From the Middle East to Northern Ireland, Western States are All Too Happy to Avoid Culpability for War Crimes

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/20/from-the-middle-east-to-northern-ireland-western-states-are-all-too-happy-to-avoid-culpability-for-war-crimes/
Date Written:  2019-05-20
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23660

Forgiving war crimes when they are committed by their own side is a practice of the Nazis that many western governements seem to be taking up.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

When is a war crime not a war crime? When it’s committed by us, of course....

There is now a dangerous slippage becoming apparent in which western states are more ready than ever to countenance military crimes against humanity, to accept them, approve of them and to expect us to connive at these gross and sickening breaches of international law....

Beorn is not comparing the US military with the Wehrmacht. But he does highlight Adolf Hitler’s infamous "Jurisdiction Order" of May 1941, just before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, which informed German troops that "for offences committed by members of the Wehrmacht and its employees against enemy civilians, prosecution is not compulsory, not even if the offence is at the same time a military crime or violation".