Putin's War Russian Genocide - the outtakes I
Don't do the Mitzvah
I’ll take the occasion to provide you with some out-takes from our upcoming book, Putin’s War Russian Genocide.
We are closing our manuscript and don’t have much time to provide absolutely fresh clickbait content.
We do however have plenty of content written up that won’t get into the book.
There has been a flood of Twitter hateful content saying that war crimes are fine when the ‘good guys do it’ and ‘eye for an eye’.
the number of ostensibly good people who are unironically telling me with a straight face "actually it's okay to kill ENEMY babies if you've been traumatized because the ENEMY killed your babies first" is destroying my faith in humanity.
— ✙ Copesint Central ✙ 🇺🇸🇱🇹🇵🇱🇩🇪🇺🇦 (@copesint) 7:11 AM ∙ Nov 24, 2022
i will always support ukraine, but fuck.
So let’s have a look at the Biblical and ancient out-look on the rules of war.
FRAGMENT 1
The development of international criminal law is somewhat entwined with the development of human rights as a concept – culminating in the legal order described at the end of this chapter.
Why are rights specifically important in relation to genocide and war crimes?[1] Because individual rights impede the state’s sovereignty to abuse them – most particularly via genocide and war crimes. This is especially important for trans-border rights and treatment of persons other than a state’s citizens. Genocide is a crime that can easily be perpetrated on the citizens of a state without foreign war. Human rights stand in the way of this – a concept that even in the 21st century people, including lawyers, are uncomfortable with. Can’t a state treat its citizens like a farmer his chickens?
The concept of human rights can perhaps be traced back to the ius gentium, a Roman concept of laws common to civilized societies which was used to regulate relations between foreigners (such as traders) and Romans and foreigners – in areas of private law.[2] However this concept was mostly connected with private and commercial law and for instance slavery, anathema to modern ideas of human rights, was definitely a part of the ius gentium.[3] I will not die on the hill of ius gentium.
Relations between states were subject to the laws of the gods and their wrath.[4] Meanwhile Classical Philosophers, such as famously democracy hating Plato, were concerned about types of government, not the alien concept of individual rights.[5] There were however recurring common practices and ‘thinking’ in the engagement of civilizations and states between each other in pre-Christian times relating to diplomacy and friendship (such as embassies), the initiation of war (what lawyers still call ius ad bellum – law towards war) and finally the conduct of war (ius in bellum – law in war).[6] Common practices and thinking brings us towards custom… and international law.
Perhaps the most pertinent rules of conduct we can analyse from these times are laws relating to conduct of war aka restraint in warfare giving us the laws of war.[7] Hebrews in pursuit of obligatory, religiously commanded, war, mitzva were literally Biblically merciless with no quarter, surrender or mercy allowed. Mutilation and slavery were required.[8] Rabbinic law would soften this and Isrealites were judged to be relatively less bloodthirsty than neighbours such as Assyrians, relatively.[9] In the Jewish case of optional war, a city refusing to surrender would need to have all the men put to the sword but the women and children were to be taken, subsequent kindlier rabbis modifying slavery to only ‘servitude’.[10
In the case of Greek warfare, Xenophon foresaw laborers being left unmolested by warriors while Polybius encouraged the destruction of assets useful to the enemy such as men, cities and crops but temples should be spared.[11]
Roman literature, or literary propaganda as we would nowadays describe it, almost always sought to contrast Roman restraint and civility with the barbarous action of their enemies, showing an element of moral superiority deeply entwined with ideas of cultural (but not singularly racial) superiority.[12] Romans seemed to particularly enjoy being given or creating the excuse of an initial outrage against Rome or Romans to justify subsequent brutality and labelling enemies as barbarians or uncivilized, subject to enslavement and extermination.[13] The Greeks and Romans generally viewed their religious sites as immune to destruction and looting, though with many qualifiers as Caesar’s relentless extermination of Gaulish druids or the later relentless destruction of the Jewish Temple and other Jewish sites proves.[14] Religious festival and public games were to be respected – most famously imitated in the Olympic ban on warfare, which perhaps Putin respected with his timing of this invasion.[15] Warfare during the Easter period, which for self-proclaimed devout Orthodox Christians is supposedly the most holy of times, would have met with Greek contempt as to barbaric customs.[16] Religious (civilized) truces were sacred. Heralds, with religious significance to their role, were mostly untouchable, unlike ambassadors who would be wise to watch their words even when talking with a weaker party.[17] Presumably the Greeks would not be amused by the serving of poison, even mild, to ambassadors and heralds.[18] The Greeks generally disproved of the slaughter, but not enslavement or imprisonment for ransom, of surrendered warriors but if offense had been given by the surrendered, this was more acceptable. Romans would try and refrain from murdering the male inhabitants of a city that instantly surrendered but slavery, rapine and looting for all was ensured and a key element of discipline and soldier retainment.[19] Any reader of the Iliad will recognize the particular Greek obsession with the retrieval of bodies and the general and godly or demi-godly, Achillean, wrath connected with the violation of corpses.[20]
(Brad Pitt in a terrible film)
Russian behaviour in Ukraine would quite often qualify as barbaric to the Greeks and Romans, though perhaps in line with literal mitzvah.
These subjects connect with another post about how the laws of war apply to vatnik cross-dressing combatants.
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Updated 7 May 2023
Changed title of book.
[1] Note that genocide does not need to be a war crime. Genocide does not require conflict or war.
[2] Ius or jus, is law in Latin. Gives us iustita, justitia -> justice in English. For other civilizations in antiquity - Timothy L. H. McCormack, Gerry J. Simpson, and Timothy L. H. McCormack, “From Sun Tzu to the Sixth Committee: The Evolution of an International Criminal Law Regime,” in The Law of War Crimes: National and International Approaches (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997). Malcolm N. Shaw, International Law (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 17, sees a concept of ‘Natural Law’ justifying ius gentium. A short introduction to international law at only 1710 pages. Civilized is used hereforth to denote what the subjects of a sentence or paragraph labelled as civilized, proper or modern, without every time qualifying their racism, nationalism, cynicism or outdated views.
[3]Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), 66.
[4] David J. Bederman, James Crawford, and John Bell, International Law in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 48–87.
[5] Generalizations required for brevity.
[6] Ibid., 8. CHECK THIS Similarly to the disclaimer in that work I am in no way at this time competent to analyse Indian and Chinese legal thought. The disastrous recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have accelerated the nascent development of a field of law called ius post bellum. Carsten Stahn, Jus Post Bellum (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2014). The field of ius ad bellum has been tainted with the legal acrobacy justifying the Iraq War, which Putin gleefully whatabouted in his February 24 invasion morning address. A troll with nuclear weapons is perhaps the supreme Fermi filter.
[7] Apart from Bederman, Crawford and Bell, International Law, see Solis, The Law, 3-5.
[8] Ibid., 242-243.
[9] Leslie C. Green, “The Law of War in Historical Perspective,” International Law Studies 72 (n.d.).
[10] “Moscow Has Deported 500,000 People to Russia, Ukraine Lawmaker Says.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, April 20, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/moscow-has-deported-500000-people-russia-ukraine-lawmaker-says-2022-04-20.
[11] Bederman, Crawford and Bell, International, 246. Rfe/rl, “Russia's Destruction of Ukraine's National and Cultural Heritage,” RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty (Russia's Destruction Of Ukraine's National And Cultural Heritage, April 27, 2022), https://www.rferl.org/a/cultural-destruction-ukraine/31821373.html. A
[12] Bederman, Crawford and Bell, International, 247-248.
[13] Alexander Hinton. “Putin's Claims That Ukraine Is Committing Genocide Are Baseless, but Not Unprecedented.” The Conversation, April 26, 2022. https://theconversation.com/putins-claims-that-ukraine-is-committing-genocide-are-baseless-but-not-unprecedented-177511.
[14] See Steven H. Rutledge, “The Roman Destruction of Sacred Sites,” Historia: Zeitschrift Für Alte Geschichte 56, no. 2 (2007): pp. 179-195. In Ukraine, for instance, a sacred Moscow Orthodoxy wooden church was set on fire by Russian artillery fire, the battery commander was either very drunk or did it deliberately. AFP, “Ukraine Blames Russia for Blaze at Revered Orthodox Church in East,” Al Arabiya English (Al Arabiya English, June 4, 2022), https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2022/06/04/-Ukraine-blames-Russia-for-blaze-at-revered-Orthodox-church-in-east. Of course the Russians denied responsibility. As they always do, see notes in next chapter on the impossibility of admitting guilt. Cicero, per Rutledge, The Roman Destruction, 193, would have viewed the desecration of sacred sites by a victor as of no consequence…
[15] Bederman, Crawford and Bell, International, 250. See Katie Bo Lillis and Natasha Bertrand, “China Asked Russia to Delay Invasion until after Olympics, Western Intel Shows,” CNN (Cable News Network, March 3, 2022), https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/02/world/china-russia-ukraine-invasion-olympics-western-intel/index.html.. Compare with previous invasions, Georgia 2008 and Ukraine 2014 – they occurred during the Summer and just after the Winter Olympics respectively, Natia Gamkrelidze, Abdolrasool Divsallar, and Wayne C. Ackerman, “The Olympics and Russian Invasion,” Middle East Institute, May 3, 2022, https://www.mei.edu/events/olympics-and-russian-invasion.
[16] Al Jazeera, “Ukraine's Zelenskyy Says Russia Rejected Easter Truce,” Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera (Al Jazeera, April 22, 2022), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/22/zelenskyy-says-russia-rejected-easter-truce.
[17] The gods however were not amused by the Spartans and terrible harvest followed, leading to two leading young men being sent to Xerxes as diplomatic sacrifices, he however refused to absolve Sparta per Herodotus, Polymnia, book VII.
[18] “Roman Abramovich Suffered 'Suspected Poisoning' at Talks,” BBC News (BBC, March 28, 2022), https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60904676.
[19] Bederman, Crawford and Bell, International, 256. Solis, The Law, 4.
[20] Yaron Steinbuch, “Bodies of Apparent Russian Soldiers Arranged in Z after Ukraine Retakes Area,” New York Post, May 3, 2022.
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