Parsifal it is a fundamental right of a population to resist, I believe that is what the second ammendment enshrines in law. You seem to quote a new definitition of a war crime written after the event to permit a nuclear attack. There is no definition of crimes against humanity that I know of that can forbid chemical weapons and allow nuclear, nuclear weapons as was known in 1945 cause death from the fallout and not only kill the immediate victims but also their decendants and people down wind. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been viewed as the most grotesque of medical experiments if the allies had eventually lost. Just think how many people were involved in researching the effects.
Consider the plight of a female German teenager in Berlin in 1945, a child when the war started seeing her city destroyed in a firestorm by British and American bombing then raped as part of the red armys occupation. When all is over she has to spend her life listening to the moral allies lecturing her on behaviour.
I have visited Germany many times and that is always in my mind when I see an old lady walking down the street.
The first victim in a war is the truth and the victors write the truth. It doesnt mean that because some victor has written it that I have to believe it.
I will be busy in the next few weeks reading wikileaks documents on Allied forces turning a blind eye to torture and executions in Iraq. Others while wandering about on what is left of any moral high ground may just consider that Guantanamo was specifically constructed to get around the letter of international law while everyone knows it breaks the spirit of it.
There is no absolutes, trying to apply the law on moral issues is a wrong test to apply. Instead the best that can be hoped for is to apply a test of equity to each individual case......to assess the relative merits of a particular action or response against the accepted standards of the day. And that pre-supposes that there is an independant body of like minded peers to judge the appropriateness or otherwise of an individuals nation or organizations actions. The most appropriate and successful application of this approach occurred at Nurnberg (IMO), since then the international court of justice has struggled hard for independance and objectivity, but it is a flawed organization at best (that perhaps explains why the US does not allow its personnel to be tried by the court).
If there is an army of occupation, it is of course reasonable for the occupying power to apply rules of military justice to acts of civil disobedience. Moreover, the military code is generally taken to mean a harsher, less rigorous test in the presumption of innocence. If you are caught with a rock in your hand, and there is a broken window nearby, under military occupation you are as good as guilty. Dont laugh, this actual situation has occurred in places like Palestine. However, the response has to be the application of reasonable force to counter the threat. If there are university students rioting, but no actual lethal force is occurring, it would be illegal to use lethal force to curb that riotus behaviour. If there are are acts of sabotage occurring, placing the lives of military personnel at risk, it becomes a more reasonable case to use deadly force
In the case of the little girl in Berlin that you cite....her plight is ultimately the responsibility of the germans themselves. The International trials that followed the war quite appropriately found Germany was guilty of starting the war, of undertaking acts of genocide and wars of aggression, of using illegal and laws contrary to basic human rights to secure political outcomes to their liking (in an extreme and perverted way ....everybody is guilty of this, but not to the same extent and level of perversion that Germans were guilty of). If the education system was set up correctly, when finally she ent back to school, she would learn that harsh as the allied respoonses to german aggression were, it was ultimately the germans who were responsible for her plight. That is not to exonerate the individual acts of bastardry meted out on her. The soldiers who raped her should have faced military justice. That is not a war crime....it s a breach of the military justice sytem of that country, the war crime would be if the soldiers were ordered to rape her, or were allowed to do it without consequence. Thats how it works I am afraid. as an aside, my stepafather is German, a Berliner, fought at Stalingrad, won the iron cross there...returned home to Berlin at the end of the war, says there were many cases of rape in the city, but also says that many Russian soldiers were eventually punished (severely....many were sent to Siberian Gulags for these crimes), though it is popular to paint the Russian authorities as s as uncaring in this situation. In fact it was the common soldiers hardened by four years of the most inimaginable conditions, who carried out these acts....my father-in law was a Soviet Cavalrymen, a Siberian that fought the Japanese, defeated the germans in front of Moscow, and fought all the way through to '45, one of the toughest soldiers I ever met. He says it was mostly the actions of the undisciplined Far eastern and Central Asian raw recruits responsible for the breakdown in discipline that occurred).
There will always be versions of the truth, like Irvings assertion of Holcaust denial, and the like. There will always be those that say the International court of justice is flawed and ought not be supported. I dont support those notions at all. The basic fundamentals in a free society are true.....in a democracy you fool all of the peoiple only some of the time. If you choose to disrespect the scarifices made on your behalf by a generation of people fighting tyranny and oppression, thats your business. I will prefer and continue to support that version of the truth closest to what I believe is the real truth.
As for guantanamo, this is NOT the applicvation of International law, neither is it the application of US dometic statutes. Its a very dicey interpretation of creating a stateless, haven that is outside all jurisdiction. I actually agree with its principals, because the situation it was dealing with ( essentially a war underetaken by stateless individuals, who took it upon themselves to wage war free of all moral or legal limitations).
