How War Shaped Us by Aiman Shakir Abdul Haris

SEKOLAH SULTAN ALAM SHAH PUTRAJAYA

HOW WAR SHAPED US

BY AIMAN SYAKIR ABDUL HARIS

“In war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.”

-Ernest Hemingway

War Crimes • Violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to: • Murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory

• • • • •

Murder of or ill-treatment of prisoners of war (POW) or persons on the seas Killing of hostages Plunder of public or private property Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages Devastation not justified by military necessity

These statements will be the main three points.

1. Because they could.

2. Because they want to.

3. And because everybody else was doing it.

Or if you’d prefer fancier academical terms…….

1. Technology 2. Ideology 3. The escalating cycle of violence.

Because they could. (Technology) • Nuclear.. Industrialization producing mass munitions‌ nations try to show their prowess.

Aftermaths?

• Health and Welfare • The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings causing mass radiation affects the future generation. Mutations, cancers have been increasing.

• White phosphorus used in Fallujah by the United States, and in Gaza by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) causing serious burns, injuries and mass deaths.

Article 1 of Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons defines: • An incendiary weapon as 'any weapon or munition which is primarily

designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target'.

Because they want to. (Ideology) • Nationalism (World War I) + Socialism (Stalin) =

something even worse: National Socialism (Hitler).

• A number of notable wars driven by ideology include:• • • • • • •

Crusades European Wars of Religion French Revolution The Russian and Chinese Civil Wars Holocaust Korean War Even genocides by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has

stated that to kill by the millions, you need an IDEOLOGY.

DEATH TOLLS BY WORLD LEADERS 40,000,000

40,000,000

40,000,000

20,000,000 17,000,000

4,000,000

Adolf Hitler

Genghis Khan

Mao Zedong

Joseph Stalin

Timur

Napoleon

THE COMMUNIST WORLD, circa 1955

Nuh uh, you’re the infidels!

Hello Shiite infidels!

1. They set up a pernicious utilitarian calculus.

• In a utopia, everyone is happy forever.

• In fact, many of us agree that it’s ethically permissible to kill a

person that threatens to kill five people where it would kill only one.

I’m off to kill 5 people!

Hits side track Kills one person Divert

2. It has to conform to a tidy blueprint.

• In utopias, everything is there for a good reason.

• How about the people? People are diverse.

• Some of them essentially cling to values that are out of place in a perfect world.

• They don’t meet the requirements of citizens living in their desired society. Why not wipe them out in the first place?

Serbs, Croats and Bosnians. Malays and Indonesians. North Koreans and South Koreans.

They are of the same race. But what divides them?

RELIGION. IDEOLOGY.

What happens right now?

• The separation of religions, to many different understandings and perceptions

• Each side trying to prove they’re right, who’s the infidels, and commencing execution

• These so-called ‘utopia’ projects are costing the lives of humanity • Have been going on for thousands of years

G.E.N.O.C.I.D.E "A genocide begins with the killing of one man — not for what he has done, but because of who he is." – Kofi Annan

• This “g” word is somehow the worst accusation you can point to a country • Theoretically, it comes from the word genetics • By definition: “the killing of a people based on their ancestry (not their religion, wealth, education, or political beliefs,)”

• One source defines the characteristics of genocide as the single minded devotion with which the oppressors eradicate the target group.

Article II of the Convention defines genocide as: • ...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• (a) Killing members of the group; • (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; • (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; • (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

TOO BROAD IN THEORY? • Almost every conflict in history can be described as “intent to destroy… in a part, a national….group.. [by] [c]ausing serious bodily….harm to members”

TOO NARROW IN PRACTICE? • Every decision to officially label and atrocity as “genocide” has to clear an almost hopeless number of political hurdles

• Only the Holocaust, mass killings in Bosnia & Rwanda have been recognised by international courts as genocide.

GENOCIDE: No serious matter?

Death tolls 16,000,000 14,000,000 12,000,000 10,000,000 8,000,000 6,000,000 4,000,000 2,000,000 0 Armenians (1915)

Bengalis (1971)

Ukranians (1932-33)

Jews (Holocaust 1944)

Native Americans

Only 13 square kilometres are cleared every year.

Where the Bosnian government hopes to clear by 2019, at this very slow rate, could take about 93 years.

Imagine living in a country like this.

LAND MINE CASUALTIES IN BOSNIAHERZEGOVINA, 1996-2007 600 552 500

400

300

202

200

100

110

88

80 60

57 38

65 35

55 32

46 26

31 23

27 16

10 9

18 17

22 8

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

0 1996

1997

1998

Deaths

Casualties

3. And because everybody else was doing it.

(The escalating cycle of violence) MY DAD DIED

I am a happy boy!

DURING WAR

I WILL AVENGE HIM

Today, we may be living in the most peaceful era in humanity’s existence.

HOWEVER, THESE PREVIOUS ATROCITIES HAVE BEEN HAUNTING US SINCE THEN.

SO ARE WE? I WANT YOU TO JUDGE.