International Criminal Court

Tim Brown says: "I have a serious problem with dividing absolutely everyone in a war zone into only two categories - armed soldiers and innocent civilians. Does this mean a peasant is a soldier at night when he pulls out his AK-47 and lays an ambush, but becomes an innocent civilian the instant moment he puts it back in its hidey hole and stars plowing his rice field. Are the unarmed civilians without whom war cannot be fought innocent, or guilty civilians? Two examples from my personal experiences. There is an unarmed, un-uniformed peasant who voluntarily;y clothes, houses and feeds several armed, uniformed combatants, he keeps them safe by being their spy, he hides their weapon in him garden along with ammo, when the combatants go into combat he dugs up their weapons and gives them to them, then he accompanies them and helps carry the weapons and ammo for them to an ambush point, he then helps them dig their fighting holes, and then stays in the area and serves as a scout, and then notifies the combatants when the enemy is approaching. A mortar round kills him during the battle in which he was not carrying a weapon or wearing a uniform. Qestion. Is he an "innocent civilian" killed against the laws of land warfare in violation of the International Declaration of Human Rights? Or is he a "guilty" civilian. Second case. Several dozen truly innocent civilians are rounded up by one side and used as human shields during a battle, during which may are killed. Clearly they ARE innocent civilians. But, would the guilt for their deaths lie with those who were using them as human shields or with those who would have fired through the civilians at the armed, uniformed combatants standing behind them holding AK-47s to their backs and killed some of the civilians by doing so? I raise these two cases because they are not hypothetical, they are actual examples from instances of ground combat in which I played a part.

A major problem with simplistic division of the world into guilty combatants and innocent civilians and the labeling of all those who kill the latter criminals is that it does not take into account real life. It is a fantasy world in which people are either black or white, evil or good, right or wrong. So, assuming one wants to do so if possible, just how does one separate the innocents from the combatants in real life combat situations when both are present and involved. The unsatisfying but honest answer is, only with great difficulty and mistakes will be made. As to the two cases above, the peasant was classified as having been a guerrilla cadre and therefore not an innocent civilian. In the second case, to avoid civilian casualties I refused fire artillery clearance and instead ordered Korean soldiers to engage in hand-to-hand combat so as to minimize casualties among the human shields. The result was about five times more dead Korean soldiers than would have died than if I had allowed them to use artillery, which I did not. I knowingly, deliberately, and very, very painfully purchased the lives of innocent civilians with the lives of soldiers. That's real life, not just talk in a salon somewhere. And it's never cut and dried"

My comment: This makes sense, and I am sure that those who designed the International Criminal Court thought of it. They are not fools.

Ronald Hilton - 8/31/02