The history of war is the history of humankind, and it is a lengthy timeline of the most brutal savagery people can visit upon each other.
It is a terrible storybook of blood and fire and pain. Armies took land by killing everyone who lived on it, ensuring no retaliation. Other leaders ordered enslavement of survivors as a workforce or a source of income. Women or children were permitted to be assaulted as a gory gift to the legions.
So much of our history involves war crimes that we often don’t recognize them as such.
They are biblical in the murder of the Hebrew babies in Egypt, a genocidal tactic to subdue a population. They exist in our greatest horror stories. “Dracula” is built on the bones of Vlad III of Wallachia, whose war with the Ottoman Empire earned him the epithet “the Impaler.”
They are not something like a fairy tale, a long time ago in a far away place. The Trail of Tears was a war crime. Surrendering Black soldiers murdered by Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a war crime. A British attempt to infect Native Americans with smallpox via blankets at Fort Pitt today would be called a war crime.
That is because war now has rules. While war will never be civilized, over the past century or so, the world has recognized our ability to kill efficiently and extensively has grown to the point where it must be bridled.
The Geneva Conventions refer to a series of protocols and protections we began to establish when realizing the horror of war was getting even more horrible. The first was in 1864. That was before mustard gas, automatic weapons and airplanes. Generally citing the Geneva guidelines refers to those established in 1949 — four years after Hiroshima.
These lay out what can and cannot be done regarding civilians, prisoners of war, the injured on the field of battle and those injured or wrecked at sea.
Outrage about war crimes often arises as we talk about other countries’ actions: attacks on civilians in the Russo-Ukrainian War; the Israel-Hamas War; Bashar al-Assad’s actions in Syria.
America has entered the discourse with concerns over military strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean and reports that disabled vessels were targeted a second time. The Washington Post reported the order to do so came directly from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying “Kill them all.” U.S. lawmakers denied that after a closed hearing Thursday.
What is dangerous is that it happened at all, not who ordered it.
The rules of war are not like how your family decides to play Uno or Monopoly — tossing out the official instructions in favor of in-house tweaks. They are important because they govern not just what we do but how other countries may respond.
If we attack a defenseless boat, another country may feel free to do the same to us, putting our soldiers — or civilians, for that matter — in harm’s way. If we take military strikes against drug dealers, will other countries feel it is OK to take lethal action against those charged with drug crimes?
This may hit close to home for those who lobbied hard to bring Butler native Marc Fogel back from Russia, where he was charged with possession of medical cannabis legally obtained in Pennsylvania. Fogel came home in February after more than 31⁄2 years in a Russian prison.
War does not seem like something that has rules. The actions of killing up close or bombing from a distance, spreading destruction and uprooting lives feels random and chaotic, not something that recognizes parameters.
But it must. Regardless of how terrible the history of war may be, it is nothing compared to what a future would be without rules that spell out what is a crime and what isn’t.