Disclaimer: what I’m about to say is not in support of any action, it’s just philosophical musing.
Isn’t the whole concept of a war crime sort of hypocritical? War is inherently barbaric and uncivilized. Yet we seem to think we can make it something other than that by placing restrictions on parts of it. The goal is to defeat your enemy but society says it’s not gentlemanly to do it in a particular way, as if treating it like a sporting event with ineffectual referees will fundamentally change what’s happening. At the end of the day we’re still giving the green light to kill a bunch of people. I get why we do it, it just seems insincere to stop short of saying any amount of killing is immoral. We’ll only allow you to kill these people in these places under these circumstances.
I don’t know how this helps anybody it’s just something I was thinking about.