GWOT IV - Crimes Of Commission
Sep. 26th, 2019 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT IV - Crimes Of Commission
The Military Commission of the Republic of California is about to have its first in person meeting.
We've had conference calls. Feeling each other out. Trying to figure out what exactly we're doing here. Knowing that we are all doomed to be stood up against a wall and shot.
But we have all seen the far side of death. That doesn't scare us at all. Or even enough.
It's been agreed that I only attend in person meetings of the Commission when they are held at Alviso Prison. Originally they had planned for me to travel. That's just not possible. Not because of the continuing surgeries on my hand, or the various death threats, but because of the need to keep an experienced hand on the prison.
And this is the big meeting. This is the one on which we agree what a war crime is.
I am also going to meet the PEG.
That's Provisional Emergency Governor.
Or I'm not. Minutes out, the security detail cancels. Sorry, too hot.
Very well. We will proceed.
The guard staff is heavily augmented with a company of mechanized infantry. Not really worried about trouble here.
Only _in_ here. In this softly carpeted room with the faux-wood panels, the dividing aisle, the dock and the judge's bench equipped with one half inch of steel plate under the veneer.
There are five members of the Commission. ("Enough to get something done, not enough to argue over it," quipped Agent Knight.)
Two are soldiers: in fact, the senior known survivors of what used to be called the California State Guard and the California Air National Guard. They have the haunted look in their eyes of men pushed far beyond their limits, yet enduring out of duty.
Two are civilians. A lawyer and a principal. Both have personal experience of what Homeland uses in place of mercy. As do I.
All five of us are eyewitnesses to various atrocities during the Homeland occupation. In our own ways, we each are guilty of our own.
(How does a high school principal commit an atrocity? Upon the pointed demand of Homeland, selecting students to send Homeward, of course. A Home from which no mortal has ever returned.)
I read aloud an excerpt from the Lieber Code, the laws of war proclaimed under the authority of President Lincoln during the First Civil War.
"Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the Army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another." I skip the part about God because fuck Him.
I pause and take two breaths.
"Military necessity does not admit of cruelty—that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult."
I pause again and change tones, from recitation to analysis.
"Killing is not a war crime. Murder is. This distinction is critical to the work of this Commission. Certain crimes have no lawful military parallel. Torture. Rape. Malicious mayhem. Certain crimes do have lawful parallels. Arson against selected targets, but not general conflagrations. Defoiliants against roadside vegetation, but not food crops. Internment of suspects, but not extermination of them.
"I therefore propose to separate our work into two categories. Atrocious crimes that can never be lawful, only as triers of fact. Acts of military necessity, that may or may not be lawful, not only to try the fact but the law.
"Further, that the only penalty accepted by this commission for the unlawful infliction of death be execution."
Both soldiers flinched. They knew exactly where I was going with this.
I had already hung nine men by the neck until dead. I proposed to hang about the neck of the California Republic a garland of strange fruit.
The civilians did not flinch. They didn't see it yet.
That made it my duty to explain.
"If we carry out this intention, thousands of executions will surely follow."
Now they flinched.
"Agent Knight, please tell the other members of the Commission what you told me."
She propped herself up at the table, eyes bright and feverish. She was having a bad pain day and had filled herself full of medications to overcome it.
No cure, however. Leukemia had been a death sentence even before the Firecracker had filled our hospitals to the brim.
"The estimated number of Californians killed by Homeland is now over two hundred thousand."
Small beans, if you were Cambodian. Hardly worth noticing if you were Jewish.
"Understanding that many of the worst war criminals do not surrender. Understanding that suicide is a problem, despite strenuous efforts to cut off that particular type of unlawful escape. Understanding that many POWs and some UCs are not guilty of murderous atrocities. Let us say that 20% of POWs and 75% of UCs _are_ that guilty. Captain?"
"I have four thousand UCs in my direct custody on these grounds. We are transferring POWs to other sites as rapidly as we can clear them, but that means the uncleared are accumulating here, and that's another two thousand odd. Or four hundred more executions."
Despite the reputation of the anti-Nazi Nuremberg tribunals, they had actually condemned only twelve men and hung ten.
In post World War II Japan we had hung over nine hundred war criminals.
Nine. Hundred.
And as ruthless as the Japanese war machine had been in occupied China, what the American war machine had done made them look like naughty children at a tea party.
"An eye for an eye makes the world blind."
So be it. And bring your cane. You're going to need it.
"Well over three thousand executions, closer to four thousand," I said brutally.
I could see the working out the math. Fifty for one.
On the numbers, genocidaire is actually a fairly safe trade. Just ask a Bosnian. Or a German of Argentinian descent.
I proposed to change that a bit.
"Genocide must be stopped. If not now, then when? If not here, then where? If not us, then by who? And I know only one way how ... to make the next boy with a rifle, told to pull a trigger in the face of a child, so terrified of what will happen to him that he shoots his own officers or runs away."
One of the soldiers speaks up.
"There is nothing a court, or this Commission, can do to a soldier that is as bad as the battlefield. We can blind you, burn you, cripple you, poison you, rip you to literal pieces ... and a Court can do none of these things."
I nodded, accepting his point.
"What a court can do, however, and what this Commission must do, is rob their deaths of all dignity and all honor. If I thought people would understand, I would shoot them in the back of the head and throw them in a hole. I propose further that shooting is too good a death for genocidaires. I insist on hanging. And I insist on no drop."
The principal suddenly threw up on the table.
She got it.
She'd probably seen it.
A rope around the neck only breaks your neck if it stops a fall, as from an edge or a trap door.
Otherwise, it tightens around the arteries of the neck and progressively damages the airway by bruising. The victim dangles in air they cannot breathe, knowing their fate, kicking helplessly, not able to die fast enough to avoid all the suffering. The suffering they deserve. They void themselves. They have no dignity and no self control. They feel the way I felt when they threw me into the furnace.
Strange. Fruit.
An orderly came forward with two buckets; one for clean up, and one with rags on top of kitty litter.
She wiped her mouth.
"Is this necessary?"
The other soldier nodded.
"Just getting shot is the risks of our profession. We shoot people who fuck up. Murdering civilians is not fucking up. It's a choice. And it has to be punished. It has to be stopped."
My skin crawled as I considered again the other punishments I'd wanted to propose to the Commission. Blinding. Bastinado. Crucifixion. Drowning with weights. Involuntary blood transfusion. Containerization. And worse.
But to have any hope of peace, we had to keep this simple and easy to understand.
Some Iowa farmer boy needed to get it, at the fundamental level. You can fight Californians. But you cannot murder them. Not any more.
No. More.
You murder, you dangle.
We argued long. But I prevailed, on the only vote that really mattered of the Commission.
Five to zero.
Our names would live in infamy.
The next day, the American press made sure of it.
The Military Commission of the Republic of California is about to have its first in person meeting.
We've had conference calls. Feeling each other out. Trying to figure out what exactly we're doing here. Knowing that we are all doomed to be stood up against a wall and shot.
But we have all seen the far side of death. That doesn't scare us at all. Or even enough.
It's been agreed that I only attend in person meetings of the Commission when they are held at Alviso Prison. Originally they had planned for me to travel. That's just not possible. Not because of the continuing surgeries on my hand, or the various death threats, but because of the need to keep an experienced hand on the prison.
And this is the big meeting. This is the one on which we agree what a war crime is.
I am also going to meet the PEG.
That's Provisional Emergency Governor.
Or I'm not. Minutes out, the security detail cancels. Sorry, too hot.
Very well. We will proceed.
The guard staff is heavily augmented with a company of mechanized infantry. Not really worried about trouble here.
Only _in_ here. In this softly carpeted room with the faux-wood panels, the dividing aisle, the dock and the judge's bench equipped with one half inch of steel plate under the veneer.
There are five members of the Commission. ("Enough to get something done, not enough to argue over it," quipped Agent Knight.)
Two are soldiers: in fact, the senior known survivors of what used to be called the California State Guard and the California Air National Guard. They have the haunted look in their eyes of men pushed far beyond their limits, yet enduring out of duty.
Two are civilians. A lawyer and a principal. Both have personal experience of what Homeland uses in place of mercy. As do I.
All five of us are eyewitnesses to various atrocities during the Homeland occupation. In our own ways, we each are guilty of our own.
(How does a high school principal commit an atrocity? Upon the pointed demand of Homeland, selecting students to send Homeward, of course. A Home from which no mortal has ever returned.)
I read aloud an excerpt from the Lieber Code, the laws of war proclaimed under the authority of President Lincoln during the First Civil War.
"Military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life or limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of the war; it allows of the capturing of every armed enemy, and every enemy of importance to the hostile government, or of peculiar danger to the captor; it allows of all destruction of property, and obstruction of the ways and channels of traffic, travel, or communication, and of all withholding of sustenance or means of life from the enemy; of the appropriation of whatever an enemy's country affords necessary for the subsistence and safety of the Army, and of such deception as does not involve the breaking of good faith either positively pledged, regarding agreements entered into during the war, or supposed by the modern law of war to exist. Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings, responsible to one another." I skip the part about God because fuck Him.
I pause and take two breaths.
"Military necessity does not admit of cruelty—that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions. It does not admit of the use of poison in any way, nor of the wanton devastation of a district. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult."
I pause again and change tones, from recitation to analysis.
"Killing is not a war crime. Murder is. This distinction is critical to the work of this Commission. Certain crimes have no lawful military parallel. Torture. Rape. Malicious mayhem. Certain crimes do have lawful parallels. Arson against selected targets, but not general conflagrations. Defoiliants against roadside vegetation, but not food crops. Internment of suspects, but not extermination of them.
"I therefore propose to separate our work into two categories. Atrocious crimes that can never be lawful, only as triers of fact. Acts of military necessity, that may or may not be lawful, not only to try the fact but the law.
"Further, that the only penalty accepted by this commission for the unlawful infliction of death be execution."
Both soldiers flinched. They knew exactly where I was going with this.
I had already hung nine men by the neck until dead. I proposed to hang about the neck of the California Republic a garland of strange fruit.
The civilians did not flinch. They didn't see it yet.
That made it my duty to explain.
"If we carry out this intention, thousands of executions will surely follow."
Now they flinched.
"Agent Knight, please tell the other members of the Commission what you told me."
She propped herself up at the table, eyes bright and feverish. She was having a bad pain day and had filled herself full of medications to overcome it.
No cure, however. Leukemia had been a death sentence even before the Firecracker had filled our hospitals to the brim.
"The estimated number of Californians killed by Homeland is now over two hundred thousand."
Small beans, if you were Cambodian. Hardly worth noticing if you were Jewish.
"Understanding that many of the worst war criminals do not surrender. Understanding that suicide is a problem, despite strenuous efforts to cut off that particular type of unlawful escape. Understanding that many POWs and some UCs are not guilty of murderous atrocities. Let us say that 20% of POWs and 75% of UCs _are_ that guilty. Captain?"
"I have four thousand UCs in my direct custody on these grounds. We are transferring POWs to other sites as rapidly as we can clear them, but that means the uncleared are accumulating here, and that's another two thousand odd. Or four hundred more executions."
Despite the reputation of the anti-Nazi Nuremberg tribunals, they had actually condemned only twelve men and hung ten.
In post World War II Japan we had hung over nine hundred war criminals.
Nine. Hundred.
And as ruthless as the Japanese war machine had been in occupied China, what the American war machine had done made them look like naughty children at a tea party.
"An eye for an eye makes the world blind."
So be it. And bring your cane. You're going to need it.
"Well over three thousand executions, closer to four thousand," I said brutally.
I could see the working out the math. Fifty for one.
On the numbers, genocidaire is actually a fairly safe trade. Just ask a Bosnian. Or a German of Argentinian descent.
I proposed to change that a bit.
"Genocide must be stopped. If not now, then when? If not here, then where? If not us, then by who? And I know only one way how ... to make the next boy with a rifle, told to pull a trigger in the face of a child, so terrified of what will happen to him that he shoots his own officers or runs away."
One of the soldiers speaks up.
"There is nothing a court, or this Commission, can do to a soldier that is as bad as the battlefield. We can blind you, burn you, cripple you, poison you, rip you to literal pieces ... and a Court can do none of these things."
I nodded, accepting his point.
"What a court can do, however, and what this Commission must do, is rob their deaths of all dignity and all honor. If I thought people would understand, I would shoot them in the back of the head and throw them in a hole. I propose further that shooting is too good a death for genocidaires. I insist on hanging. And I insist on no drop."
The principal suddenly threw up on the table.
She got it.
She'd probably seen it.
A rope around the neck only breaks your neck if it stops a fall, as from an edge or a trap door.
Otherwise, it tightens around the arteries of the neck and progressively damages the airway by bruising. The victim dangles in air they cannot breathe, knowing their fate, kicking helplessly, not able to die fast enough to avoid all the suffering. The suffering they deserve. They void themselves. They have no dignity and no self control. They feel the way I felt when they threw me into the furnace.
Strange. Fruit.
An orderly came forward with two buckets; one for clean up, and one with rags on top of kitty litter.
She wiped her mouth.
"Is this necessary?"
The other soldier nodded.
"Just getting shot is the risks of our profession. We shoot people who fuck up. Murdering civilians is not fucking up. It's a choice. And it has to be punished. It has to be stopped."
My skin crawled as I considered again the other punishments I'd wanted to propose to the Commission. Blinding. Bastinado. Crucifixion. Drowning with weights. Involuntary blood transfusion. Containerization. And worse.
But to have any hope of peace, we had to keep this simple and easy to understand.
Some Iowa farmer boy needed to get it, at the fundamental level. You can fight Californians. But you cannot murder them. Not any more.
No. More.
You murder, you dangle.
We argued long. But I prevailed, on the only vote that really mattered of the Commission.
Five to zero.
Our names would live in infamy.
The next day, the American press made sure of it.
