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by yostrovs 77 days ago
What about unguided bombs? When they strike an apartment building, the person firing it can't be guilty. He never aimed at an apartment building. Right? The real rule here is that only the people with precision weapons can be seen as guilty.
1 comments
ZunarJ5 77 days ago
Exactly. And the inverse holds too. Precision capability raises the duty to verify, which is precisely what Van Schaack and HRW argue the US failed to do here.
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yostrovs 77 days ago
If having precision weapons raises the duty to verify, does it follow that having unguided weapons raises the duty to not use them at all, since the operator doesn't know what it will strike?
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ZunarJ5 77 days ago
IHL applies to all parties and all weapon types. Using unguided weapons in populated areas carries its own legal exposure, yes. But that's a separate analysis.

The discussion here is about a specific strike by the state with the most advanced intelligence and precision strike capability on earth, where multiple legal experts have concluded the duty to verify was not met. The question of what other actors do with less precise weapons doesn't mitigate that failure.

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yostrovs 77 days ago
You may be right, but I think it's important to realize that there is no IHL and what these experts say doesn't change anything in practice. Pointing to some law that doesn't exist/not enforced only highlights how irrelevant it is. If there was a military force behind the pleadings of the experts of IHL, which would enforced it, then it would mean something. Alas, that's not the case.
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Schmerika 77 days ago
The enforcement gap is real. That doesn't mean IHL doesn't exist.

Legal norms and international courts still influence state behavior, slow and relatively toothless as they may be. That's why you haven't seen Netanyahu or Ben Gvir doing much travel lately, for example.

That's why Israel and the US work so, so hard to delegitimize and demonize the UN, the ICC and the ICJ - and here you are helping them do it. Please, stop doing that.

Yes, there are real problems with IHL. Throwing it out and declaring it meaningless doesn't solve any of those problems, and makes many of them worse.

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