[Planktonne]

"But Iran did it!" is not the clinching argument you think it is. If killing civilians is bad for Iran to do, then it's bad for the US to do, and you can't commit the same evils as the ones you're using to justify your actions.

You need to have higher standards; "no worse than Iran" is not something the US should aspire to.

[spwa4]

You misunderstand the argument I'm making. Legislation is only what is enforced, is only it's consequences, otherwise it is about as relevant as pointing out Iran has severely violated the "magic for all" legislation of Equestria.

As for standards: they are useless unless they allow for doing what is required to make the other side comply. Or at least, without that standards won't achieve their goal.

The world has chosen to not enforce war crime legislation under any circumstances, decades ago. Specifically, the agreement is the Rome statute, which essentially says that no government can ever be accused of a warcrime except in one of two circumstances. One, the government one whose soil it happened agrees to enforce war crime legislation AND asks for a conviction (Iran has not, and will not, do this). Either that or the UNSC convicts you.

Other than those 2 situations, war crimes aren't possible. And this is not something the US has chosen but the world has agreed. If any parties are responsible for that, it's Russia and China.

By the way, Iran has managed to commit bad enough warcrimes that China, Russia, US, France and the UK all agreed they were guilty of warcrimes. The US has not.

Someone call Celestia! Magic for all!

[Planktonne]

War crimes aren't bad just because they have the word 'crime' in them. They're morally abhorrent.

[spwa4]

If you're going to talk morality you have a similar problem. Every moral system I've ever seen has an enforcement mechanism, and it's always the same: if somebody starts acting immoral, you "get to" violate morality towards this person. You get to violate rules to stop the problem. Normal restrictions, against violence for example, are lifted. And without anyone's permission, by the way. YOU have to judge for yourself if you're in such a situation. There is even tolerance for some reasonable amount of collateral damage.

Example: Somebody starts, or even threatens, to kill a child, you can empty a clip of bullets into them. You can break their bones. You can hit them with a bat. Hard. That's fine, sometimes even described as "heroic".

And if you empty a clip of bullets into a random person, well, that's against morality.

You can do a lot of things to such a person that would never be acceptable under normal circumstances. In fact, in western countries, violating normal rules to prevent worse outcomes than those rules are meant to achieve to is a duty. This goes from being forced to help if someone's in real trouble to if you are blocked by a red light and refuse to violate the law and prevent an ambulance's passage, that's a serious crime.

You read that right, under those specific circumstances not violating the law is a serious crime.

There is no moral or legal system that has an absolutist view like your statement makes. 12 year olds think like that. And of course, if you actually read this law, you won't find such an unqualified rule.