Hegseth saying no quarter is a war crime but no one seems to care. Why is that?
Attacking civilian targets with cluster bombs has happened and Iran is doing that as we speak. That is a war crime.
Attacking infrastructure is not a war crime if that infrastructure serves a military purpose. Attacking purely civilian use infrastructure is a war crime.
Threatening to attack civilian use infrastructure is not a war crime. Threatening to attack infrastructure used for military purposes is also not a war crime.
Mowing down protestors with machines guns is not a war crime but maybe we should consider it a crime against humanity.
EDIT: FWIW I do care about what Hegseth said. It's wrong and he shouldn't have said that. But people say stuff- what matters are the actions.
then in the iran conflict, leaving the sailors to drown after sinking iran's show boat with a sub
Iran's government mows down protestors by the 10's of thousands. They beat woman to death for violating the dress code. They conduct public hangings in stadiums. They routinely use torture and arbitrary arrests. They and their proxies bombard civilians routinely. They recruit child soldiers. The list is just endless. How is that even comparable to the US government?
https://iranhumanrights.org/2024/03/crimes-against-humanity-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning_of_Afghan_refugees_in...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-af...
How about the double tap strikes? Targeting first responders is a war crime, remember. And US use of double tap strikes is well documented.
If you just want to talk about how bad the victim of war crimes is, that sounds like making excuses for war crimes to me.
I did see some mention that the school was hit twice but I don't think that's supported by the satellite imagery or videos we've seen. In theory US service personnel can and should refuse to execute an order that is targeting first responders and my base assumption would be that the US does not practice this. There are huge number of people involved in planning strikes and executing them so you'd think some of those people would refuse such an order and/or speak about it publicly. I.e. I don't believe the US initial salvo of Tomahawk cruise missiles and bombings were designed to intentionally hit first responders. Beyond it being a war crime it also makes no sense to "waste" bombs and cruise missiles on first responders when presumably there are a lot of other more valuable targets; beyond it being morally wrong and a war crime it's also stupid. The only time I've seen this sort of strategy being executed intentionally is during the suicide bombing campaign in Israel. e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_Lid_suicide_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Yehuda_Street_bombings#200...
In the context of terrorizing a population it makes perfect sense. In the context of the US attack on Iran it makes zero sense since it doesn't serve the US interest to terrorize the population of Iran and the regime couldn't care less.
What do you want me to say about the US? I would like to see zero war crimes from the US. I would like to see a US president that doesn't sound like a mad person on social media and a SecDef that isn't a religious zealot. I still think that big picture there is no comparing the US to Iran in terms of the actions each is taking and has taken. Iran fundamentally wants to make the world a worse place and the US wants to make it a better place (and sure, make a lot of money while doing that...). Would a solution that doesn't involve dropping bombs be better? Sure. Find me one.
Assuming the US did not intend to kill school girls that is also not a war crime. You can certainly argue that this happened due to the US decision to go to war and claim the actions to not be moral (or illegal as some have stated). Others might argue that more harm would occur if no action was taken and that the action minimizes the overall harm (e.g. to the Iranian people or others).
You could also argue that attack was intentional. I don't think there's any evidence of that and I'm not sure what purpose it served if it was one.
You're probably technically correct and that the US didn't intentionally look in Google Maps for an elementary school and decided to destroy it. But did we really need to Double Tap it?
Timothy Snyder has an opinion about this: https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/2040883546093436941?s=20
I'm not quite there yet.
Unfortunately it's also the only motivation anyone has presented that there is any real hope of actually achieving. And it's the kind of excuse trump could use to become glorious dictator. Or at least I wouldn't be surprised to learn he thinks it is.
No, I really don't think that's why this war was started. I don't think trump actually wants terrorist attacks in America. But it just might be what he will get, whether he likes it or not.
He might not but he's surrounded by christian evangelist lunatics who think bringing about the end times is their moral responsibility and, more importantly, they are in charge because Trump is an addled idiot who has fewer thoughts in his head than an orange cat.
On the contrary, there appear to be good legal arguments that Hegseth merely saying "no quarter" is, on its own, a war crime:
https://www.justsecurity.org/133970/legal-advice-hegseth-no-...
Be sure that this US threat is not just against Iran, it's a US threat aginst the entire world, and it will be taken as such by many, you war crime justifying tool.
Also pretty telling, that you're using intl. law to justify US attacks, instead of using it for what their purpose was,... which is to limit the ways in which states execute war. The same thing Israel was doing to justify murdering 20 000 children in Gaza, just constantly finding "loopholes" and using it retroactively to justify every single thing they did that someone contensted.