The War Laws

If law is the master of the government and the government is its slave, then the situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state.

Plato

From Wikipedia's excellent discussion of The Rule of Law

A system of Law that is not universal in both its formulation and application and with a view to the common good is nothing better than a system of oppression with a false pretense to having moral legitimacy.

Site Author

When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege: Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.

Deuteronomy 20:19-20

Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.

The first Caliph, Abu Bakr, whilst instructing his Muslim army in the early 7th century.

From Wikipedia's excellent discussion of The Laws of War

While the likes of Jack Straw would like to evade the facts of law (laws that would consign them to the gallows as criminals) as "vague" and seek to invalidate the law, people like Koffi Annan former Secretary General of the UN, the government's own legal office and the majority of informed international law opinion confirms what the majority of the general public believes; that the wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq are illegal and that the people who initiated them by fraud and the subversion of democracy are war criminals who MUST be brought to justice.

These pages set out to provide resource information about the laws of war.

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