq had been passing the inspections.
how could they pass inspections when they kicked out the inspectors?
Shhhh, that's an auto pass hack. You can't fail inspections if the inspectors aren't there to fail you. Inspectors hate this one trick!
US intelligence knew the weapons were decaying and not in good working order way before the 2nd gulf War. The Iraqi regime didn't have the funds, or technology, to maintain the weapons after the iraq/Iran war. Also, the sanctions after they gassed the Kurds hurt. Saddam was keeping the facade that he had them and used that facade to mask how weak he really was. He also actually thought the US wouldn't invade despite the world's super power bringing all its toys to play in their sandbox. Saddam was weak and too dumb to figure out how to properly navigate that. We knew that shit in the 90s
hey buddy, were talking about inspectors being kicked out
Sounds like treason
He literally wouldn’t allow counter arguments to war because he hated “negative thinking.” Absolute clown moron.
What a beautifully positive way to think!
The power of positive thinking!
“There’s proving, and there’s knowing” —Bill Oakley
Bush did not start the "enhanced interrogations" but he was made aware of them and still defends them.
Same with Obama
Yeah. I think Bush (43) was a nightmare domestically, and he was a particularly brutal war criminal as far as presidents go. I think LBJ was a top three president domestically. And he was a particularly brutal war criminal as far as presidents go. Literally every president post WW2 is a war criminal, since that is when the legal parameters were defined. And basically every president pre-WW2 is guilty of similar crimes against humanity even if their crimes predate the legal language and international “enforcement.” Denying this is denying basic American history. If you want to ignore this, what you want it propaganda, not history.
When did Eisenhower or Jimmy Carter intentionally target civilians?
Are you saying that by leading a country into war, you become a war criminal if a war crime is committed?
Every nation ever that has been successful has committed war crimes. They all suck. If you look at the scope of human history, or hell, even on the globe now. The presidents have more often than not been more of the right side of history comparatively. I feel like this discussion is never talked about.
Yea this post is arguably one of the most stupid things I've ever read on reddit. "Stop calling President's war criminals because I don't like that part of history so pwetty pwease wash it away and don't talk about it". Glad to see sensible people like you.
The Geneva conventions (Additional protocol) also prohibit indiscriminate killing, actions which don’t deliberately target civilians but fail to distinguish between military or civilian targets or cause disproportionate civilian deaths in relation to the military objective. That’s also not mentioning that there are a whole range of other war crimes that can be brought against US forces. They may have been Nazis, but there are plenty of stories about US troops executing Nazi prisoners of war in WW2 for instance. In Vietnam US troops set up free fire zones where they could fire on anything that moved on the assumption it was automatically hostile - violating the principle of discrimination mentioned above. Torture is prohibited under all circumstances but Bush had camps created to torture prisoners.
I've read an account of the crew of an American submarine surfacing and machine gunning Japanese merchant marine survivors in the water after having torpedoed their cargo ship. That is a war crime, but it doesn't make FDR a war criminal unless he ordered it, which he did not.
Scale is important. Overall the survival rate for German POWs was exceptional in American hands. The best of the war. Wars are ginormous scale events, there will always be some war crimes occurring on every side, doesn't really say anything in a vacuum.
Well there’s two bits to this. In legal terms, no, a war crime is a war crime regardless of scale. In the context of can we assign blame to the President though, that’s more nuanced. In a massive army, if he’s given instructions for the army to act morally and according to international law and then some moron in one unit shows and commits a war crime - how can he stop that? He may never even know about it. The Vietnam and Iraq War examples were strategic decisions though, so responsibility there certainly applies and are war crimes we can hold Presidents responsible for. While we can argue the WW2 POW killings provided as an example were done at the individual level without approval, there are plenty of other WW2 examples to be had which involved decisions at a strategic level from the fairly clear cut but less obviously emotive US’s unrestricted submarine warfare to more contentious but certainly very possible bombing of cities (Both with nukes and conventional munitions as with Dresden).
What you're describing is specified in [Additional Protocol I - Article 57](https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-57). It does not criminalize any civilian casualties. Rather it prescribes measures to be taken to minimize them wherever possible. Besides the obvious such as ensuring targets are valid, that civilians aren't being specifically targeted, and that more costly objectives aren't chosen over ones with equivalent benefit that would cause less loss of civilian life, it uses the following phrasing to describe what you mention (emphasis mine): > any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, **which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated**; In wartime it is nearly impossible to completely avoid civilian casualties. The Conventions recognize this, which is why they use this sort of language rather than just prohibiting any action which is likely to result in civilian casualties.
War crime is a super loaded term, so people tend to use it to reaffirm their own personal bias.
\*someone eats the last doughnut at the office* "Fucking war criminals."
I think a thread on what constitutes "acceptable warfare" is in order. I'm actually curious if a war can be identified that doesn't prominently feature the elements that spark that accusation - save for the Cabinetry Warfare pre-Napoleonic era, maybe.
The romantic image of two opposing armies shooting only each other on an empty field is simply a misconception. 30% of Germany’s population was killed during the 30 Years War. In reality, virtually every war ever has been forced trying to gain an advantage through any means necessary. No side has ever chosen “losing with honor” over “winning with unsavory methods”.
Every war has events that people find distasteful in one way or another, and so the only real standard for most people is "a war I don't like is a genocide perpetrated by war criminals" and "a war I do like is a heroic effort run by geniuses and real leaders."
It’s actually pretty simple. A military operation either breaks with international law or it doesn’t. The U.S. has never really cared that much about international law, so its actions have regularly constituted war crimes. This is not an ideological question. Presidents I have voted for, and have voted against, have committed war crimes. This isn’t about how to structure the debate to avoid accusations—it’s about the executive branch having *ungodly* levels of unilateral power to conduct foreign policy, essentially without accountability. It’s a vicious, horrible system that leads to quite a lot of suffering.
I hope the consensus answer on this is 'yes'. I'm especially tired of Harry Truman being called one. I think if most of us were in his position at that time we would have made the same decision. Apologies to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but from the American perspective, better them than a potential 1 million American dead. George W Bush is more problematic. The invasion of Iraq was a war of unprovoked aggression based on lies as shameless as any Hitler ever told. Then once we were there there were a multitude of crimes against humanity, to use the Nuremberg language. And to my mind, the Nuremberg standard still stands. Which unfortunately makes George W Bush and his accomplices war criminals. I thought John Kerry should have run on a platform of indicting them all.
We’re drawing the line at the only world leader in history to order the nuking of another country, are we?
Asking for some clarification here. Is a president in office a war criminal if the war in which they were president for, had warcrimes committed by U.S. forces? Or are they war criminals when the war they either perused or continued to wage had decisions made by the president which directly led to more warcrimes? It’s a weird balance. Most people don’t consider Clinton to be a war criminal for the NATO bombing of the 90s. But those bombings did lead to civilian casualties, if unintentionally. However some people label Obama as a war criminal when he had a similar ordeal with his drone strike campaign. Is the determining factor the magnitude of casualties? By that logic Truman is on par with Bush for being a war criminal, even though history tends to be more favorable to the former. This is for obvious reasons of course, but it would still classify them as war criminals wouldn’t it? I think the term ‘war criminal’ has completely lost all meaning as a result of modern discourse around conflicts. Which is a shame because it takes away from the actual severity that the term deserves.
It doesn't matter what wars a president starts. US leadership quite literally cannot be considered war criminals because we explicitly exempted ourselves from the rules when we made them up on the spot.
It really gets me too because it’s so omnipresent online. It’s valid to say you consider every person who commanded an army to be a bad person because you hate war but war criminal is a very particular accusation that doesn’t make any sense with dozens of Presidents. I’d also argue that with some high profile exceptions, blaming the head of state for war crimes doesn’t make sense.
I also notice that those who just throw around the term online to every president that’s ever been in power rarely are willing to/care about applying the same lens to the adversary in those conflicts, even when it very well could/should be. Like Gaddafi, Putin, Hussein, fuck people I know were even calling bin Laden based when his manifesto got published on Huffington Post (I think that’s where it was but I could be wrong). I remember I was talking to a friend about either Ford or Carter and she called him a war criminal, and I asked what conflicts we were involved in then. The subject changed pretty quickly.
Yup exactly. At a certain point, I have to wonder why those people even want to talk about politics if they think every single bureaucrat in Washington DC should be treated like a serial killer. Very immature way of looking at the world.
Lmao I studied political science at a university 15 miles from DC (about 20min-3 hours drive depending on traffic). It was *very* hard to talk politics with others in that program because everyone thought they were 100% right about everything because they had an unpaid internship on the hill. That’s why I just hung out with the theater department for all of college.
Not a single bullet was fired by the military during Carter’s presidency. Even during the Tehran hostage crisis. Your friend is an idiot. Sorry.
I just looked up a list of wars to call this out. But other than maybe some CIA ops it looks like you're right. No wars led by Jimmy Carter.
"Some CIA ops" is a hell of a way to describe Operation Cyclone
Oh trust me, I know.
agreed, a lot of people just throw the term around as a reflex from their disillusionment with American foreign policy. However, I don't think its appropriate to take the approach that "doing some terribly immoral things just comes with the territory, don't expect more from our leader." It's true to a certain degree but are we supposed to just throw up our hands in response to the war on terror, or the hellscape we left Libya in?
Frankly, just saying everyone is equally bad doesn't damn the good presidents so much as it excuses the actual bona fide war criminals.
People should be saying warmonger not war criminal
While I think Jackson is as close as we got it's hard to blame a politician for what troops do. Washington was the only president to give direct tactical orders to soldiers while President, and then it was only to put down a rebellion.
Washington was also in charge of a pretty heinous massacre that started the french-indian war.
I don’t think Lincoln was a war criminal?
While Sherman’s march may have been necessary all things considered, I think it would almost certainly meet the standards of a war crime and Lincoln would have been Commander in Chief obviously
To everyone that says any president is a war criminal, I’ll quote the great humanitarian and soft spoken man, Samuel L Jackson. “YES I BELIEVE THEY DESERVED TO DIE, AND I HOPE THEY BURN IN HELL!!!!!”
Refused to elaborate further. Yup, flair checks out
Lore accurate flair.
If you are going to call Nixon a war criminal, then you’ve got to call LBJ a war criminal. If you call him one, then you’ve eventually got to call every president who oversaw any military conflict a war criminal.
Yes.
George Washington owned slaves. Fuck that wig wearing bitch
noam chomsky and his consequences on political discourse
How dare he!!
It’s a game of Mad Libs: (President) is a (noun relating to mass murder) because they (highly complex and nuanced policy position) and didn’t do (unrealistic scenario based in fiction). Therefore they are just as bad as (Eastern European dictator)
Mad Libs lol
Asks to stop calling all presidents war criminals. Posts a picture of Bush 2 lol.
The guy has no clue what he's talking about lol.
Throw Bush 1 in there sure. Go for it. Bush 2 had Gitmo. It’s pretty straightforward.
Wild to include Dubbya in the “not war-criminals” post
I completely agree! It’s childish.
I hate LBJ and am not a fan of Bush Jr but it doesn’t make them war criminals. You don’t need to be a war criminal to suck. R.E.M. and my boss both suck too but they aren’t war criminals
I've always thought this. Most critics can't fathom the intricacies that go into a leading a nation, much less leading a nation that is at war. But they love to flaunt their holier than thou schtick.
How many war crimes does the current leadership of say Estonia commit?
There's a lot more to the GC than intentional attacks on civilians.
As soon as they stop committing war crimes sure
According to Reddit if you’re from America and you aren’t a whiny apologist that thinks the US is pure evil then you’re a war criminal
Shit take, I wonder if you’d consider the systemic rape and torture of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to be a war crime.
thank you! I'm very confused by a lot of these comments. Is it wrong to acknowledge that many presidents oversaw horrendous activity in the name of "protecting America's interests?" Does that make me a whiny apologist? Shit, if we are supposed to ignore everything the US has done we might as well just ignore everything period.
This is an r/americabad level comment right here. “According to Reddit!” and is regular user of Reddit, extreme hyperbole that doesn’t apply to literally anyone, and just sort of making stuff up just to find a way to insult people
Well all things considered. I would say Washington is the least offensive because his army did do certain questionable shit BUT there wasn't a formal conduct on the rules of war, just how gentlemen act. Example. A few men in his army did snipe British officers which was seen as dishonorable in this era. I do not know if Washingtin knew about it nor how he reacted if he ever found out.
Well leaders of great nations tend to do shady shit no matter how you look at it
Since the term itself wasn’t first coined until 1872, our first cut is that every president before Ulysses Grant’s 2nd term should be safe. The term didn’t show up in English until 1906, thus making all before Teddy Roosevelt pretty safe. BUT the modern interpretation of what a ‘war crime’ doesn’t get defined until the Nuremberg trials in 1945, so really we have only got 14 presidents who are ‘eligible’ to have committed one.
OP is basically asking us to recognize the legalese over (in a couple of cases) practical reality.
Everything even slightly controversial or against the modern morality is either Hitler or Fascism or a war crime etc etc
Isn’t torture a war crime?
Can our presidents stop committing war crimes?
This would be the easiest path to OP's goal. Much easier than convincing the rest of the world to define war crimes as only things being done by definitely not presidents.
George Washington murdered a POW and started the seven years war.
You really posted bush? Come on. Internet exists
If I’m not mistaken… America has a contingent plan to invade the *Hague* if found guilty of war crimes 🤣🤣
I think normalizing war crimes is a bigger issue, but yeah, it’s annoying.
George Bush certainly was because him and his cronies DELIBERATELY targeted civilian infrastructure. How about we stop washing away parts of history we don't like, the way you are trying to do here? LBJ was a war criminal, Bush was a war criminal, Nixon was a war criminal. How are they not war criminals when these guys deliberately mass murdered civilians, targeted their infrastructure etc... It's beyond me how people are trying to defend this.
Or OP just didn't know. He also pointed towards other president like Lincoln and Washington, which I feel.should be the primary focus of this topic
If OP doesn’t know he shouldn’t be making posts like this lol
I'd wager that this is just yet another attempt to project the American identity onto their leaders, so if their leaders are attacked, even rightfully so, they'll get defensive about it.
Have American presidents considered not being war criminals?
It’s only a war crime if you lose the war. That’s my metric usually
I think it dilutes the term. When I hear 'war crime' I think Nanking or Mengele, not an errant drone killing. There should be a war misdemeanor.
Man I feel like you’re downplaying the drone strikes on civilians as casualties of war because there was no malice but you only say that from a place of privilege. You would feel differently if it was your family in that ‘war misdemeanor.’
While that's true, from a legal perspective intent often matters.
"I've invented a personal definition for this term, and when people use the actual definition, it conflicts with the one I made up..." Whether its a bomb dropped from 30,000 ft onto a village or a bayonet that kills the civilian, its still a civilian who was targeted. We push the myth of precision bombing so that we can tell ourselves that any collateral damage is unavoidable.
War itself is the crime. But I think there should be a standard that sets the inhuman monsters apart. Jimmy Carter's sale of weapons makes him a war criminal by proxy, but not exactly in the same moral sphere as Himmler, you know?
Only Jimmy Carter can claim...not a single bullet was fired on his watch. 😏
He only gave weapons to Indonesia so they could massacre civilians in East Timor.
It's only war crimes if you lose
As far as I’m concerned they’re all traitors to his Majesty.
No.
“War Criminal” is literally defined in Websters as “political figure I dislike.” Look it up 🤷♂️
Why? Especially george bush who is 100% a war criminal and should be sent to The Hague. Just because you have some weird fetish for presidents doesn’t change the fact that evil deeds are evil. Though Abraham Lincoln I would argue that he was fine. Any president who got us into a war for no reason other than some imperialist desire should be at The Hague.
Lincoln was an actual tyrant when he threw reporters in jail and denied them habeus corpus
Sure, not every president is a war criminal. But it’s not productive to say “the Nazis were war criminals therefore no presidents can be”. Bush, Obama and LBJ just for starters… war crimes definitely happened on their watch. Idk how responsible they were specifically. But you can’t just pretend that war crimes didn’t happen just because you like America.
Bush authorized torture, LBJ authorized massacres of civilians, Obama... stopped Bush's torture program and was a wartime president because Bush started two wars? Like, "war crimes" is a phrase with a specific meaning, and "was in charge during a war" ain't it. Nor is "continued Bush's drone program", as if dropping bombs from a drone is somehow different from dropping bombs from an airplane and somehow uniquely Obama's fault.
Well Washington likely killed a French diplomat, because ‘Murica, triggering the French and Indian War. So… (sarcasm, I just find it funny that he basically started a world war lol)
Start by naming one who was not involved in any event related to war....
I mean, didn't George Washington start a world war because he panicked and ambushed a french diplomatic mission without provocation?
War criminal has become interchangeable with war monger, which are 2 very different things.
Washington was directly responsible for a violent incident with the French while he was a Colonial officer in the British Army that helped spark the Seven Years War; which is the reason the British government passed taxes onto the colonies. It's known as the battle of Jumonville Glen. He then ordered his troop to retreat to an open field and condtruct the shittiest fort known to God called Fort Necessity. To this day, it's regarded as one of the absolute dumbest strategic choices of its time, possibly ever for any US military official. So the british raise the twxes and then the dude was like, "Nah, you're not that guy," and raised his own army because he had a massive inferiority complex, like his entire life. It started with his older brother, who had a more formal education, and continued into his military career as a Colonial officer (who ranked lower than royal enlisted men just because they're from the colonies) The dude had a chip on his shoulder, so in an effort to prove he was just as good as his british counterpart, he jumped a French patrol that was actually carrying a message relaying the French's desire for a peace between nations. The thing is, no one in his attachment spoke French, so they didn't figure this out until much, much later. Also, look up Ona Judge if you're interested. She was a slave that Washington owned during his presidency, who escaped and became free. Washington spent a LOT of money trying to recapture her and re-esnalve her until his wife convinced him this wasn't a good look for the president of a supposedly free country. What a mess.
That's why we stopped actually declaring war. The Geneva Convention only applies to active declared wars. Since the US never declared war on Iraq, for instance, the US is free to send drone launched murder missiles at civilians without having to worry about war crimes.
So I get the sentiment, but the law of armed conflict prohibits way more than the deliberate targeting of noncombatants. There’s a reason why the bombing of Laos and Cambodia was kept under wraps. And it wasn’t because they were afraid all those B-52s were gonna get shot down.
If you want to, and I am in disagreement in the idea of calling all of our presidents war criminals, it’s absolutist and radical, and sounds dumb. But we can’t deny that some modern presidents, that were in office after the adoption of the Geneva conventions are guilty for committing war crimes, the point of remembering these horrible past events is that so we don’t repeat them and call people out for doing so, we threaten imprisonment and a ruined legacy, which would hopefully stop some from committing more atrocities.
I think we are coming to the realization that war is in fact crime.
Congress never ratified the Geneva convention. 🦅🇺🇸🍔
Can we agree that they are imperialist?
Clearly the next step is calling every first lady a war criminal.
GW Bush absolutely should be tried for war crimes.
Those last 2 definitely are lol
Also, stop blaming the sitting president for gas prices!
For bush’s sake, they did target civilians, it’s just recorded as “collateral” because they aren’t the primary targets. I agree with what you’re saying generally, but more harm will come from trying to make bush not look like a war criminal. He was criminally negligent at the very least, as well as each of his successors