[PW] Re: War crimes

[Reed C Bowman]

JT Thompson wrote:

>Another list is discussing when it started being regarded as a crime 
>to target civilians in a war. Any answers?
>_______________________________________________
>Project Wombat
>list at project-wombat.org
>http://www.project-wombat.org/
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If you mean a crime in the most general sense, the idea has been around 
since ancient times. St Augustine discusses the idea of a Just War, and 
one of the principles for considering a war Just is that only combatants 
may be the target of attacks. But even this is just a development of far 
more ancient rules of human nature and common sense, and was recognized 
from the beginning as being just a codification and Christianization of 
the way people thought about 'civilized' combat.

But as for considering it a literal crime, prosecutable by some 
authority, that is very modern. I would guess that it arose in limited 
ways in the 18th century, with courts martial trying their own captains 
for unlawful attacks on civilian shipping (possibly much earlier, at 
sea, now that I think about it, because the line between pirate and 
man-of-war is always blurry). The modern concept of war crimes 
prosecuted by international tribunals must be a product of the Geneva 
conventions, the League of Nations, the UN and the example of Nuremberg.

RCB