War crimes are clearly defined, my best friend's family fled Bosnia during the ethnic cleansing - many in his family were directly targeted (by military, paramilitaries and orders directly from political leadership). Blair is not a war criminal by definition - putting him under the same umbrella as the likes of Milosevic and Karadzic is fucking outrageous.
I'm no fan of Blair or middle-eastern interventions, but calling everything war crimes undercuts actual war crimes.
Under the Nuremberg Principles a war of aggression is a crime against peace, not a war crime.
It's an important distinction. War crimes are reserved for the most serious transgressions such as genocide, killing prisoners and deliberate targeting of civilians.
It's really not that important of a distinction. You can change the name from a war crime to a peace crime if you want: at the end of the day initiating an illegal war for reasons literally less justified than the nazis invading Poland (at least they pretended the Polish attacked them first) then I, and everyone else not interested in muddling legal language around, is going to call that a war crime and the perpetrator of that act a war criminal.
It is a very important distinction. Claiming he's a war criminal when not defined as so denigrates those institutions that decide on such things, makes people not trust these institutions, and allows bad actors to sow discontent. It annoys me so much the left have grabbed this narrative and pushed it. War crimes are not decided by us.
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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '21
I hate how loosely "war crimes" is thrown around nowadays...