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How has the geneva convention effected 21st century war
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In the 1800s a Swiss man by the name of Henry Dunant saw the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino. Upon observation, Henry was distraught with what he saw. In fact, Henry was so perplexed by what he witnessed that he wrote a book about it and lobbied for a conference of nations in the hope of agreeing upon the improved handling of enemy soldiers in a time of war. His lobbying inevitably led to both The Hague and Geneva Conventions. Since their conceptions in the 1800s, these conventions have been persistent in setting broader and stricter “rules” for war over time in regards to everything from ammunition and hospitals, to the treatment of both civilians and militants (human rights). These authoritarian standards that are written in black and …show more content…
Sledge recollects his experiences as a young man with the Japanese strategies of faking to be injured or deceased and then either throwing a grenade or stabbing the medic (Sledge p. 34). During one invasion, he sees a man that was incapacitated by a shell and stared at “the glistening viscera” that lay near the man’s hollowed out stomach (Sledge p. 64). The misery of war didn’t stop there for him, as during one night a Japanese soldier sneaked into a Marine’s position and let out “animalistic guttural noises, and grunts” due to being killed by the Marine ramming his “forefinger into the enemy’s eye socket” (p. …show more content…
120). There were happenings where the Japanese fired upon Marines that were undertaking the endeavor of evacuating their wounded. In other occasions the Japanese mutilated the corpses of Marines “like a carcass torn by some predatory animal”(p. 148). These incidents triggered his fellow Marines to develop desensitization concerning human life. This desensitization culminated when a Marine held down a surviving Japanese soldier to pry out his gold teeth with a knife (p.120). With the Japanese soldier exasperatingly flailing about the Marine missed the teeth and “cut his cheeks open to each ear” (p.120). It was commonplace for Marines to wrench out gold teeth from deceased Japanese throughout the war. This is not taught in history lessons growing up as an adolescent studying the triumphs of a generation that has been famously dubbed as the greatest
In 1864 the Geneva Convention was formed internationally. The Convention laid down rules concerning the treatment and protection of prisoners during wartime. The Japanese did not follow this Convention as they continuously mistreated many prisoners including Australian troops/soldiers and civilian prisoners. The Japanese saw the prisoners in camps as people who surrendered, therefore they were considered weak and cowardly because of a belief that the Japanese held that soldiers should die out respect for their emperor and country, known as the Bushido Code. A medical officer at the time was told by a Japanese commander,
Jus ad bellum is defined as “justice of war” and is recognized as the ethics leading up to war (Orend 31). Orend contends that an...
“War is brutish, inglorious and a terrible waste” (Sledge 315). E.B Sledge says this when describing war after two grueling campaigns in the Pacific. However, there is irony. Earlier in the war, Sledge is hungry for war, for action, for involvement. War intrigues him, then like most, he feels the reality of it. This is one of the main focuses in With the Old Breed. Sledge’s view of war changes as he continues through the war and beyond, along with his understanding of conflict and the realization of war being the solution.
The American Marines are taught that “Battles are won by teams working together, not by heroic individuals fighting on their own,” (Bradley 57). The Marines are taught that being a hero comes from working as a team to earn Americans’ freedom, and that trying to be a hero by yourself will just get your fellow Marines killed. In Japan, the “issen goren” (the cost of mailing a draft notice postcard at one yen, five rin) followed a very corrupt version of Bushido, or the “Way of the Warrior.” “Death in battle was portrayed as an honor to the family and a transcendent act on the part of the individual. Surrender was a disgrace to the soldier and his family,” (Bradley 55). During this time, a Japanese soldier was simply told to kill at least ten Americans before he died or that he would be dishonoring the Emperor.
The actual business of physical injury had added the more subtle process of slaughter of morale, a far more difficult, but none the less effective, method of warfare. The Germans have for a long time preached it. They practiced it from the first, 'frightfulness' being merely the German interpretation of the theory of the destruction of morale. Bernhardi lays as much stress upon it as upon perfection of maneuver. The Allies, perhaps keener students of psychology, substituted persuasion for brutality, and developed a system of military propaganda that has never before been equaled.
The battle at Iwo Jima was very unforgiving, especially for the soldiers who fought there. Some soldiers were killed by the Japanese or critically wounded. Some soldiers gained PTSD from the horrible environment, fighting the Japanese, and witnessing friends and family die. Many soldiers lost limbs from mines and other explosives fired by the Japanese. Some soldiers gained injuries from the Japanese soldier’s constant firing. Some of these soldier’s wounds were fatal, but others were able to heal.
The Geneva Convention was created to take care of prisoners of war. It contains rules about the treatment and rights of prisoners of war during captivity. A quote told by Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry about the Geneva convention: “...our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.” It sets out:
ICRC. (2014, April 4th). The Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949. Retrieved from International Committee of the Red Cross: http://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf
In doing so, the description is a vivid yet eerie, and almost dreamlike picture. With the Old Breed is full of descriptive passages that draw the audience in, even the simplest of things like the author describing what he was thinking about at the time. Such descriptions make it seem like the reader can see this man from a third person point of view lost in thought moments before his encounter with the enemy. Other events that the author experienced can only be described as horrific, seeing men, women, children, soldiers, and event the enemy maimed or killed due to negligence stuck with him for a very long time. Seeing the dead body of the enemy for the first time made Sledge remember a time when he would go hunting back home. Sledge writes, “The corpsman was on his back, his abdominal cavity laid bare. I stared in horror, shocked at the glistening viscera be-speckled with fine coral dust. This can’t have been a human being, I agonized. It looked more like the guts of one of the many rabbits or squirrels I had cleaned on hunting trips as a boy. I felt sick as I stared at the corpses.” (Sledge p. 70). With the amount of detail that is given, readers can see that Sledge's viewpoint on the war is a disheartened one, yet out of pride he continued to serve his country. Comparing the dead body of Japanese soldier to that of
The horrors of war have forever caused a mental shift in the people who have returned from it. Changed not only from what they have had to endure, also from what they have inflicted on others in the heat of battle. Dissociation is an altered state of consciousness characterized by partial or complete disruption of the normal integration of a person’s normal conscious or psychological functioning (Dell, P. F. & O'Neil, J. A., 2009). Dehumanization is to make somebody less human by taking away his or her individuality, the creative and interesting aspects of his or her personality, or his or her compassion and sensitivity towards others (Zimbardo, 2012). Dehumanization causes troops to be impaired in their capacity to experience compassion, empathy and guilt because they had become numbed by the trauma of war along with the social consensus that extreme or brutal behavior was appropriate (Taylor, 2006).
Third Geneva Convention was signed on July 27, 1929 at Geneva, Switzerland. It was made to protect the human rights of Prisoners of War (POW). These laws apply from the moment a combatant is imprisoned until the POW is released. The main point of this Convention was to protect the Prisoners of Wars from physical and mental torture. Because of this law, torturing to prisoners was illegal and wrong on an international level. It states that prisoners should not be forced to reveal any other information related to their identity (i.e. military unit, home town, address, relatives).
19 February 1945 marked the beginning of one of the fiercest and bloodiest; and more decisively, the most strategically important battles fought during World War II. A total of 6,821 U.S. Marines had lost their lives, along with 19,217 wounded over the five-week span of the battle for Iwo Jima. Of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers on the island, only 212 were taken prisoners. “Iwo Jima was the only battle by the U.S. Marine Corps in which the overall American casualties (killed and wounded) exceeded those of the Japanese, although Japanese combat deaths were thrice those of the Americans throughout the battle (O'Brien, 1987).”
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
For most of the world’s conflicts until the presence of violent non-state actors, clashes have occurred between large state entities. The wars and skirmishes consisted between the two states with a separate armed forces contingency battling each other on a set stage with defined ethical and political motives. This black and white model of violent conflict resolution became the standard for a long stretch of time and was agreed upon by all state actors. One of the reasons that Coker discusses for the advantageous nature of the set battlefield and soldiers includes the preservation of humanity for the civilian population and the soldiers. The mutual agreement of ethical boundaries even in war protect those not taking up arms and helps to maintain decency when regarding prisoners of...
“Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital.”[1]