Woah dude, you’re putting a lot of words in my mouth.
It may not be wrong but but it’s not exactly useful unless you can believe it can be avoided
There’s no metric saying that war crimes weren’t avoided by condemning them.
Also, we don’t use mustard gas anymore. We don’t use zyclon d. Or agent orange. There are plenty of tools of war we don’t utilize anymore because we condemn them as war crimes, even if there’s no actual, tangible punishment for utilizing them.
There’s plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of just calling those things war crimes and condemning them.
Are you going to say that you prefer a world where we didn’t condemn and phase out more brutalistic forms of warfare in the name of alleviating hypocrisy? Because grandstanding about how not all war crimes, or war, can be averted, is advocating for a world that’s much worse off for the lack of restraint.
Edit: I’m not deaf to your point that the individual participants of war are no more deserving of death than anyone else. But is preventing some death in the name of sparing women and children morally the same as just letting everyone be killed for a concept of equality and justice?