Let us try to sort out the terms that are now being applied to the newly discovered wartime atrocities found north of Kiev, that term neutral in that it remains problematic whether these events of Russian troops killing civilians, executing them after they are tied behind their backs, is to be treated as a war crime or even a genocide which is what Zelensky says is the case because the Russians are out to eliminate Ukraine as a people. Biden regards them merely as war crimes and regards Putin as a butcher and a war criminal and wants independent authorities to put on trial those who are responsible. Those events of killing civilians are vile and horrendous and certainly to be condemned, but whether to try them is a good question. Today, we say that killing civilians is a war crime because it does not fulfill a military objective. In similar fashion, it is considered a violation of the rules of warfare not to execute prisoners of war and expect combattants to either be wearing a uniform or some insignia or, at the least, be enrolled in a military so that the person is not regarded as a terrorist. But these restrictions only apply to the defeated. Japanese commanders were executed for having mistreated prisoners of war and Germans for having used slave labor camps. But the victors get scot free. Gen. Curtis LeMay was not prosecuted for leveling Japanese cities, the bombing of civilians treated as collateral damage while artillery aimed at civilians is regarded, now as then, as culpable. You could argue that hurting the morale of civilian targets is a military goal, but in that case Russians are now engaged in hurting morale by killing people and so should not be regarded as a war crime.
Lt. Calley was prosecuted for the Mai Lai Massacre, but no American commander was prosecuted for having killed numerous local government officials for officiating over North Vietnamese local territories in South Vietnam or for administering “free fire” zones, where American helicopters were allowed to kill anyone who was seen running away, assuming that person was actually a belligerent rather than a civilian just running for their life. And by Zelensky’s standard, the entire war on Vietnam was an objet lesson to show that a nation should not side with the Soviet Union in the Cold War rather than a war to defeat an enemy for itself and so a kind of genocide. We use these terms too loosely and unevenly even if the function of war crimes is to simply eliminate, under color of justice, people of the defeated side who might become the cause of a new war.We don’t trust Goering to live and spread his point of view.
But if war crime tribunals are tainted because they are unevenly administered, it is true that the Germans engaged in awful atrocities, as the Russians are doing today, even if they think terror to be practically useful,or legitimate revenge because the civilian population in the north of Ukraine were cooperting with the harassment and killing of Russians, as the russians who survived may well have thought. The inequality of war crime tribunals does not mean Biden and others should not condemn the atrocities in Ukraine for what they are, and call out accurately the distinctions concerning what are the various war crimes that Russia and its soldiers are committing, even if only to put them into the court of public opinion or to the judgment of history. That is worthwhile and Biden accurately suggests that Putin is now a permanent pariah and Biden does not add the thought that Putin is such whether or not Putin is ever brought to a court.
It is interesting that in the White House Press Room many reporters are now vengeful, anxious for Biden to put on even more sanctions and offer more weapons so as to punish Putin and his troops for their atrocities. Jen Psaki keeps repeating that it is not in the American interest not to provoke World War III. Perhaps the elements of the press corps that are so bloodthirsty is the result of the United states having, so far, had an easy war of it. Yes, there are elevated gas prices, but it was expected that Russia would launch cyberwarfare and might intrude on American pipelines or even elevate to the American electricity grid or to dams and other facilities. But either American countermeasures are very effective or else that Mutual Assured Destruction works with cyberspace as it does with atomic weaponry and Putin, while a monster, is sensible enough to risk more than he is already risking. So the war is settling down to Ukrainians slowly grinding down the Russian military with the U. S. and NATO armaments while Russia pulverizes Ukraine. It will be a bloody war which will be considered protracted even if it lasts for only a few more months and Biden will have to be patient in allowing it to take its course. Needless to say, neither the Republicans or even the American people, lately given by animus rather than policy, are likely to judge Biden with good grades for having managed the coronavirus and the russian-Ukraine War, He is expected to have done so as a President and commander in chief, and so gets no extra points in the midterm, though the management in domestic and foreign policy were disasters in the two previous Republican Administrations. Democrats, after all, are expected to run a responsible government, and not praised for having succeeded at that, while Republican Presidents, like Nixon, W., and Trump, are wild cards. It will be an interesting election cycle, Mitch already condemning inflation, immigration and crime without bothering to provide an alternative program for dealing with them. That is the way it is with Republicans. They know they do best at carping rather than proposing policies.