You gotta hand it to the guy for getting me to watch his video. I taught LOW for 7 years, so nothing new here. I just won't be clicking on any more videos entitled "You don't know..."
.... Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell Come to Jesus Christ today Jesus Christ is only way to heaven Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today Romans 6.23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Hebrews 11:6 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Jesus
I can not believe there are grown ass adults out there that believe missing a .50 cal shot by a couple feet not only harms the target in any way other than hearing and psychological damage, but believe it can rip an arm off
if you think about it at all it makes no sense. bullets are designed to be aerodynamic and cut through the air, displacing it as little as possible so they can stay fast. the only thing that could do this is probably a literal meteorite due to the heat of it burning up as it passes through the atmosphere at over 10x the speed of a bullet
I didn't know people actually believed that bullshit until the Trump fiasco. So many stupid conspiracy theories claiming Trump would be dead if he got hit or nearly hit. As if it would've popped his head like a watermelon by simply nicking his ear. 2nd time posting this as youtube constantly deletes my comments the instant I post them if it contains any words having anything to do with arms from which projectiles are expelled using a certain flammable powder. This time it was writing five five six as a number that did it
An incomplete list of people that were roasted in this video: gamers, 38 year olds, our uncles that concealed carry, the UN, my mom, militia larpers, Justin's cousin, people that think near misses are injurious
the self deprecating "grunt" humor in videos like this always raises my eyebrow (like the asvab score remarks). Grunts are smart, bruh. Anyway, we did it with classes and lots of little cheat sheets we'd carry in a pocket. You can train on rules of engagement pretty well, but it is a challenge for everyone.
Bro there has to be a certain size bullet for near misses to be injurious. Ofc a 22.lr isn't gonna to anything, but an 16 inch 50 cal near miss WILL delete your respiratory systems due to pressure and shockwave. also proxim fuses exist.
@@boinkyummy2464 No, that's not how physics works at all. A bullet would have to dump a lot of energy into the surrounding air for a miss to be injurious, and they're designed to not do that.
Yep. Also, people not recognizing the distinction between casevac and medevac. A soldier doesn't magically become a medic the moment they start helping their wounded.
Would’ve also been nice for him to expound some more on false surrender. There’s a lot of misunderstandings about why false surrender is a warcrime, especially since hacky TV writers think it’s a great plot device to show how “clever” their protagonist is. In real life, once you’ve surrendered, you have *surrendered.* Laying down arms is biconditional with your continuing right to be kept alive (as a prisoner). The *moment* you stop cooperating your your captors, even something as “benign” as intentionally leaving a trail for your buddies; congratulations: you’ve transformed yourself into an enemy combatant. So now your captors can (and probably will) kill you. And what’s worse is that now you’ve escalates the game of “chicken” (Take-No-Prisoners Edition,) making the enemy faction less likely to accept your allies’ surrender and more likely to commit warcrimes against the prisoners already in their care. That’s the *entire reason* why rules against false surrender/playing dead are in the Geneva conventions. Screwing with norms relating to prisoners would be a lose-lose for everyone.
Orcas off the coast of Spain have began to intentionally target/attack the ruders on boats and are attacking boats because of the amount of human disruption to their habitat. I wouldn't fuck with them.
One thing you missed (that most folks miss when discussing thr laws of war). The *reasons* for the rules on how to treat genuine POWs. 1. To encourage troops to surrender *and stay surrendered* when things are hopeless, so they don't feel the need to fight to the death every time, and their captors don't feel the need to just massacre all prisoners they get. That's also why the rules specifically allow for escapes, and say that if you follow the rules for a POW escaping, you can't be shot out of hand if you get recaptured. "For you, Major, the war is over." 2. A *bribe* , to encourage combatants not to be utter barbarians on the battlefield, *especially* with regard to civilians. "Hey, if you follow the basic rules, you're a lawful combatant, and you get to be treated under the POW rules, and you get to go home after the war. But if you deliberately break the rules, we can try you for war crimes and you'll end up doing Mambo Number Nuremberg and dance at the end of a rope."
It confuses me when people think this has anything to do with morals and Right and wrong. It for sure isn’t which is why on the battlefield if one side does something then it’s gonna happen back to you.
@@contentcop They do it’s the rare exception where they won’t. Theres situations where taking prisoners isn’t an option such as in WW2 with U.S Paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines. The goal of war isn’t to kill the enemy it’s to break there will to fight, I’m still convinced that if any military seriously did this then they could win wars with little bloodshed. You get Women soldiers and there duty is to go to a POW base where there is booze, casino, amazing food every meal, hotel service and the women are to make it the time of there lives and all the soldiers be given cell phones and allowed to go wherever and do whatever and there’s just a cage around it and make the rules where any harming the women is so execution and require them to constantly be in contact with the fellow solders proving it all real and even offer possibly citizenship and how long are men gonna keep fighting in some miserable trench getting shelled and maybe skeptic st first but then you see someone you were just around on FaceTime showing you steak and lobster and 2 little blondes who beg you to come see them. It’s a perfect strategy given you can keep your men in line forcing them to understand the is modern warfare.
He mentioned an Asterisk because the US signed (but didn't ratify) a treaty on the use of incendiaries against personnell, so, nominally, WP is registered as an Anti-Materiel weapon in the USAF.
@prizrak-br3332 All of 196 UN countries have signed first 4 Geneva conventions and 193 have signed Chemical Weapons Conventions. Remaining Geneva protocols regulating particular weapon's use and ratification is a bit more complicated. However it seems you missed the central point of this video. Nearly all countries are legally equal under international laws. It's deployment circumstances and intent that deems use of a weapon or force legal or illegal, in the UN it applies. White phosporous as a weapon is not prohibited by any convention, as long as it's used with according intention or method - for illumination, smokescreen or enemy force incendiary purpose. Element and weapons containing it is noy prohibited - unless it's for purpose of poisoning (like all chemocal veapons) or unnecessary suffering (wether civilian or combattant). Some weapons can be illegal for countries ratifying certain treaties (there are 7 parts just to Geneva Conventions and 3 more major independent treaties), like cluster munitions, personal landmines (for some) or glass and plastic shrapnel mines and munitions (for all UN countries).
you should make a video going over every statute and law related to war crimes that you can get your hands on. Maybe turn it into a series. I'd be there for it.
It’s really isn’t overly complicated either, which makes the fact that antisemites can’t figure it out extra pathetic. Then again, they’d have to actually care about the truth in the first place.
One thing you only touched on superficially that's very interesting is the not making a body difficult to identify rule. You see, dogtags aren't just a cool little trinket to be worn around the neck, they're meant to make identifying a soldier's body easy. Ever wonder why they come in pairs? It's because if for whatever reason your squadmates have to leave your body behind, they take one of the tags with them to confirm your death and leave the other one with the body. Point is, taking a dead enemy's dogtags is making their body more difficult to identify, which is a war crime, which means the very concept of CoD's "kill confirmed" game mode is repeatedly commiting a war crime.
@@sionsoschwalts2762 tell that to the SASR squadron that got disbanded just because they accidently shot some guy with no weapon who might have been flexicuffed. Hey at least the chain of command who were legally responsible for training, disciplining, controlling and monitoring those guys psychological fitness got "letters of reprimand".
@4:52 - white phosphorous is highly toxic though; absorption of it through wounds can absolutely kill you, even if the burns don’t. Although the smoke may not be lethal to humans, it’s a big part of WP’s effectiveness against troops. The fumes produce phosphoric acids and are highly irritating. If you mix WP and HE (shake and bake), the WP smoke drives people out of bunkers to where the HE can kill them in the open.
It’s chemical weaponry, and it non discriminatory if used in mixed areas, and the idea of making people flee their cover to kill them is disgusting But at the same time, that guy didn’t even once talk about the fact that hey, maybe war is dumb in inhumane in and of itself. Basically, a warcrime is harm that is not useful. But if it’s useful to kill people effectively, you can bet it’s not a warcrime.
@@Rafaelforte-hs4bv War is, unfortunately, often tragically necessary. As Clausewitz said, it's just politics by other means. On the subject of it being dumb and inhumane...yeah. Modern warfare is dropping an anvil on a puppy. Such a thought might make you wince, and that's the point. It's horrible, but so is modern war. The trouble is, once gain, that war is often tragically necessary. There are some problems that cannot be solved through politics and war is the only practical solution. Pacifism and non-violence is a nice thought, but any state that adopts them as their national policy would quickly find out that not everyone shares those ideals. Si vis pacem para bellum. Before you start calling me names, understand this. As someone both trained to engage in modern warfare and as someone who has studied the history of modern war on an academic level, I don't like war and I don't want it to happen.
You are absolutely right! from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK598124/ "White phosphorus is the most active allotropic form and is extremely toxic when inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through burned areas..." "...White phosphorus can cause thermal injury and hygroscopic damage by absorbing water from surrounding tissues. It reacts with oxygen and water to form strong acids (H3PO2, H3PO3) and combines with metals like copper to form dark-colored inactive salts..." "If phosphorus is absorbed as the gas phosphine (PH3), death can occur rapidly due to cardiac collapse (Blanke 1970)."
@@Rafaelforte-hs4bv Well, nowdays ALMOST all wars are useless. The few that are necessery are usually the bloodiest. At least back a few thousand years you'd get your 700 boys to go capture a mine or something, now Millions of soldiers are involved.
@@Rafaelforte-hs4bv "and the idea of making people flee their cover to kill them is disgusting" Hand grenades have been used to do this quite effectively since WWI, and nobody thinks of hand grenades as "disgusting." So have flamethrowers, and whilst I do concede that flamethrowers aren't really considered the most tasteful of weapons, the reason why nobody uses them anymore isn't because they are banned by international treaty. It's simply because people figured out better ways to deliver heat to unfriendly foreigners, such as incendiary bombs, rockets, and missiles, instead of sending some poor bastard forward with a 70 lb SuperSoaker from hell strapped to his back. "But if it’s useful to kill people effectively, you can bet it’s not a warcrime." If this were the case, then nerve gases like Sarin and VX wouldn't be banned, as they are _very_ useful for killing people effectively. Yet, *all* chemical weapons, even less-lethal agents like CS gas, have been proscribed for use in warfare since the end of WWI. As for "non-discriminatory" weapons, plenty of weapons "legal" for use in warfare are pretty indiscriminate in their effects. High explosive munitions aren't too choosy about whom they shred into hamburger, and most fragmentation weapons can hurl deadly splinters to surprisingly long distances. "maybe war is dumb in inhumane in and of itself" On this you are 100% correct. Just about every weapon that is 'legal' to use in warfare kills and maims other human beings in rather grisly and painful ways. But sadly, war remains "necessary" because whilst you, I, and 95% of people on this planet may prefer living in peace and not bothering our neighbors, what are we going to do about the 5% of people who think otherwise? We can only keep them in check through the threat of inflicting unacceptable destruction on them. And thus we are back to square one, preparing for war so that we may live in peace. Paradoxical and perhaps even insane, but that's been the norm in human history for over 10,000 years.
People don't know the difference between CasEvac (soldiers retreating with the wounded) and MedEvac (medical personnel carrying the wounded). Enemy combatants don't turn into medics when they start applying a tourniquet to the wounded soldier next to them. Imagine there are five enemy combatants at the start of an engagement. One of them gets severely wounded, to the point that they are _hors de combat_ , i.e. no longer a valid target. The remaining four are still valid targets even if they throw their buddy onto a stretcher and retreat from the engagement. The casualty on the stretcher doesn't create a magic bubble of protection for the four enemy combatants retreating with him. It *is not a war crime* to drop a grenade on them from a drone.
While evacuating wounded the combatants will be exiting the battle AO and therefore be showing there backs to the frontlines and no longer presenting themselves as direct threats making the use of explosive weapons on those specific individuals fall under the same warcrime that is to cause unnecessary permanent harm and the warcrime of making dead bodies harder to identify as related to the double tap argument. (warcrime 1) There would be no threat posed by that group warranting such measures especially when one of the combatants was already made a non combatant and the use of such explosive drone attack makes it a warcime by the plain fact the noncombatant was in range of the blast therefore targeted. (warcime 2) If the OPFOR already took out one combatant they could realistically do the same to the other 4 during the aid process whether it was snipers that took out combatant 1 or an mg or regular rifle fire it doesnt matter, not a bomb was used to hit one guy therefore when that one guy is no longer a combatant and they are unarguably weaker theres no legal necessity to increase force levels such as in the vids teargas point. (warcrime 3). The noncombatant on the stretcher does in fact not create a magic safety bubble but they do still exist and must be accounted for especially when your scenario describes a combatant who is plainly and obviously disabled to the point of noncambatant status. Therefore it isnt a warcrime to drop that drone bomb it is actually 3 of them. EDIT Also real life soldiers dont get equipped like arma3 dude. If there was a stretcher then there was at least 1 medic. That type of equipment is big and bulky to carry around even when collpsed, just ask your average EMT. That kind of thing is just not possible to bring unless your job is to bring all the supplies needed to be a battlefield doctor, AKA a goddamned medic, anybody else would have rations ammo ort literally anything to make them more combat sustainable and frankly drugs and tourniquet's are 100% of medical equipment that fall into that category.
@@paddycake5915Stretchers can just sit in the back of a truck, and anyone can drive a truck. My truck was usually full of medical gear and I was never a medic. And retreating/not presenting oneself as a threat means nothing. It is not at all equivalent to surrendering. You are still a valid target under the law of war until you surrender.
@@ghost.patrols I think the other guy is probably correct on at least 1 of those 3 points (I don't think 1 makes much sense, but 2 and 3 do). You wanna address them?
@@paddycake5915A retreating force, even presenting no threat, are still legal combatants. The only time you get made a non-combatant is if you always were one, you are surrendering, or if you are too injured to keep fighting. And actions that kill non-combatants in a reasonable blast zone of combatants are legal. As long as the action can be considered a reasonable targeting of combatants it is legal.
@@elishafollet5347 You are no longer a "civilian", or more correctly "non combatant" if you take up arms, so any conventions will apply to you in that situation. That being said, paratroopers enjoy no protection whatsoever while parachuting.
@@elishafollet5347 They apply to everyone. As a civilian (non combatant) you are given certain protections. If you engage the enemy you become a combatant and are fair game as much as regular military forces.
That's not a war crime. You can't be charged with a war crime unless you are engaging in war. That's why these laws don't apply to cops or civilians using hollow points. In the USA at worst the Red Cross could sue you, and even that is questionable if you weren't making any money off of it.
Just to clarify, the man talking at 3:26 is Nicholas Irving, a former spec-ops sniper for the US Army, he clearly knows it's not true and just explains common misconceptions about .50 cal in the extract.
I think you missed a big point of confusion, and even said it wrong yourself at 10:08. From my understanding, it’s something along the lines of the following: Killing a non combatant isn’t necessarily a war crime. Intentionally targeting a known non combatant is illegal, as well as killing them via gross negligence, but accidentally killing them due to thinking they are a combatant, or due to reasonable collateral damage when targeting combatants, is not. I could be wrong though, feel free to correct me.
You're not wrong. There is some nuance in if you're in a hybrid setting with combatants and civilians if all options were exhausted before using lethal force on someone who *may* be a combatant, and that measures were taken to ensure that de-escalation was attempted/the minimum use of force was used. It's a really sticky situation.
it's actually fairly simple: - you see a legal target? shoot. exceptions apply like yes, damaging the enemy's energy infrastructure IN THE WZ (not 1000km behind enemy lines where only civilians would suffer) is legal, but not nuclear powerplants, even if they are protected with dozens of sentries and bunkers bc they know exactly that you wanna have at it eitherway. - hmm, but now you not only see a legal one but also illegal ones, what do? cases: a) the enemy built their military HQ right under a hospital in the middle of a city. it's not your responsibility for them not to build it there. there isnt any other way to take them out, so bad luck for them. also this is a WC committed by them, not you. b) the enemy is defending from a ruin which is right next to a kindergarten. chances are, they have all fled. even if not, a) still applies. it's legal. if it turns out that you were wrong, it's still not your fault. they have committed a WC. c) the enemy is using human shields. this is a WC end of story lol. go ham, it's not your responsibility. sth i do not know is what happens if the enemy is forcing its civilians to dig trenches, retrieve casualities and so on. also, what about civilians working in arms factories and the like? is the factory itself a military target and the workers always collateral dmg? ps: i think the nuances wouldve been exactly the important part here, but oh well, guess we're only gonna do the boring stuff that every normal person already knows in this video.
this is gonna be a weird answer to my own comment if it doesnt make it through, but oh well: as you can tell, ham-"donkey" (you know which middle eastern group i mean) has been committing WC from the very beginning to this very day and the IDF literally wouldnt even need to bother with the whole POW concept. all those military installations next to all those civilians that they didnt bother to evacuate. quite the contrary, they told them to stay home. also human shields. only one side has professionalised in committing WC, even the blind can see it
@@nevermindmeijustinjectedaw9988 Ye. The problem with insurgent style warfare is that they pretty much make absolutely every tactic legal to fight them. Its honestly hard to commit a warcrime without doing some torture thing just to be inhumane. As it should. Insurgent warfare is inhumane and anyone who defends it is a bad person. It is the turning of your own civilian populace into a bunker. It is the choice of massacring your own people.
This is one of those topics that really warrants multiple videos regarding the history of the Laws of War, the major treaties that codified those laws, and the reasons for those laws. Addressing misconceptions about what constitutes a "war crime", is a good start, but in addressing those misconceptions you tend to overlook some of the reasons for those misconceptions. For example, in WWI the German army very much felt that he American use of the shotgun was a war crime, and declared that they'd execute any American they found carrying one. And double-tapping isn't illegal; executing the wounded, giving la coup d'grâce, and/or shooting corpses are illegal. Assault teams are taught to fire "controlled pairs" in CQC conditions in order to maximize potential lethality when engaging targets.
In the swiss army we got a little booklet that had a dumbed down, shortend version of the GC (at least in my unit) with the basic shit in it like dont kill civilans (shocker ik) and most didnt even bother opening if except when got them handed to us 😂
Lots of problems there. Not all civilians are non-combatant, just as not all uniform-wearing people are combatant. But the uniform also one to surrender as a POW, while wearing civilians clothes is sometimes cause for summary execution. The Swiss army would have to change their book rapidly if they deployed into Lebanon, for example.
A few minor criticisms of this vid from someone who follows modern conflicts as a hobby (I am incredibly autistic) 1) 0:57 It's not just a "handful" of countries who have signed the Geneva Conventions - 196 countries have signed and ratified all 4 Geneva Conventions (for reference, the UN has 193 countries, plus 2 observers - the Cook Islands (free association with NZ so not represented in the UN) independently ratified the GC too). There are three additional protocol as well but those are much more specific, and even then P1 has 174 countries as parties, P2 has 169 countries as parties, and P3 (which is about additional emblems only, like the red crystal instead of red cross/crescent) has 78 countries as parties. The Geneva Conventions and supplementary protocols are also pretty much exhaustive lists as to the conduct of an army in wartime, and don't exactly have a lot of wiggle room. Also, war crimes are not solely defined in the Geneva (and Hague) Conventions - the use of prohibited weaponry is also a war crime (like using cluster munitions when both you and your belligerent state are signatories to the convention on cluster munitions). Other good things you could have mentioned would be stuff like crimes against humanity, and state-level war crimes such as collective punishment. 2) 1:28 The US withdrew its signature of the Rome Statute (which established the International Criminal Court) in 2002. In fact, the US has a law known as the American Service-Members' Protection Act that literally protects US soldiers from being subject to international criminal courts to which the US is not a party. It's popularly nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act", since (even as extraordinarily unlikely this is) it basically legalises invading the Netherlands to rescue US military personnel from custody. It also does some interesting things like prevents US agencies from cooperating with the ICC, extraditing anyone to the ICC, and _technically_ prohibits US aid to countries who are parties to the Rome Statute (it has obvious exceptions to this last thing, like major NATO and non-NATO allies, plus any country who signs a bilateral agreement to prevent extradition of US nationals to the ICC). Also, minor spelling mistake. It should be "Hague", not "Hauge". I win. (insert shadow the hedgehog gif here idk) 3) 2:22 No, not really? For example Ukraine and Russia both haven't signed the Cluster Munitions Convention but 112 states are party to the convention (which is more than half of the UN membership list) and neither side has faced any punishment for their use of cluster munitions (in fact when the US handed over DPICM to Ukraine all that both sides from their allies (UK, France, Germany, etc.) received was criticism, not litigation). This doesn't really make much sense that you could be subject to an international treaty that you're not a party to. I feel like I’m not fully understanding the point you’re making, since it seems illogical that you could be found guilty of violating an agreement that you haven’t even signed. You’d just be charged for violating stuff you did already sign, like the UN charter in this case. 4) 3:47 Incendiary weapons were not defined in the Geneva Conventions, but were in fact defined in Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). In fact, there was a disappointing lack of mentioning of existing arms control treaties: talking about incendiary weapons could have warranted a mention of the CCW, which not only defines an incendiary weapon, but makes some exclusions. For example, white phosphorus is fair game since its primary use is an obscurant and not an incendiary weapon (technical term is "incidental incendiary effect") since it's so good for smoke grenades, and then restricts their use (can't be used on civilians, dropped by aircraft on any civilian concentrations, attack foliage cover unless it's concealing military targets, etc.). The CCW has 127 states as parties to the convention, with the non-signatories being various African countries plus other random states like Indonesia, Iran, Syria, etc. Since you mentioned chemical weapons, another interesting arms control treaty you could have mentioned could be the Convention on Chemical Weapons (or even the 1899 Hague Convention that actually banned poison gases, which was of course heavily violated in subsequent conflicts like the First World War - hell, this would have been a great tie-in since hollow-point bullets were banned in this same convention). 5) 4:48 this is my most minor nitpick but this happens so often it annoys me: what you are witnessing is not WP but is in fact thermite - it's footage from Vuhledar in March 2023, likely 9M22S magnesium-based thermite rockets fired from a BM-21 Grad. WP produces a much smokier explosion since its, y'know, mostly a smoke munition (to be specific it's basically a vapour of phosphorus pentoxide - it's so effective because the size of the droplets are close to the Mie scattering radii for visible light, which doesn't just obscure but also scrambles the light. it also works against thermal imaging as well). 6) 5:25 The Geneva Convention didn't outlaw CS gas or tasers - CS (and other incapacitating agents) was banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925 (not to be confused with the other Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions either). The Chemical Weapons Convention also banned incapacitating agents. Tasers aren't banned by the CCW though, since Protocol IV of the CCW only bans blinding laser weapons (or other weapons designed to cause permanent blindness) so tasers, sonic weapons, and dazzlers that only cause temporary blindness are legal. In fact, long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) are present on many military naval vessels in Norway, Sweden, and the US. 7) 5:40 much more minor nitpick but the first formal treaties regarding the laws of war were actually in the early 19th century, not 20th century - one of the precursors to international humanitarian law was the Treaty of Armistice and Regularisation of War between Gran Colombia and Spain in 1820. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the 1848 Mexican-American War also created rules for future wars, including rules regarding treatment of civilians and POWs. The First Geneva Convention itself was established in 1864. 8) 8:39 well you probably wouldn't use APFSDS on a single dude (although we have actually seen footage of Ukrainians in Western-made tanks using such rounds on infantry positions since they have a critical lack of HE), but nothing is stopping you from loading 120mm canister rounds or HE or what have you to blast a soldier with. You still have rounds optimised for anti-infantry that you can use from your main gun that could also be used on soft-skinned vehicles that APFSDS and your coax would be unsuitable for. 9) In addition to double-taps, you could have also potentially mentioned "mercy-killings", and also cases whereby people are killed by a drone-dropped munition while attempting to surrender to a drone (and potentially also wounded, up to the point of being hors de combat). Those things are *very* hotly debated upon, especially by those following the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. Also I kind of wish you touched upon other war-crimey behaviours such as perfidy. Also also the other meaning of double tap, where a location is targeted twice with a few minutes' interlude in order to attack the rescue workers. Otherwise super cool video, arguably the most important part of your whole video is talking about the actual classification of a combatant, plus the use of the term "hors de combat". Also regarding shooting parachuting people, just remember the rhyme: "If there's a rifle, there's no trifle!". If I misunderstood some stuff just give me a shout, I may have missed some stuff and my reply is probably a bit incoherent considering it’s quite late my time when I’m writing this
Smoke from WP is phosphorus pentoxide produced by the burning of phosphorus. If you had a mist of phosphorus it would immediately burst into flames and be converted into phosphorus pentoxide. It absorbs moisture from the air to make phosphoric acid.
Hollow-points should be reconsidered, they're popular self-defense ammunition partly because there's less risk of over-penetration (depending of course on specific caliber and powder load, etc). As an armed civilian they make perfect sense, I'm liable for every round fired from my gun, I don't want it to go through the 'bad guy' and potentially injure someone else. If you're DEVGRU or CAG or GSG9 or whoever, and there's 'bad guys' in-between your team and where hostages are located, you don't want rounds going through a wall and injuring someone you might not have even known was there. I think a reasonable case for exemption to the 'hollow-point = bad' rule for military SOF units conducting hostage rescue operations, because the intent of such rounds is not to cause unnecessary suffering, but rather to mitigate the risk of of unintended injury of a non-threat.
The issue with "reconsidering" hollow points and expanding projectiles is that if the Hague Declaration were ever annulled, well, that would just open up an arms' race to see who could make the nastiest possible small arms ammunition. That was arguably the whole reason for the prohibition on expanding projectiles in warfare back around the turn of the 20th century--nobody wanted to deal with the nastiness that nations would cook up in their quest for victory. Look up the ballistic gel tests of WWII-era exploding 8mm Mauser and 7.62x54R ammunition, and tell me if that's stuff you want people shooting at you on the battlefield. Because you can bet that people would start developing and fielding stuff like that again if that treaty were off. Heck, the Mk 211 Raufoss .50 BMG ammo can _potentially_ explode inside a person if the target is wearing ballistic armor and it strikes him at a particularly oblique angle (since no man-portable ballistic armor will stop a .50 BMG round), so it's definitely within contemporary technological capacity to produce high-explosive rifle-caliber ammo with projectiles designed to explode inside people or upon striking bone. NB: The Mk 211 Raufoss cartridges are *not* designed to explode inside people--they are intended for anti-materiel purposes primarily. Using them against enemy personnel is sort of an legal grey area, but regular ball .50 BMG is perfectly legal to use against personnel.
@Schwarzvogel1 ... you do realise that international laws can be amended without being scrapped, right? Also are you aware that a lot of rounds nowadays are designed to tumble in a target, doing essentially the same thing as a hp round? Also you can codify explosive ordinance smaller than 400g and fragmenting rounds as a separate thing to hollowpoints, and thus make one legal whilst make the others illegal. You could also codify WHEN they can be used, for instance "in the interest of reducing collateral damage", for instance in an embassy that has been taken control of by a group of iranian/iraqi militants who are now holding hostage civilians. Cant imagine that happening, but yknow, if it ever did, you would probably want to reduce the chance of a through-and-through becoming a through-and-through-and-through-the-fucking-next-guy
@@Schwarzvogel1 "Look up the ballistic gel tests of WWII-era exploding 8mm Mauser and 7.62x54R ammunition, and tell me if that's stuff you want people shooting at you on the battlefield." If I'm on a battlefield I don't want anything to be shot at me, but since it's war that's not up to me. The USA doesn't currently use hollow points but has said they reserve the right to. A treaty doesn't have to be scrapped or withdrawn from to change. There are lots of treaties that countries have ratified with provisions. They say "Okay, we agree to this except this part here. We're still going to do this if we feel like it." A nation can withdraw in full or in part from any treaty they feel like any time they feel like it.
As an 'armed civilian', war crime laws are irrelevant to defending yourself. If you are militia, fighting as a conventional army makes them useless. As an unconventional army, you have committed a war crime anyway and war crime laws do not apply to you.
My favorite kind of people are the ones who call characters from fantasy games war criminals like yeah you definetly know about the laws of war in Azeroth and Fodlan
Worth noting that the most important concept in IHL is Necessity. How necessary is it that you use system X or blow up thing Y The go to one that people think about is hospitals. But there is absolute prohibition on blowing up a hospital. If military forces were to occupy a hospital, that shifts the balance from being a medical establishment to one of mixed use, which degrades the protections that hospitals have. The calculus shifts from one of prohibition to one of there being military necessity to strike the hospital
Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell Come to Jesus Christ today Jesus Christ is only way to heaven Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today Holy Spirit Can give you peace guidance and purpose and the Lord will John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Hebrews 11:6 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Jesus
None of these mention how the US thinks war crimes are "other people" concepts, will never allow an American citizen to be tried for warcrimes by anyone other than the US military, and has on the books laws enabling full military operations on allied soil to extract any American citizens detained for warcrimes
The point of the system of war crimes is to minimize civilian harm, first and foremost. Your target is enemy combatants, not the civilians. It's part of why fighting insurgent forces is difficult because they WILL NOT wear a uniform, they are all going to dress like civilians and as such you are always effectively fighting defensively or else you risk several war crimes. Literally the way the US has avoided actually being charged is because A) we make the rules and B) we basically justify any casualties of a "Military age male" to be a justified concern.
The uniform issue only extends to government militaries as civilian groups might not have designated uniforms. Being found in the enemy uniform, however, automatically gets every combatant treated as a spy instead of having the normal P.O.W. protections.
Even as a civilian militia you are still required to be identifiable. Although something as simple as wearing any type of camouflage, or wearing armbands, would probably suffice. The point is to not force the enemy to put civilians under their suspicion, from fear of being attacked by partisans.
@@bobbertbobberson6725 if you're part of an organized militia you do need organizational identifiers. However, the civilian population is the most basic militia. The uniform is for organized militias only ( this includes government militaries). Since the rest of the civilian population isn't part of an organized militia they will not have a uniform available to them.
@@ianbelletti6241 that's whybi said some sort of identifier, not a strict ubiform. You cannot dress identically to civilians because it puts civilians at risk
@@bobbertbobberson6725 my identifier is my rifle pointed at the enemy. Any other identifier is unnecessary for civilian combatants that are not part of an organized militia.
@@ianbelletti6241 , a combatant in civilian clothes does not get POW status and gets executed on site. But much worse than that, if there is a group of combatants in an area that do not wear uniforms, that area will be bombed entirely, and possibly endanger real civilians living there.
Tbf the main doctrinal use for napalm is for anti infantry use and batteries of artillery. With chemical weapons, the current doctrinal uses are more for protecting flanks on an already fucked cold war battlefield, since CWs mean you wear protective gear, have to have that changed now and then, decontaminate weapons and vehicles, along with the psychological impact. It's a lot harder to fight in MOPP gear than not, unsurprisingly. The US still has their chemical weapons stocks, though sadly we got rid of our deliriant stock pile, which is stupid because i think a pretty clear aerosol that makes enemy combatants see the hat man and unable to tie their boots is a good weapon.
10:03 I'd like to add that retreating does NOT mean someone isn't a combatant anymore, even if the person is not (in that moment) intending to keep fighting.
I've always heard white phosphorus was a war crime/really bad so it's frowned upon not because of fumes, but because it's pretty hard to put out if you get some on your body. But I'm just a fish.
GC: "Yup..... but the police forces and civilians can use them to their hearts comtent because technically they aren't war fighters". Got to love autisitic legalise
5:40 This is the first video of yours I've had come across my feed and I was listening while I drive - VERY confused for a moment when you said my name 😂😂
he was probably thinking meters, not yards. Every meter is approximately 3.3 feet (plus or minus .05 feet) so for 100 meters it would be approximately 330 feet. No idea tho.
To make it short war crimes are the things you want to do to your enemies but you never want to experience yourself. They are a gentlemens agreement between two enemies. If you are a low rank soldier they dont really interest you. If you do what they said to you well done. If it turns out to be a war crime as a german I can tell you "I just followed orders" gets you far in life.
funnily enough according to german soldier law your officer cant order you to commit a crime (including warcrimes) which funnily makes every single grunt responsible too. somebody definetly didnt think that one through completely. though on the other hand its nice to have something on hand to say no if the one with much glitter on his shoulder tells you to do a no russian
@@sergeantsharkseant That law was created in 1956 when the Bundeswehr was formed. It is specifically in place so that soldiers have a legal grounds to refuse orders that would constitute crimes of some nature. If other countries would follow suit, the US and Israel would still commit warcrimes like crazy because to them, anyone in a conflict who's not American/Jewish is literally not even human.
@@sergeantsharkseant That is *exactly* what that law is intended to do. It isn't intended to "protect" enlisted men but rather to enshrine the court judgements at Nuremberg on the Nazis who stood trial--namely that "I was just following orders" is no valid defense for committing war crimes and other illegal acts. In other words, you cannot escape conviction in a war crimes tribunal or court-martial by claiming that your CO ordered you to massacre those surrendering enemy personnel or unarmed civilians. It effectively removes any legal justification that a soldier may have for perpetrating criminal offenses in an armed conflict. The US military, the IDF, and just about every armed forces in this world (except those of countries like the DPRK and other dictatorships) have and enforce similar systems. Now whether they will prosecute a given soldier for committing a war crime depends highly on circumstances, although the US has prosecuted more than one serviceman for war crimes committed during the conflict in Afghanistan.
And now 20 years later some random patostreamer that calls his father and grandfather alcoholic tries to explain what war crime is instead, after randomly being chosen by youtube algorithm.
Exactly. People don't follow the rules. And modern day evidence doesn't change that. Do you think people really care about one life when running armies? You're a footnote. Life is cheap. That's the real rule of war.
Almost a half-century ago, when I was a sophomore or junior in high school, I read a book in the public library titled "A Soldier's Guide to the Laws of War" In my 20 year military service, I attended many LOAC briefings. None of them told me anything I didn't already know,
Actually the hollowpoint rule is just an example of outdated laws. Many modern rifle rounds are extremely high velocity and designed to break up inside a person to some degree in order to cause more damage. The 5.56/.223 is especially famous for turning into shrapnel inside flesh and causing huge wound channels. When introduced .223 was noted for causing extremely severe wounds, much worse than those of the bigger but slower .308
I think you're referring to yawing, when the round loses velocity in the target body and curves downwards as it travels, potentially damaging multiple organs. I highly doubt the round breaking apart is an intended effect, more like a useful side-effect
@@danikisikan9821 Yawing happens with all rifle bullets. Some break up inside flesh. 5.56 is very much noted for this effect. In fact with the M855 that was adopted in the 80's in conjunction with lower muzzle velocities from the M4 carbine and the longer engagement ranges in the ME due to terrain and the mass introduction of ACOG optics it was noted that the 5.56 was no longer reliably shrapneling inside flesh due to the bullet construction and lower impact velocities. The famous "ice picking" effect. For this reason the army has adopted a new bullet M855A1 which among other things reliably shrapnels even at lower velocities. It is very much an intended effect and very critical for achieving good performance out of such a small bullet.
@@rachelpurity1 You should read up on the adoption of the new M855A1 and the mk262 before that. Both bullets were designed to address 5.56 bullets no longer reliably shrapneling in the new combat scenarios of Afghanistan with short barrel carbines.
Great video. The absurdity of a 1,200 page "rule book" is hilarious, pretty sure they could've narrowed that down to a 60 page pamphlet + ROE for the non-readers out their defending our.. strategic interests.
I would like to add that carrying a gun doesn't automatically make someone a combatant. You are allowed to carry a pistol, a hunting rifle or a sometime even an assault rifle if it is for self defense or other civilian purposes (eg hunting/law enforcement). Similar if you don't have a gun with you and are just carrying an ammo box or driving a logistics truck, still definitely a valid target.
@@Justin_Taylor right. I know nothing about the military but even I know not to carry a weapon in place where people with weapons are attacking other people with weapons
honestly kind of comforting to know that any respectable solider has a set of rules they follow. obviously this doesnt stop any rule breakers or people outside of the rules, but better than nothing 😂
@@bulutcoskuner9774Japan was an ancient army equipped with modern (at that time) weapons, hence, their complete ignorance of the Geneva convention and their brutality against POW and civilians from the enemy side. They see pillaging as a way to improve morale.
@@triadwarfare Forget the geneva convention, how is for example the horrible experiments they ran and the torture on prisoners raising morale? I think this gives them too much credit, or atleast paints them the wrong way
3:32 Restrepo. It doesn’t rip limbs off, but if you miss close enough, apparently it can cause superficial burns. And we’re talking like. Within a foot. Restrepo is a good doc. Korengal is the second flick? Both are solid.
I’ve actually been thinking exactly this recently. Especially in contexts where it’s not even applicable - a fantasy or sci fi world where those laws wouldn’t be present, against enemies it doesn’t apply to. I get it’s supposed to be funny but it’s such a tired joke
@@truly_infinitethe person who wrote about the conflict have a russian flag as their profile picture, suggesting that they are the part of the invading forces. Also, russian military is widely known for committing war crimes, wartime crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide,.. basically almost any other crime possible - it seems like they really treat crime lists as checklists. Thus there is no wonder that there are people who don’t want russian military continue existing.
Turns out i actually did know what a war crime is.
Same here I really thought I wasn’t gonna but I did
Me too. Because we actually do research
You gotta hand it to the guy for getting me to watch his video. I taught LOW for 7 years, so nothing new here. I just won't be clicking on any more videos entitled "You don't know..."
I knew the important parts.
I knew who he was talking to. Wasn’t me.
The first Rule of Engagement is to have fun
According to everyone's parents the first rule of engagement is to get pregnant quickly and give them grandbabies😂
That's exactly how Kamala feels
I thought it was not to talk about engagement.
Fun is fleeting. Meaning endures.
i thought the first rule is STAY THE F*** IN COVER
So what i can gather from the thumbnail is skydiving isn’t allowed unless you are carrying a flamethrower
@@CertifiedSmoothBrain_l that is correct yes
@@Justin_Taylor you being for real?
@@yurichan5368 💯
pyro with the thermal thruster is not a war crime 👍
@@yurichan5368Absolutely, I sense zero sarcasm in his comment so ur good
"pillaging villages, stealing livestock, and all kinds of innocent tomfoolery"
Ah yes minecraft
@@gabecollins5585 raid farm
Sounds like Rimworld
Honestly
Engaging in a bit of Militaristic Shenanigans and Tomfoolery is really fun though
No tomfoolery today Ronald, I'm sick of your dreadful, speckled mug.
Thanks for teaching me how to never see my family again
I have that taken care of honey😮
When I gotta go back to war since some of my “warcrimes” weren’t warcrimes so I gotta get those numbers back up
He taught me the police commit war crimes but it’s not war so it’s not a warcrime
What even the hell.
....
Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today
Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven
There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today
Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell
Come to Jesus Christ today
Jesus Christ is only way to heaven
Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void
Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today
Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today
Romans 6.23
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Mark 1.15
15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Hebrews 11:6
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Jesus
I can not believe there are grown ass adults out there that believe missing a .50 cal shot by a couple feet not only harms the target in any way other than hearing and psychological damage, but believe it can rip an arm off
@@acenio654 the people touting it probably don’t, it’s just a cool thing to say if you don’t know any better. Heard it a lot at bars unfortunately.
if you think about it at all it makes no sense. bullets are designed to be aerodynamic and cut through the air, displacing it as little as possible so they can stay fast. the only thing that could do this is probably a literal meteorite due to the heat of it burning up as it passes through the atmosphere at over 10x the speed of a bullet
Also the in underwear departent
I didn't know people actually believed that bullshit until the Trump fiasco. So many stupid conspiracy theories claiming Trump would be dead if he got hit or nearly hit. As if it would've popped his head like a watermelon by simply nicking his ear.
2nd time posting this as youtube constantly deletes my comments the instant I post them if it contains any words having anything to do with arms from which projectiles are expelled using a certain flammable powder. This time it was writing five five six as a number that did it
the guy who said it in the video is a Army Sniper - he's also a complete joke of a person. so it all tracks actually.
My favorite war crime is you aren't allowed to pull a gun or sword or something out of a museum to kill someone with it.
What if you just happened to steal them before you wanted to kill someone?
@@EGRJWell then it's a crime. And if you're a combatant and are in a war, it would be a wartime crime.
Hmm, I think I'd break that rule if push came to shove. Never underestimate swords in museums. 😆🍿
You don't want Indiana Jones fighting against your troops.
That shouldnt be a war crime
An incomplete list of people that were roasted in this video: gamers, 38 year olds, our uncles that concealed carry, the UN, my mom, militia larpers, Justin's cousin, people that think near misses are injurious
Near misses are injurious.
_It nearly missed him!_
the self deprecating "grunt" humor in videos like this always raises my eyebrow (like the asvab score remarks). Grunts are smart, bruh.
Anyway, we did it with classes and lots of little cheat sheets we'd carry in a pocket. You can train on rules of engagement pretty well, but it is a challenge for everyone.
Bro there has to be a certain size bullet for near misses to be injurious. Ofc a 22.lr isn't gonna to anything, but an 16 inch 50 cal near miss WILL delete your respiratory systems due to pressure and shockwave. also proxim fuses exist.
@@boinkyummy2464 No, that's not how physics works at all. A bullet would have to dump a lot of energy into the surrounding air for a miss to be injurious, and they're designed to not do that.
@@boinkyummy2464 I was playing some of George Carlin's word games. I wasn't making a physics argument.
I have it on good authority that it's never a war crime the first time.
The Holocaust?
Woah crazy. I knew a different Holt who also has this on good authority
Canada? Canada
Cans and grenades too?
Get out of here before I steal your maple syrup.
Should've rolled with "War crime expert reacts to war crime scenes in 20 youtube videos"
“Yeah, that’s what I woulda did”
"38 year old alcoholic" hits a lil too close to home...
Idk about you but I got 6 years before I resemble that remark but I'm working on it
Indeed!
I'm a bit late for the first part and have to work on the second one, but i felt it nonetheless..
Weird at home is exactly where a 38 year old alcoholic hit me
@@solalabell9674 should have kept your mouth shut xD
Big one you missed: retreating =\= surrendering
I watched band of brothers and i'm sure this is real (that scene where one of the characters throws a granade on the back of a german)
Highway of death 1991 flashbacks
Yep. Also, people not recognizing the distinction between casevac and medevac. A soldier doesn't magically become a medic the moment they start helping their wounded.
Would’ve also been nice for him to expound some more on false surrender. There’s a lot of misunderstandings about why false surrender is a warcrime, especially since hacky TV writers think it’s a great plot device to show how “clever” their protagonist is.
In real life, once you’ve surrendered, you have *surrendered.* Laying down arms is biconditional with your continuing right to be kept alive (as a prisoner). The *moment* you stop cooperating your your captors, even something as “benign” as intentionally leaving a trail for your buddies; congratulations: you’ve transformed yourself into an enemy combatant. So now your captors can (and probably will) kill you. And what’s worse is that now you’ve escalates the game of “chicken” (Take-No-Prisoners Edition,) making the enemy faction less likely to accept your allies’ surrender and more likely to commit warcrimes against the prisoners already in their care. That’s the *entire reason* why rules against false surrender/playing dead are in the Geneva conventions. Screwing with norms relating to prisoners would be a lose-lose for everyone.
the Imperial Japanese Army wants to know your location
5:00 the "orcas havent harmed anyone" is in reference to wild orcas, captive orcas are well established to attack n hurt their keepers
Thats why he isnt going into the pool with Shamu
I wonder if it has to do with their perpetual enslavement and cruel treatment...
@@AAAAAA-qs1bv noooo, couldn't be!! Those intelligent creatures surely love being forced to do tricks for hordes of sweaty tourists!
@@idontwantahandlethoughTo be fair, I don't believe the whales have the sweatiness of the audience in consideration at all
Orcas off the coast of Spain have began to intentionally target/attack the ruders on boats and are attacking boats because of the amount of human disruption to their habitat. I wouldn't fuck with them.
One thing you missed (that most folks miss when discussing thr laws of war). The *reasons* for the rules on how to treat genuine POWs.
1. To encourage troops to surrender *and stay surrendered* when things are hopeless, so they don't feel the need to fight to the death every time, and their captors don't feel the need to just massacre all prisoners they get. That's also why the rules specifically allow for escapes, and say that if you follow the rules for a POW escaping, you can't be shot out of hand if you get recaptured. "For you, Major, the war is over."
2. A *bribe* , to encourage combatants not to be utter barbarians on the battlefield, *especially* with regard to civilians. "Hey, if you follow the basic rules, you're a lawful combatant, and you get to be treated under the POW rules, and you get to go home after the war. But if you deliberately break the rules, we can try you for war crimes and you'll end up doing Mambo Number Nuremberg and dance at the end of a rope."
It confuses me when people think this has anything to do with morals and Right and wrong. It for sure isn’t which is why on the battlefield if one side does something then it’s gonna happen back to you.
its adorable you think people follow these lmao.
@@contentcop They do it’s the rare exception where they won’t. Theres situations where taking prisoners isn’t an option such as in WW2 with U.S Paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines. The goal of war isn’t to kill the enemy it’s to break there will to fight, I’m still convinced that if any military seriously did this then they could win wars with little bloodshed. You get Women soldiers and there duty is to go to a POW base where there is booze, casino, amazing food every meal, hotel service and the women are to make it the time of there lives and all the soldiers be given cell phones and allowed to go wherever and do whatever and there’s just a cage around it and make the rules where any harming the women is so execution and require them to constantly be in contact with the fellow solders proving it all real and even offer possibly citizenship and how long are men gonna keep fighting in some miserable trench getting shelled and maybe skeptic st first but then you see someone you were just around on FaceTime showing you steak and lobster and 2 little blondes who beg you to come see them. It’s a perfect strategy given you can keep your men in line forcing them to understand the is modern warfare.
@@JamesonRutfordPhD tell me you never served without saying it. Ik people personally who have committed war crimes, admitted it, and no one cared.
@@contentcop Afghanistan wasn’t a war it was policing. I’m talking about real war. Of course no one gives a shit about policing is done in Afghanistan
I knew about the 50 cal myth, but legal use of white phosphorus was not something I was expecting to hear. Good vid.
He mentioned an Asterisk because the US signed (but didn't ratify) a treaty on the use of incendiaries against personnell, so, nominally, WP is registered as an Anti-Materiel weapon in the USAF.
It depends, for the US, no it isn't, but for some other countries absolutely.
Because it is internaionally ostracized and most major countries except the US, Israel and Russia have outlawed white phosphorus.
@prizrak-br3332
All of 196 UN countries have signed first 4 Geneva conventions and 193 have signed Chemical Weapons Conventions. Remaining Geneva protocols regulating particular weapon's use and ratification is a bit more complicated. However it seems you missed the central point of this video. Nearly all countries are legally equal under international laws. It's deployment circumstances and intent that deems use of a weapon or force legal or illegal, in the UN it applies. White phosporous as a weapon is not prohibited by any convention, as long as it's used with according intention or method - for illumination, smokescreen or enemy force incendiary purpose. Element and weapons containing it is noy prohibited - unless it's for purpose of poisoning (like all chemocal veapons) or unnecessary suffering (wether civilian or combattant).
Some weapons can be illegal for countries ratifying certain treaties (there are 7 parts just to Geneva Conventions and 3 more major independent treaties), like cluster munitions, personal landmines (for some) or glass and plastic shrapnel mines and munitions (for all UN countries).
@@acceptablecasualty5319and uniforms are considered material
Edgelord: You mean the checklist? 😏
Edgier edlord
Geneva bucketlist
@@unstoppabletigertalukan6710 😂
The Geneva Shopping Reminder
Or if you’re Canadian. Apparently, lol.
Hahaha hail #Edgelord
“I’m praying that this information remains useless for the rest of your life.”
Game developers making a war game:
👁️ 👄 👁️
Writers wanting to write a war novel
As someone with a Law degree the Law of Armed Conflict is pretty short compared to other legal works
you should make a video going over every statute and law related to war crimes that you can get your hands on. Maybe turn it into a series. I'd be there for it.
It’s really isn’t overly complicated either, which makes the fact that antisemites can’t figure it out extra pathetic. Then again, they’d have to actually care about the truth in the first place.
And that is still a whole other problem.
One thing you only touched on superficially that's very interesting is the not making a body difficult to identify rule. You see, dogtags aren't just a cool little trinket to be worn around the neck, they're meant to make identifying a soldier's body easy. Ever wonder why they come in pairs? It's because if for whatever reason your squadmates have to leave your body behind, they take one of the tags with them to confirm your death and leave the other one with the body.
Point is, taking a dead enemy's dogtags is making their body more difficult to identify, which is a war crime, which means the very concept of CoD's "kill confirmed" game mode is repeatedly commiting a war crime.
as an australian these are hot tips for young players
Lol friendlyjordies entered the chat 😭
As a Canadian, your welcome for the ideas
yeah, don't snitch
@@sionsoschwalts2762 tell that to the SASR squadron that got disbanded just because they accidently shot some guy with no weapon who might have been flexicuffed.
Hey at least the chain of command who were legally responsible for training, disciplining, controlling and monitoring those guys psychological fitness got "letters of reprimand".
Man the concept of a war ref really got me chuckling
Says that the "geneva suggestion" joke isnt funny, proceeds to make a "yo mama" joke later. xD
Yo mama is always a joke though.
yo mama has been a lil underused this time of year
Because it's ageless unlike yo momma
yo mama jokes will always be funny
@@thecalhamlmao gott’em
@4:52 - white phosphorous is highly toxic though; absorption of it through wounds can absolutely kill you, even if the burns don’t. Although the smoke may not be lethal to humans, it’s a big part of WP’s effectiveness against troops. The fumes produce phosphoric acids and are highly irritating. If you mix WP and HE (shake and bake), the WP smoke drives people out of bunkers to where the HE can kill them in the open.
It’s chemical weaponry, and it non discriminatory if used in mixed areas, and the idea of making people flee their cover to kill them is disgusting
But at the same time, that guy didn’t even once talk about the fact that hey, maybe war is dumb in inhumane in and of itself.
Basically, a warcrime is harm that is not useful. But if it’s useful to kill people effectively, you can bet it’s not a warcrime.
@@Rafaelforte-hs4bv War is, unfortunately, often tragically necessary. As Clausewitz said, it's just politics by other means. On the subject of it being dumb and inhumane...yeah. Modern warfare is dropping an anvil on a puppy. Such a thought might make you wince, and that's the point. It's horrible, but so is modern war. The trouble is, once gain, that war is often tragically necessary. There are some problems that cannot be solved through politics and war is the only practical solution. Pacifism and non-violence is a nice thought, but any state that adopts them as their national policy would quickly find out that not everyone shares those ideals. Si vis pacem para bellum.
Before you start calling me names, understand this. As someone both trained to engage in modern warfare and as someone who has studied the history of modern war on an academic level, I don't like war and I don't want it to happen.
You are absolutely right!
from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK598124/
"White phosphorus is the most active allotropic form and is extremely toxic when inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through burned areas..."
"...White phosphorus can cause thermal injury and hygroscopic damage by absorbing water from surrounding tissues. It reacts with oxygen and water to form strong acids (H3PO2, H3PO3) and combines with metals like copper to form dark-colored inactive salts..."
"If phosphorus is absorbed as the gas phosphine (PH3), death can occur rapidly due to cardiac collapse (Blanke 1970)."
@@Rafaelforte-hs4bv
Well, nowdays ALMOST all wars are useless.
The few that are necessery are usually the bloodiest. At least back a few thousand years you'd get your 700 boys to go capture a mine or something, now Millions of soldiers are involved.
@@Rafaelforte-hs4bv "and the idea of making people flee their cover to kill them is disgusting"
Hand grenades have been used to do this quite effectively since WWI, and nobody thinks of hand grenades as "disgusting." So have flamethrowers, and whilst I do concede that flamethrowers aren't really considered the most tasteful of weapons, the reason why nobody uses them anymore isn't because they are banned by international treaty. It's simply because people figured out better ways to deliver heat to unfriendly foreigners, such as incendiary bombs, rockets, and missiles, instead of sending some poor bastard forward with a 70 lb SuperSoaker from hell strapped to his back.
"But if it’s useful to kill people effectively, you can bet it’s not a warcrime."
If this were the case, then nerve gases like Sarin and VX wouldn't be banned, as they are _very_ useful for killing people effectively. Yet, *all* chemical weapons, even less-lethal agents like CS gas, have been proscribed for use in warfare since the end of WWI.
As for "non-discriminatory" weapons, plenty of weapons "legal" for use in warfare are pretty indiscriminate in their effects. High explosive munitions aren't too choosy about whom they shred into hamburger, and most fragmentation weapons can hurl deadly splinters to surprisingly long distances.
"maybe war is dumb in inhumane in and of itself"
On this you are 100% correct. Just about every weapon that is 'legal' to use in warfare kills and maims other human beings in rather grisly and painful ways. But sadly, war remains "necessary" because whilst you, I, and 95% of people on this planet may prefer living in peace and not bothering our neighbors, what are we going to do about the 5% of people who think otherwise? We can only keep them in check through the threat of inflicting unacceptable destruction on them.
And thus we are back to square one, preparing for war so that we may live in peace. Paradoxical and perhaps even insane, but that's been the norm in human history for over 10,000 years.
People don't know the difference between CasEvac (soldiers retreating with the wounded) and MedEvac (medical personnel carrying the wounded). Enemy combatants don't turn into medics when they start applying a tourniquet to the wounded soldier next to them.
Imagine there are five enemy combatants at the start of an engagement. One of them gets severely wounded, to the point that they are _hors de combat_ , i.e. no longer a valid target. The remaining four are still valid targets even if they throw their buddy onto a stretcher and retreat from the engagement.
The casualty on the stretcher doesn't create a magic bubble of protection for the four enemy combatants retreating with him. It *is not a war crime* to drop a grenade on them from a drone.
While evacuating wounded the combatants will be exiting the battle AO and therefore be showing there backs to the frontlines and no longer presenting themselves as direct threats making the use of explosive weapons on those specific individuals fall under the same warcrime that is to cause unnecessary permanent harm and the warcrime of making dead bodies harder to identify as related to the double tap argument. (warcrime 1)
There would be no threat posed by that group warranting such measures especially when one of the combatants was already made a non combatant and the use of such explosive drone attack makes it a warcime by the plain fact the noncombatant was in range of the blast therefore targeted. (warcime 2)
If the OPFOR already took out one combatant they could realistically do the same to the other 4 during the aid process whether it was snipers that took out combatant 1 or an mg or regular rifle fire it doesnt matter, not a bomb was used to hit one guy therefore when that one guy is no longer a combatant and they are unarguably weaker theres no legal necessity to increase force levels such as in the vids teargas point. (warcrime 3).
The noncombatant on the stretcher does in fact not create a magic safety bubble but they do still exist and must be accounted for especially when your scenario describes a combatant who is plainly and obviously disabled to the point of noncambatant status. Therefore it isnt a warcrime to drop that drone bomb it is actually 3 of them.
EDIT
Also real life soldiers dont get equipped like arma3 dude. If there was a stretcher then there was at least 1 medic. That type of equipment is big and bulky to carry around even when collpsed, just ask your average EMT. That kind of thing is just not possible to bring unless your job is to bring all the supplies needed to be a battlefield doctor, AKA a goddamned medic, anybody else would have rations ammo ort literally anything to make them more combat sustainable and frankly drugs and tourniquet's are 100% of medical equipment that fall into that category.
@@paddycake5915Stretchers can just sit in the back of a truck, and anyone can drive a truck. My truck was usually full of medical gear and I was never a medic.
And retreating/not presenting oneself as a threat means nothing. It is not at all equivalent to surrendering. You are still a valid target under the law of war until you surrender.
@@ghost.patrols I think the other guy is probably correct on at least 1 of those 3 points (I don't think 1 makes much sense, but 2 and 3 do). You wanna address them?
@@idontwantahandlethough 2 is highly arguable, and so is 3 - they're not targeting the one guy, they're targeting the combatants.
@@paddycake5915A retreating force, even presenting no threat, are still legal combatants. The only time you get made a non-combatant is if you always were one, you are surrendering, or if you are too injured to keep fighting. And actions that kill non-combatants in a reasonable blast zone of combatants are legal. As long as the action can be considered a reasonable targeting of combatants it is legal.
Would duck hunting paratroopers with a homemade cannon loaded with grapeshot and homemade high explosives be a warcrime, asking for a friend
paratroopers are fair game. Just don't shoot bailing out crew of downed aircraft.
I heard the Geneva conventions don't apply to civilians so probably
@@elishafollet5347 You are no longer a "civilian", or more correctly "non combatant" if you take up arms, so any conventions will apply to you in that situation. That being said, paratroopers enjoy no protection whatsoever while parachuting.
@@elishafollet5347 They apply to everyone. As a civilian (non combatant) you are given certain protections. If you engage the enemy you become a combatant and are fair game as much as regular military forces.
@@bobbertbobberson6725 even more fair game than regular military forces.
My personal favourite warcrime is modding medkits in video games to have the red cross.
Yes that exists
Isn't that only a warcrime if you do it in war? Otherwise it's just IP crime.
That's not a war crime. You can't be charged with a war crime unless you are engaging in war. That's why these laws don't apply to cops or civilians using hollow points. In the USA at worst the Red Cross could sue you, and even that is questionable if you weren't making any money off of it.
Not a warcrime if youre carrying and using a rifle.
The dad from Inside Out really knows his stuff!
I cant unsee it now lmao
Just to clarify, the man talking at 3:26 is Nicholas Irving, a former spec-ops sniper for the US Army, he clearly knows it's not true and just explains common misconceptions about .50 cal in the extract.
Thank you for pointing that out. I was a little frustrated to see how that quote was being used out of context. I mean, thats the Reaper himself.
Thank goodness. I saw Irving and thought "what"?!
Arma: Warcrimes
Rust: Crimes against humanity
I think you missed a big point of confusion, and even said it wrong yourself at 10:08. From my understanding, it’s something along the lines of the following:
Killing a non combatant isn’t necessarily a war crime. Intentionally targeting a known non combatant is illegal, as well as killing them via gross negligence, but accidentally killing them due to thinking they are a combatant, or due to reasonable collateral damage when targeting combatants, is not.
I could be wrong though, feel free to correct me.
You're not wrong. There is some nuance in if you're in a hybrid setting with combatants and civilians if all options were exhausted before using lethal force on someone who *may* be a combatant, and that measures were taken to ensure that de-escalation was attempted/the minimum use of force was used. It's a really sticky situation.
It’s hard to define “reasonable collateral damage”
it's actually fairly simple:
- you see a legal target? shoot. exceptions apply like yes, damaging the enemy's energy infrastructure IN THE WZ (not 1000km behind enemy lines where only civilians would suffer) is legal, but not nuclear powerplants, even if they are protected with dozens of sentries and bunkers bc they know exactly that you wanna have at it eitherway.
- hmm, but now you not only see a legal one but also illegal ones, what do? cases:
a) the enemy built their military HQ right under a hospital in the middle of a city. it's not your responsibility for them not to build it there. there isnt any other way to take them out, so bad luck for them. also this is a WC committed by them, not you.
b) the enemy is defending from a ruin which is right next to a kindergarten. chances are, they have all fled. even if not, a) still applies. it's legal. if it turns out that you were wrong, it's still not your fault. they have committed a WC.
c) the enemy is using human shields. this is a WC end of story lol. go ham, it's not your responsibility.
sth i do not know is what happens if the enemy is forcing its civilians to dig trenches, retrieve casualities and so on. also, what about civilians working in arms factories and the like? is the factory itself a military target and the workers always collateral dmg?
ps: i think the nuances wouldve been exactly the important part here, but oh well, guess we're only gonna do the boring stuff that every normal person already knows in this video.
this is gonna be a weird answer to my own comment if it doesnt make it through, but oh well:
as you can tell, ham-"donkey" (you know which middle eastern group i mean) has been committing WC from the very beginning to this very day and the IDF literally wouldnt even need to bother with the whole POW concept. all those military installations next to all those civilians that they didnt bother to evacuate. quite the contrary, they told them to stay home. also human shields. only one side has professionalised in committing WC, even the blind can see it
@@nevermindmeijustinjectedaw9988 Ye. The problem with insurgent style warfare is that they pretty much make absolutely every tactic legal to fight them. Its honestly hard to commit a warcrime without doing some torture thing just to be inhumane.
As it should. Insurgent warfare is inhumane and anyone who defends it is a bad person. It is the turning of your own civilian populace into a bunker. It is the choice of massacring your own people.
This is one of those topics that really warrants multiple videos regarding the history of the Laws of War, the major treaties that codified those laws, and the reasons for those laws. Addressing misconceptions about what constitutes a "war crime", is a good start, but in addressing those misconceptions you tend to overlook some of the reasons for those misconceptions. For example, in WWI the German army very much felt that he American use of the shotgun was a war crime, and declared that they'd execute any American they found carrying one. And double-tapping isn't illegal; executing the wounded, giving la coup d'grâce, and/or shooting corpses are illegal. Assault teams are taught to fire "controlled pairs" in CQC conditions in order to maximize potential lethality when engaging targets.
In the swiss army we got a little booklet that had a dumbed down, shortend version of the GC (at least in my unit) with the basic shit in it like dont kill civilans (shocker ik) and most didnt even bother opening if except when got them handed to us 😂
Lots of problems there. Not all civilians are non-combatant, just as not all uniform-wearing people are combatant. But the uniform also one to surrender as a POW, while wearing civilians clothes is sometimes cause for summary execution. The Swiss army would have to change their book rapidly if they deployed into Lebanon, for example.
bonus points for using battlebit footage
I am now more informed. You should do a video ranking your favorite Zynn puns.
A few minor criticisms of this vid from someone who follows modern conflicts as a hobby (I am incredibly autistic)
1) 0:57 It's not just a "handful" of countries who have signed the Geneva Conventions - 196 countries have signed and ratified all 4 Geneva Conventions (for reference, the UN has 193 countries, plus 2 observers - the Cook Islands (free association with NZ so not represented in the UN) independently ratified the GC too). There are three additional protocol as well but those are much more specific, and even then P1 has 174 countries as parties, P2 has 169 countries as parties, and P3 (which is about additional emblems only, like the red crystal instead of red cross/crescent) has 78 countries as parties. The Geneva Conventions and supplementary protocols are also pretty much exhaustive lists as to the conduct of an army in wartime, and don't exactly have a lot of wiggle room.
Also, war crimes are not solely defined in the Geneva (and Hague) Conventions - the use of prohibited weaponry is also a war crime (like using cluster munitions when both you and your belligerent state are signatories to the convention on cluster munitions). Other good things you could have mentioned would be stuff like crimes against humanity, and state-level war crimes such as collective punishment.
2) 1:28 The US withdrew its signature of the Rome Statute (which established the International Criminal Court) in 2002. In fact, the US has a law known as the American Service-Members' Protection Act that literally protects US soldiers from being subject to international criminal courts to which the US is not a party. It's popularly nicknamed the "Hague Invasion Act", since (even as extraordinarily unlikely this is) it basically legalises invading the Netherlands to rescue US military personnel from custody. It also does some interesting things like prevents US agencies from cooperating with the ICC, extraditing anyone to the ICC, and _technically_ prohibits US aid to countries who are parties to the Rome Statute (it has obvious exceptions to this last thing, like major NATO and non-NATO allies, plus any country who signs a bilateral agreement to prevent extradition of US nationals to the ICC).
Also, minor spelling mistake. It should be "Hague", not "Hauge". I win. (insert shadow the hedgehog gif here idk)
3) 2:22 No, not really? For example Ukraine and Russia both haven't signed the Cluster Munitions Convention but 112 states are party to the convention (which is more than half of the UN membership list) and neither side has faced any punishment for their use of cluster munitions (in fact when the US handed over DPICM to Ukraine all that both sides from their allies (UK, France, Germany, etc.) received was criticism, not litigation). This doesn't really make much sense that you could be subject to an international treaty that you're not a party to. I feel like I’m not fully understanding the point you’re making, since it seems illogical that you could be found guilty of violating an agreement that you haven’t even signed. You’d just be charged for violating stuff you did already sign, like the UN charter in this case.
4) 3:47 Incendiary weapons were not defined in the Geneva Conventions, but were in fact defined in Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). In fact, there was a disappointing lack of mentioning of existing arms control treaties: talking about incendiary weapons could have warranted a mention of the CCW, which not only defines an incendiary weapon, but makes some exclusions. For example, white phosphorus is fair game since its primary use is an obscurant and not an incendiary weapon (technical term is "incidental incendiary effect") since it's so good for smoke grenades, and then restricts their use (can't be used on civilians, dropped by aircraft on any civilian concentrations, attack foliage cover unless it's concealing military targets, etc.). The CCW has 127 states as parties to the convention, with the non-signatories being various African countries plus other random states like Indonesia, Iran, Syria, etc.
Since you mentioned chemical weapons, another interesting arms control treaty you could have mentioned could be the Convention on Chemical Weapons (or even the 1899 Hague Convention that actually banned poison gases, which was of course heavily violated in subsequent conflicts like the First World War - hell, this would have been a great tie-in since hollow-point bullets were banned in this same convention).
5) 4:48 this is my most minor nitpick but this happens so often it annoys me: what you are witnessing is not WP but is in fact thermite - it's footage from Vuhledar in March 2023, likely 9M22S magnesium-based thermite rockets fired from a BM-21 Grad. WP produces a much smokier explosion since its, y'know, mostly a smoke munition (to be specific it's basically a vapour of phosphorus pentoxide - it's so effective because the size of the droplets are close to the Mie scattering radii for visible light, which doesn't just obscure but also scrambles the light. it also works against thermal imaging as well).
6) 5:25 The Geneva Convention didn't outlaw CS gas or tasers - CS (and other incapacitating agents) was banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925 (not to be confused with the other Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions either). The Chemical Weapons Convention also banned incapacitating agents. Tasers aren't banned by the CCW though, since Protocol IV of the CCW only bans blinding laser weapons (or other weapons designed to cause permanent blindness) so tasers, sonic weapons, and dazzlers that only cause temporary blindness are legal. In fact, long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) are present on many military naval vessels in Norway, Sweden, and the US.
7) 5:40 much more minor nitpick but the first formal treaties regarding the laws of war were actually in the early 19th century, not 20th century - one of the precursors to international humanitarian law was the Treaty of Armistice and Regularisation of War between Gran Colombia and Spain in 1820. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the 1848 Mexican-American War also created rules for future wars, including rules regarding treatment of civilians and POWs. The First Geneva Convention itself was established in 1864.
8) 8:39 well you probably wouldn't use APFSDS on a single dude (although we have actually seen footage of Ukrainians in Western-made tanks using such rounds on infantry positions since they have a critical lack of HE), but nothing is stopping you from loading 120mm canister rounds or HE or what have you to blast a soldier with. You still have rounds optimised for anti-infantry that you can use from your main gun that could also be used on soft-skinned vehicles that APFSDS and your coax would be unsuitable for.
9) In addition to double-taps, you could have also potentially mentioned "mercy-killings", and also cases whereby people are killed by a drone-dropped munition while attempting to surrender to a drone (and potentially also wounded, up to the point of being hors de combat). Those things are *very* hotly debated upon, especially by those following the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. Also I kind of wish you touched upon other war-crimey behaviours such as perfidy. Also also the other meaning of double tap, where a location is targeted twice with a few minutes' interlude in order to attack the rescue workers.
Otherwise super cool video, arguably the most important part of your whole video is talking about the actual classification of a combatant, plus the use of the term "hors de combat".
Also regarding shooting parachuting people, just remember the rhyme: "If there's a rifle, there's no trifle!".
If I misunderstood some stuff just give me a shout, I may have missed some stuff and my reply is probably a bit incoherent considering it’s quite late my time when I’m writing this
God bless all autistic homies...
Smoke from WP is phosphorus pentoxide produced by the burning of phosphorus. If you had a mist of phosphorus it would immediately burst into flames and be converted into phosphorus pentoxide. It absorbs moisture from the air to make phosphoric acid.
@@cianmoriarty7345 Thank you for the correction, I didn’t spot that mistake when originally typing my comment. I’ll edit it now.
point #2 is especially messed up. We would literally invade the Netherlands if someone tried to hold us accountable for our [often heinous] actions 😂😂
Gotta love an autistic infodump to settle the facts.
Hollow-points should be reconsidered, they're popular self-defense ammunition partly because there's less risk of over-penetration (depending of course on specific caliber and powder load, etc). As an armed civilian they make perfect sense, I'm liable for every round fired from my gun, I don't want it to go through the 'bad guy' and potentially injure someone else. If you're DEVGRU or CAG or GSG9 or whoever, and there's 'bad guys' in-between your team and where hostages are located, you don't want rounds going through a wall and injuring someone you might not have even known was there.
I think a reasonable case for exemption to the 'hollow-point = bad' rule for military SOF units conducting hostage rescue operations, because the intent of such rounds is not to cause unnecessary suffering, but rather to mitigate the risk of of unintended injury of a non-threat.
I think the United States has adjusted some rules for hollow points for that exact reason, at least for specific mission sets.
The issue with "reconsidering" hollow points and expanding projectiles is that if the Hague Declaration were ever annulled, well, that would just open up an arms' race to see who could make the nastiest possible small arms ammunition. That was arguably the whole reason for the prohibition on expanding projectiles in warfare back around the turn of the 20th century--nobody wanted to deal with the nastiness that nations would cook up in their quest for victory.
Look up the ballistic gel tests of WWII-era exploding 8mm Mauser and 7.62x54R ammunition, and tell me if that's stuff you want people shooting at you on the battlefield. Because you can bet that people would start developing and fielding stuff like that again if that treaty were off.
Heck, the Mk 211 Raufoss .50 BMG ammo can _potentially_ explode inside a person if the target is wearing ballistic armor and it strikes him at a particularly oblique angle (since no man-portable ballistic armor will stop a .50 BMG round), so it's definitely within contemporary technological capacity to produce high-explosive rifle-caliber ammo with projectiles designed to explode inside people or upon striking bone.
NB: The Mk 211 Raufoss cartridges are *not* designed to explode inside people--they are intended for anti-materiel purposes primarily. Using them against enemy personnel is sort of an legal grey area, but regular ball .50 BMG is perfectly legal to use against personnel.
@Schwarzvogel1 ... you do realise that international laws can be amended without being scrapped, right? Also are you aware that a lot of rounds nowadays are designed to tumble in a target, doing essentially the same thing as a hp round?
Also you can codify explosive ordinance smaller than 400g and fragmenting rounds as a separate thing to hollowpoints, and thus make one legal whilst make the others illegal. You could also codify WHEN they can be used, for instance "in the interest of reducing collateral damage", for instance in an embassy that has been taken control of by a group of iranian/iraqi militants who are now holding hostage civilians. Cant imagine that happening, but yknow, if it ever did, you would probably want to reduce the chance of a through-and-through becoming a through-and-through-and-through-the-fucking-next-guy
@@Schwarzvogel1 "Look up the ballistic gel tests of WWII-era exploding 8mm Mauser and 7.62x54R ammunition, and tell me if that's stuff you want people shooting at you on the battlefield." If I'm on a battlefield I don't want anything to be shot at me, but since it's war that's not up to me. The USA doesn't currently use hollow points but has said they reserve the right to. A treaty doesn't have to be scrapped or withdrawn from to change. There are lots of treaties that countries have ratified with provisions. They say "Okay, we agree to this except this part here. We're still going to do this if we feel like it." A nation can withdraw in full or in part from any treaty they feel like any time they feel like it.
As an 'armed civilian', war crime laws are irrelevant to defending yourself. If you are militia, fighting as a conventional army makes them useless. As an unconventional army, you have committed a war crime anyway and war crime laws do not apply to you.
My favorite kind of people are the ones who call characters from fantasy games war criminals like yeah you definetly know about the laws of war in Azeroth and Fodlan
That your mom joke *was* a war crime
What is a War Crime? Ask Canada
Mre's don't leave bruises 😂
Just don’t ask Canada for medical advice
just read about the somalia affair. jesus christ what the fuck
what German prisoners?
Or the US, or Australia, or probably any other country that has at one point waged war
"I'm praying that this information remains useless for the rest of your life."
That was... really poignant. Damn. I hope it does, too.
Worth noting that the most important concept in IHL is Necessity. How necessary is it that you use system X or blow up thing Y
The go to one that people think about is hospitals. But there is absolute prohibition on blowing up a hospital. If military forces were to occupy a hospital, that shifts the balance from being a medical establishment to one of mixed use, which degrades the protections that hospitals have. The calculus shifts from one of prohibition to one of there being military necessity to strike the hospital
oh thank god, my antics against my prisoners of war in rimworld are still warcrimes. I was about to be upset.
Average RimWorld player
EDIT: I say this as someone with hundreds of hours in
I’m sorry, is your colony recognized by the UN? Are you a standing army?
Yeah, I thought so
"The geneva conventions have only been signed by a handful of countries"
The 196 country-sized handful in question:
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John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Mark 1.15
15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Hebrews 11:6
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Jesus
None of these mention how the US thinks war crimes are "other people" concepts, will never allow an American citizen to be tried for warcrimes by anyone other than the US military, and has on the books laws enabling full military operations on allied soil to extract any American citizens detained for warcrimes
12:24 innocent tomfoolery, as defined by the CIA
The point of the system of war crimes is to minimize civilian harm, first and foremost.
Your target is enemy combatants, not the civilians. It's part of why fighting insurgent forces is difficult because they WILL NOT wear a uniform, they are all going to dress like civilians and as such you are always effectively fighting defensively or else you risk several war crimes.
Literally the way the US has avoided actually being charged is because A) we make the rules and B) we basically justify any casualties of a "Military age male" to be a justified concern.
The uniform issue only extends to government militaries as civilian groups might not have designated uniforms. Being found in the enemy uniform, however, automatically gets every combatant treated as a spy instead of having the normal P.O.W. protections.
Even as a civilian militia you are still required to be identifiable. Although something as simple as wearing any type of camouflage, or wearing armbands, would probably suffice. The point is to not force the enemy to put civilians under their suspicion, from fear of being attacked by partisans.
@@bobbertbobberson6725 if you're part of an organized militia you do need organizational identifiers. However, the civilian population is the most basic militia. The uniform is for organized militias only ( this includes government militaries). Since the rest of the civilian population isn't part of an organized militia they will not have a uniform available to them.
@@ianbelletti6241 that's whybi said some sort of identifier, not a strict ubiform. You cannot dress identically to civilians because it puts civilians at risk
@@bobbertbobberson6725 my identifier is my rifle pointed at the enemy. Any other identifier is unnecessary for civilian combatants that are not part of an organized militia.
@@ianbelletti6241 , a combatant in civilian clothes does not get POW status and gets executed on site. But much worse than that, if there is a group of combatants in an area that do not wear uniforms, that area will be bombed entirely, and possibly endanger real civilians living there.
Our societies continued use of taking warcrimes as a joke is actually a bit scary when you think about it.
Humanity has always treated warcrimes as a joke. It's why we still commit them.
@@mattd5240people make jokes about EVERYTHING, stop clutching your imaginary pearls
@@txcgladiator4030 Only one clutching their pearls here is you. I don't care.
War crime is when you get caught and you gotta try hard to get caught
0:57 Okay how about "it's never a war crime the first time." 🙂
Tbf the main doctrinal use for napalm is for anti infantry use and batteries of artillery. With chemical weapons, the current doctrinal uses are more for protecting flanks on an already fucked cold war battlefield, since CWs mean you wear protective gear, have to have that changed now and then, decontaminate weapons and vehicles, along with the psychological impact. It's a lot harder to fight in MOPP gear than not, unsurprisingly. The US still has their chemical weapons stocks, though sadly we got rid of our deliriant stock pile, which is stupid because i think a pretty clear aerosol that makes enemy combatants see the hat man and unable to tie their boots is a good weapon.
10:03 I'd like to add that retreating does NOT mean someone isn't a combatant anymore, even if the person is not (in that moment) intending to keep fighting.
I've always heard white phosphorus was a war crime/really bad so it's frowned upon not because of fumes, but because it's pretty hard to put out if you get some on your body. But I'm just a fish.
Even that won't save you it is very toxic and difficult to remove once in your blood stream.
Save those flamethrowers for the bug monsters. Master Mundi knows what I'm talking about.
4:12 What Tokyo firebombing? I don't know what you're talking about.
War crimes : how nationalised are your fuel and mining industries? Do you use the IMF bank? No? Warcimes.
0:33 well said it is a weirdly popular joke to make
The easy answer to this is: don’t be a fuckin soldier. ie don’t be a stupid gun for hire for your own government.
7:26 yes needlessly causing pain is just malicious and can't be justified.
He stole my robucks
Thank you. War crime joke have been so stale and unoriginal for years. Last time I laughed at one was in 2017.
“….so, we can’t use expanding bullets because they’re unnecessarily cruel… but, we can use flamethrowers?”
GC: "Yup..... but the police forces and civilians can use them to their hearts comtent because technically they aren't war fighters". Got to love autisitic legalise
“It’s not a warcrime if it’s the first time.” -Chubby Electron Guy
🤣
5:40 This is the first video of yours I've had come across my feed and I was listening while I drive - VERY confused for a moment when you said my name 😂😂
The 50 cal "sniper" guy also thinks 330 feet is a 100 yards
Am I missing some joke here? Because the math is off by 10 yards.
@@Wicked_Knighttrue
But it's more that the guy was proven to be talking out of his ass
he was probably thinking meters, not yards. Every meter is approximately 3.3 feet (plus or minus .05 feet) so for 100 meters it would be approximately 330 feet. No idea tho.
It is 100.6 meters though. I didn't see the exact statement you're referencing, but if he misspoke and meant meters, he's correct.
@@bobbertbobberson6725 you're aware 1 yard is equal to 0.9144 meters
To make it short war crimes are the things you want to do to your enemies but you never want to experience yourself. They are a gentlemens agreement between two enemies. If you are a low rank soldier they dont really interest you. If you do what they said to you well done. If it turns out to be a war crime as a german I can tell you "I just followed orders" gets you far in life.
funnily enough according to german soldier law your officer cant order you to commit a crime (including warcrimes) which funnily makes every single grunt responsible too.
somebody definetly didnt think that one through completely. though on the other hand its nice to have something on hand to say no if the one with much glitter on his shoulder tells you to do a no russian
@@sergeantsharkseant That law was created in 1956 when the Bundeswehr was formed. It is specifically in place so that soldiers have a legal grounds to refuse orders that would constitute crimes of some nature. If other countries would follow suit, the US and Israel would still commit warcrimes like crazy because to them, anyone in a conflict who's not American/Jewish is literally not even human.
@@rachelpurity1 i know, but in reality it also pushes the punishment also on the soldier
@@sergeantsharkseant That is *exactly* what that law is intended to do. It isn't intended to "protect" enlisted men but rather to enshrine the court judgements at Nuremberg on the Nazis who stood trial--namely that "I was just following orders" is no valid defense for committing war crimes and other illegal acts.
In other words, you cannot escape conviction in a war crimes tribunal or court-martial by claiming that your CO ordered you to massacre those surrendering enemy personnel or unarmed civilians.
It effectively removes any legal justification that a soldier may have for perpetrating criminal offenses in an armed conflict. The US military, the IDF, and just about every armed forces in this world (except those of countries like the DPRK and other dictatorships) have and enforce similar systems. Now whether they will prosecute a given soldier for committing a war crime depends highly on circumstances, although the US has prosecuted more than one serviceman for war crimes committed during the conflict in Afghanistan.
Keeping your word is more imporant. It's a matter of honesty.
If I wasn’t committing war crimes out there then I better reenlist and fix that error right away!
You can ignore all of this so long as you win, don't get captured, and what
Yes. Plenty of people did and do. Then they complain when the foot drops. There are complain marches every week in big cities.
I was staring at how his mustache seems to be both even, and somehow larger on his right side and could not pay attention to the video
And now 20 years later some random patostreamer that calls his father and grandfather alcoholic tries to explain what war crime is instead, after randomly being chosen by youtube algorithm.
Your point? If he’s father and grandfather are alcoholics then it is what it is
"Don't make the Geneva Suggestion joke, it's over done"
*makes a doing your mom joke*
Funny enough just saying/declaring no mercy/quarter will be given is also a war crime
I wish I could "like" this video more than once. This video deserves at least as many of my likes as I would probably give all month.
Great video! The conclusion I’ve come to is whatever I thought a war crime was before, it’s actually much more complicated
But Pirates of the Caribbean made the most thing to remember
Dead Men tell no tales
The times of the pirates are long gone.
We have forensics now.
But the body does
Exactly. People don't follow the rules.
And modern day evidence doesn't change that. Do you think people really care about one life when running armies? You're a footnote.
Life is cheap. That's the real rule of war.
Love how you brought up squad and im waiting to finish this food so i can get back into it
I wasn't expecting much beyond surface level, but this was surprisingly infodense and informative. Fantastic video and subbed!
Almost a half-century ago, when I was a sophomore or junior in high school, I read a book in the public library titled "A Soldier's Guide to the Laws of War" In my 20 year military service, I attended many LOAC briefings. None of them told me anything I didn't already know,
Attaching a claymore to a roomba 🤣🤣🤣🤣
A war crime is whatever the losing side does
Actually the hollowpoint rule is just an example of outdated laws. Many modern rifle rounds are extremely high velocity and designed to break up inside a person to some degree in order to cause more damage. The 5.56/.223 is especially famous for turning into shrapnel inside flesh and causing huge wound channels. When introduced .223 was noted for causing extremely severe wounds, much worse than those of the bigger but slower .308
I think you're referring to yawing, when the round loses velocity in the target body and curves downwards as it travels, potentially damaging multiple organs. I highly doubt the round breaking apart is an intended effect, more like a useful side-effect
5.56 does not, in fact, do that and very much wasn't designed to do so either.
@@danikisikan9821 Yawing happens with all rifle bullets. Some break up inside flesh. 5.56 is very much noted for this effect. In fact with the M855 that was adopted in the 80's in conjunction with lower muzzle velocities from the M4 carbine and the longer engagement ranges in the ME due to terrain and the mass introduction of ACOG optics it was noted that the 5.56 was no longer reliably shrapneling inside flesh due to the bullet construction and lower impact velocities. The famous "ice picking" effect. For this reason the army has adopted a new bullet M855A1 which among other things reliably shrapnels even at lower velocities. It is very much an intended effect and very critical for achieving good performance out of such a small bullet.
@@rachelpurity1 You should read up on the adoption of the new M855A1 and the mk262 before that. Both bullets were designed to address 5.56 bullets no longer reliably shrapneling in the new combat scenarios of Afghanistan with short barrel carbines.
0:04 As someone who had to teach this subject to Cadets, I'm taking this a challenge from the algorithm.
Anyway ever tell you that you look like a young Dave Grohl? Great video mate. ❤
Great video. The absurdity of a 1,200 page "rule book" is hilarious, pretty sure they could've narrowed that down to a 60 page pamphlet + ROE for the non-readers out their defending our.. strategic interests.
I would like to add that carrying a gun doesn't automatically make someone a combatant. You are allowed to carry a pistol, a hunting rifle or a sometime even an assault rifle if it is for self defense or other civilian purposes (eg hunting/law enforcement). Similar if you don't have a gun with you and are just carrying an ammo box or driving a logistics truck, still definitely a valid target.
It might not, but openly carrying a firearm in an active war zone with a hostile army within firing distance is probably not a good idea.
@@Justin_Taylor right. I know nothing about the military but even I know not to carry a weapon in place where people with weapons are attacking other people with weapons
honestly kind of comforting to know that any respectable solider has a set of rules they follow. obviously this doesnt stop any rule breakers or people outside of the rules, but better than nothing 😂
yeah about 7 minutes into this video i realized i knew exactly what a war crime was.
I do remember me saying my RoE in 06 in Baghdad was more strict than the cops in North Carolina.
As a holier than thou youtube commenter fully learned from the school of reddit I must say, All War, is crime 🧐
thank you, this "joke" was bothering me for some time, people litteraly called everything a warcrime
“War Crime” is whatever the winning side of the war is still angry about
I'm pretty sure Japan didn't win.
@@bulutcoskuner9774 Japan was the biggest war criminal and didn't give a fuck.
Nope
@@bulutcoskuner9774Japan was an ancient army equipped with modern (at that time) weapons, hence, their complete ignorance of the Geneva convention and their brutality against POW and civilians from the enemy side. They see pillaging as a way to improve morale.
@@triadwarfare
Forget the geneva convention, how is for example the horrible experiments they ran and the torture on prisoners raising morale?
I think this gives them too much credit, or atleast paints them the wrong way
Yea tell ‘em Justin. That word is just to big for their brains to chew🤣
3:32
Restrepo.
It doesn’t rip limbs off, but if you miss close enough, apparently it can cause superficial burns. And we’re talking like. Within a foot.
Restrepo is a good doc. Korengal is the second flick? Both are solid.
I know what I’m about. I know exactly why this is in my recommendations.
Just retired after 34 1/2 years in the military and am frustrated that I can't use this as a mandatory safety brief/ training.
"Dark Brandon" I'm laughing more than I should
13:27 ah yes. The Boomba
I got one of the Imperial Russian models from 1904.
The Tzar Boomba.
I’ve actually been thinking exactly this recently. Especially in contexts where it’s not even applicable - a fantasy or sci fi world where those laws wouldn’t be present, against enemies it doesn’t apply to. I get it’s supposed to be funny but it’s such a tired joke
I will not be coming home from this conflict.
Good
@@ObamaoZedong are you okay?
@@truly_infinitethe person who wrote about the conflict have a russian flag as their profile picture, suggesting that they are the part of the invading forces. Also, russian military is widely known for committing war crimes, wartime crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide,.. basically almost any other crime possible - it seems like they really treat crime lists as checklists.
Thus there is no wonder that there are people who don’t want russian military continue existing.
RIP
Wishing you luck.
This video is bringing back LW403 memories (in a good way)
Why did I already know most of this? Should I be conserned?