Drums of War

[Wanderfound]

Key findings of the Brereton report into allegations of Australian war crimes...

@Wanderfound

Soldiers in action will commit war crimes; this is pretty much inevitable. Young men, trained to celebrate violence, placed under extreme stress, facing people who they are encouraged to dehumanise (and who are often racially and culturally distant from them), will frequently do horrific things.

But you can reduce the incidence of war crimes by (a) stomping the perpetrators hard when they occur, and (b) not deploying military force unless there is no other option. The fact that atrocities are an apparently inevitable part of war needs to be part of the calculation when evaluating the cost of military action.