It is easy to feel self righteous when a notorious war criminal is brought to book. It is even easier to feel that smugness which comes from the knowledge that we, as individuals, would never do such things, nor would our country. Sadly that is not wholly true.
It is odd when victorious military commanders talk of the depravity of those they have defeated. There is talk of Rules of War, as if these, like the Highway Code, were a guide to all who fight. There is, of course, the Geneva Convention, yet even the US has breached this when it feels its own national security is best served by doing so. The truth is that each war develops its own rules and, depending on the conflict, the depravity of the rules will vary. This is especially the case with wars with an ethnic or racial dimension as in Bosnia, or all out war like World War Two.
It is now recognised that carpet bombing of residential districts of cities like Hamburg to kill as many as possible, knowing that the majority would be innocent women and children, whose end came in the terror of mass bombardment and consuming fire storms, was wrong and if we had lost the war, would have been judged a War Crime. This is not to suggest our brave air crew, perhaps our fathers or grandfathers, were criminals. They were, after all, carrying out orders. But in a war crimes court, obeying orders is no defence.
This does not mean leading war criminals, like Ratko Mladik, should not be pursued and brought to justice, nor that we should not rejoice when they are. It does mean that we should ponder the fundamental truth that war itself is a crime. For that reason we should only engage in it as a very last resort. The last decade has not been good for our record in those terms. We need to move on to more enlightened times.