Quote Originally Posted by jmm99 View Post
So, if you can take a little break from hooking those huge bass , frame an indictment of Howlin' Jake Smith.
An indictment must already exist, somewhere, as Smith was tried by court martial, for the crime of "conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline". He was found guilty; the court recommended that he be admonished.

Smith's case is widely cited, largely because it was formally investigated and formal evidence was obtained, both during Maj Waller's trial and Smith's own trial. The specific orders that became items of contention were the order to "kill and burn", the instruction to take no prisoners, and the designation of anyone over 10 years of age as capable of bearing arms. These orders were established by the testimony of Maj Waller and other witnesses. Whether those orders would justify prosecution for war crimes, rather than for "conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline", I'm not qualified to say.

In many other cases the evidence is not sufficient to establish a retrospective "verdict" in any legally satisfactory state. Certainlyu there are enough surviving accounts to establish that torture was widespread, and that prisoners and the wounded were systematically executed. Frederick Funston, among others, is described in various accounts as having specifically ordered the killing of prisoners.

This quote, from a Major Cornelius Gardener, the Army's Provincial Governor of the Tayabas province (1902) always struck me as alomost "pop-centric", and an echo of views to come...

"Of late by reason of the conduct of the troops, such as the extensive burning of the barrios in trying to lay waste the country so that the insurgents cannot occupy it, the torturing of natives by so-called water cure and other methods, in order to obtain information, the harsh treatment of natives generally, and the failure of inexperienced, lately appointed Lieutenants commanding posts, to distinguish between those who are friendly and those unfriendly and to treat every native as if he were, whether or no, an insurrection at heart, this favorable sentiment above referred to is being fast destroyed and a deep hatred toward us engendered.

The course now being pursued in this province and in the Provinces of Batangas, Laguna, and Samar is in my opinion sowing the seeds for a perpetual revolution against us hereafter whenever a good opportunity offers. Under present conditions the political situation in this province is slowly retrograding, and the American sentiment is decreasing and we are daily making permanent enemies."
War crimes? You're the lawyer. Bad policy? Retrospectively, maybe not, as the "permanent enemies" did not in fact appear. Thrashing the enemy into submission, as we've seen in Sri Lanka much more recently, is effective, if you can do it.

Clips of a period document, just out of interest:







A wider indictment, also of the period, can be found here:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Secret...ippine_Warfare

These certainly involved some cherrypicking, but are not without interest:

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/58/

I would be interested to see a serious study comparing attitudes toward these matters in "peer conflicts" such as the civil war and in wars fought against "savages", widely viewed at the time as being essentially members of another species. From the US perspective that would mean the Native American wars and the Philippine-American War... maybe Steve Blair could provide some cases from he former. Certainly any such examination could also look at Europe, and compare attitudes and practices prevalent in conflicts among Europeans with those pitting Europeans against Kipling's "lesser breeds without the law".