Top 5 Facts About War Crimes
From history to Infamy to foreign policy. Welcome to WatchMojo's Top 5 facts. In today's installment, we're counting down the five most brutal and surprising facts we could find about war crimes, those acts that everyone agrees are so bad, you can't even do them to your sworn enemies.
Special thanks to our user Daniel Fong for submitting the idea using our interactive suggestion tool at http://www.WatchMojo.comsuggest
Top 5 Facts About War Crimes
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From history to Infamy to foreign policy. Welcome to WatchMojo’s Top 5 facts. In today’s installment, we’re counting down the five most brutal and surprising facts we could find about war crimes, those acts that everyone agrees are so bad, you can’t even do them to your sworn enemies.
#5: War Crimes are a Modern Idea
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The history of war is filled with a bunch of horrible, terrible, horrible, awful stuff. People used to think raping and pillaging and genocide were just part of the war process. States first started to talk about international war laws during the Napoleonic era, but for the most part there was no way to enforce any treaties or laws that existed until the Second World War. The modern laws around war crimes have their roots in the 1899 Hague convention, but again, there wasn’t really any way to enforce them until the 1940’s. The First World War was filled with atrocities like the Armenian Genocide and the Rape of Belgium, but even if soldiers and politicians were found guilty of War Crimes they were rarely extradited or punished. It wasn't until after World War Two during the Nuremberg trials and the trials in Tokyo that the laws were codified and a system was created to enforce them.
#4: Pepper Spraying Is a War Crime, but Only During War
Pepper spray fits into a weird gray area of legality. It’s technically a chemical weapon which makes it Illegal to use for warfare, but it’s legal to use it for crowd control... even in a war zone. This means it’s not a war crime for, say, American forces to break up a civilian riot with pepper spray even if that riot happens to be in Iraq or Syria. As far as international law is concerned a state can use pepper spray anywhere as long as they don’t spray enemy combatants. So, while it’s technically not against international law, most governments will not use pepper spray abroad for fear of causing an international incident. Pepper spray can kill people with respiratory and heart problems and it’s impossible to control whether it hits rioters, insurgents or bystanders... but the health risks don’t seem to stop many countries from using it domestically. In summation, pepper spray is too cruel and dangerous to be used against a trained soldier, but against a college kid at a sit-in protest, it’s just fine.
#3: George W. Bush is a (Symbolic) War Criminal
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In 2014 former President George W Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were tried in absentia by the Kuala Lampur War Crimes Tribunal, which sought to emulate the Nuremberg trials. The tribunal found them all guilty of war crimes for their roles in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But this needs to be put into context: the tribunal is primarily a symbolic institution, as it holds no power due to their lack of a UN mandate. Regardless, while these verdicts were not immediately actionable in any way, fears of extradition have stopped Bush from traveling to several countries. There have even been some pushes to arrest Dick Cheney as a war criminal if he ever returns to Canada. On a forboding side note, Donald Trump has advocated what many have called similar war crimes in the fight against ISIS. So this whole mess could happen all over again in a few years.
#2: Alleged War Criminals Got America to the Moon
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Operation Paperclip was a covert post World War 2 Operation in which America imported over 1,500 German scientists for work on missiles, along with chemical and biological weapons. Although President Truman ordered that no active Nazis or former high ranking Nazi officials were to be brought to America, the CIA reportedly went behind his back and covered up evidence of war crimes to allow many of these scientists to enter America. One of the most famous people brought to America through operation paperclip was Wernher von Braun. He was a former Nazi scientist, and a member of the SS, and though he was never tried as such, he is considered by some to be a war criminal. He played a key role in developing the Saturn V rocket which would eventually get Americans on the moon.
#1: America Covered up Japanese war crimes
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Unit 731 was a World War 2 Japanese research unit that did human experiments on Chinese, Russian, and Korean citizens and soldiers for the purposes of developing chemical and biological weapons. Because of its covert nature it’s hard to say how many victims were experimented on. Low estimates have it at 3,000 while high estimates reach all the way up to a quarter of a million. There are no known survivors. Details about the Unit have only started to become public in the last few decades because, according to the New York Times, the American government actively covered it up and offered immunity to Japanese researchers if they provided America with the medical and military research they'd accumulated during the unit's existence. Part of the reason they did this was again to keep the research away from the Russians. The details of the program are incredibly depressing and reportedly involved murder, rape, infanticide, and a series of unimaginably awful experiments with infectious diseases, extreme elements, and weapons tests. So what do you think? Is it unethical to utilize research gleaned from unethical experiments? For more UN mandated top 10s and internationally outlawed top 5s, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com
