This brings to mind an expression new via the Viet Nam war, "we had to destroy the city to save it."
In order to save human rights they must be destroyed? That philosophy didn't work in Viet Nam. Unlike Iraq that war was mismanaged, run first by Democrats that made a mess of it and then by Republicans that turned the fuming mess into a disaster.
I know that should be followed by a vote green peace or something. That's not an option. It's which one of the two possible sets of geniouses will one vote for. Can we even vote our way out of this one? Shall we "stay the curse" or "cut and try to escape?"
They will not follow us home. They're already here. We have identified the enemy and it is us. I don't know what to do for sure but I believe this identifies the cause, http://www.hoax-buster.org/learninglies
Roger
The film itself does do an excellent job of presenting several IR issues, but another point that should be made is that it is an excellent propaganda film which creates a partisan picture on doubtful and perhaps incorrect information.
The film, does an excellent job of restating the facts to accentuate the negative aspects of the relationship between the Crown and the Old Commonwealth. It is a one sided view that is not necessarily obvious from film.
Lt Morant enlisted in an Australian unit raised to fight in South Africa. When that unit went home he reenlisted in a war raised British authorized and paid colonial unit. Thus his actions were subject to a British court marshal not an Australian one. This is controversial because the Australian states provided troops with the provision that they held military justice authority. The British government said this applied to Australian units, Australians serving in British raised units are subject to British military justice as had been the practice for many years. The Australians said they had at least at an appellate level authority over any Australian serving. The film, especially to people from the Old Commonwealth, will see the Australian position. But if a country raises and pays for a military force does it not have some duty to enforce discipline and prevent war crimes?
South Africa is cold in the winter and Boars supply system, such as it was, had collapsed so the Boars took to wearing captured British uniforms. After several cases of mistaken identity to the British disadvantage an order was issued that Boers captured in British uniform would be court marshaled and executed. This was in accordance standing international law at the time, and still is today. The effect was the Boers started to deface the uniforms enough so that there would not be mistakes. Unless there was an apparent attempt to mislead, generally the captured Boars were treated as POW’s. A few were tried and executed. There are also several documented cases of summary executions, the perpetrators being court marshaled. The defendants all claimed that there was an order allowing summary executions, which the British denied. This order, if it ever existed, no longer exits. There is a genuine question of discrimination in that Old Commonwealth soldiers received heaver sentences than British soldiers.
To make the case, the film turns Lt Morant into a far more sympathetic figure than he deserves. The actual facts that are available are confused, the trial transcript having been lost, the best source of information being a highly partisan account by one of the accused. What is undisputable is that Lt Morant’s unit murdered prisoners of war, when the higher authorities found out about this, they conducted an investigation and court marshaled those they believed to be involved. I would think that the fact there was a Court Marshal is evidence that the British, at some level. were in fact attempting to operate with in the letter of the law of war
Note: Lt Morant’s execution of prisoners is in distant shot and his execution is close up. Which tends to devalue the significance of the crime against the ugliness of the death penalty.
The big problem for me with this film is that to make the point it treats the perpetrators of a war crime as victims, which tends to delegitimize efforts to prevent and punish war crimes. I do know people (not military) who have used this film to support the idea that the law of war is the creation of iron panted Martinets and dogooder fuddyduddism and has no real legitimacy. (Actually there choice of words was rather more obscene.) It was an interesting convesation.
In addition to the film itself I think there are several important IR and poly science lessons to be drawn from the actual incident.
End of Rant
Thanks for the extensive comments.
BTW, my students seemed to believe that Morant and colleagues acted immorally and were likely guilty of their crimes -- even if they were just following orders. After all, such orders would likely have been illegal. We even discussed what we could find out about the British and international law of the era (though not very extensively).
One provocative point. Think about what happened to the prisoner Tom Hanks and his unit released in "Saving Private Ryan."
FUBAR
The points here about Morant are important, and I'm glad others have raised them.
On the other hand, one thing about the film that does largely ring true is that the Anglo-Boer War was in large measure conducted by a British military and political leadership that failed to foresee the nature of the conflict that they had entered, and pulled a lot of shady stuff in the domestic political sphere to justify the war and conceal some of the serious errors of judgement leading up to and during the war. The end of the war was marked by a lot of effort to sweep things under the rug, though the worst political and military debacles actually came in the early phases of the war.
It was also one of the quintessential wars that raised questions about its necessity given its aftermath. The war unified South Africa but forced the postwar British administration into a position of relative weakness in terms of pressure to institute comprehensive racial segregation and ingratiate itself with Afrikaner nationalists. In many ways, the weak position of the British after the war was a direct consequence of the 1913 Land Act, in which many Africans lost their land to white farmers, and the loss of voting rights by non-whites.
So there are parallels: I just don't know that Morant's case in specific is the best analogy to the present. File it more under the general heading of "imperial misadventure that leads to worsening the situation in many respects, some predictable, some not; defended by mendacious tactics and jingoism at home."
Failed UniBus Address Register???
In Viet Nam a behind the lines patrol did kill a prisoner. The patrol (on Operation Phoenix? info) snatched an NVA Colonel and was returning to the pickup point. The patrol justified shooting him on grounds that he was actively trying to slow them down and reveal their location and they could not make it to the pick up point with him. They were court marshaled, convicted and sent to Leavenworth. This is the extreme case that the JAG officers present in Military Law cases. The Tom Hanks character acted correctly.
General Order of 1863 was the only codified statement of the Law of War at the time. When issued it was an attempt to put the existing Law of War in a single source for guidance to field commanders, and also make sure it was enforceable since violating a General Order is chargeable if nothing else. Actually it was a little stricter than actual practice. It became a source for the 1906 treaties. Parts of it would not pass muster today, and should be read with an eye to changes in definitions between then and now. It is considered to be a good statement of the actual international practice at the turn f the century.
Timothy’s comments are pertinent.
Thats General order 100 of 1863
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