War Crimes and Atrocities: Horrific Crimes Committed Under the Guise of War

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What is a war crime? To most people, war itself is a crime, a total breakdown of the civilized process of negotiation, compromise and conciliation that normally takes place between nations or opposing parties to settle a dispute. Thus, war is by its nature a resort to brute force, to armed violence, in which ordinary, innocent people are killed, injured and have their lives disrupted. So how can it be anything but a crime?

This is a persuasive moral point, but there is also a pragmatic argument to be made: in a situation where a dispute has not been settled, and nations, states or opposing groups have already become involved in conflict, surely there is a need to lay down some rules that everyone will abide by – a need, in short, for damage limitation. And surely there are some actions that occur in times of war – such as massacres of prisoners of war and atrocities perpetrated on civilians, including children – that serve no real political purpose at all, but appear to be purely sadistic in nature and are simply an affront to human decency and dignity.

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