Stuff You Should Know - How the Rules of War Work

Episode Date: December 3, 2010

The rules of war are agreed-upon rules that are intended to govern international wars and conflicts. Who developed these rules? And do countries really abide by them? Josh and Chuck take a detailed look at how the rules of war work in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HouseStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We're recording. This is Stuff You Should Know. The aggressive version. Hey, dude. Hey, dude. How are you? I'm tired. Hey, we're almost out of here, man. I'm not.

Let's wrap this puppy up. I'm not almost out of here. This is just like the middle of my day. You're working until like 10 and then you're working Saturday. I'm working Sunday. So are you, pal? That's right. Chuck. Yes, Josh. Do you remember when we talked about brainwashing? We did a brainwashing one, right? Yeah, I enjoyed that one. I did too. Do you remember when we talked about the Koreans brainwashing American POWs? Oh, yeah. That's against the rules. The rules of what? The rules of war. I have more examples. Okay. Do you have you ever heard of the Dachau massacre? The Dachau massacre? Yes. Yeah, you have. The Dachau massacre? Yes. You have. Well, I mean, you've secretly told me. Have you seen, well, you've seen Shudder Island, right? Yeah,

I didn't realize there was a connection there. Yeah, the flashbacks where Leonardo DiCaprio is like in the army and they're at this concentration camp and they're shooting the German guards. Yeah. That actually happened. Oh, really? Yes, at Dachau. The American liberators who came like came and saw this and like were apparently so overwhelmed by it that they lined up the SS officers against a wall 75 of them and shot them. I guess I didn't know about it then. Yeah. So it didn't come out until 2001 actually that this actually happened. It was covered up, ignored, but it was against the rules. Okay. Can't do that. Abu Ghraib, remember that one? Yeah, that's been the news lately. That was against like six or seven different rules and all of these are, they're against the

rules of war. Right. It's actually kind of, to me, a triumph of the human spirit to know that there, we've tried to figure out how to create structure, right? Insanity in a chaotic and insane institution. That's when we look at it. What's another way, pal? Well, what I was most struck with was that how messed up it is that you have to keep revisiting this over the years because all of these rules that are in here are there because someone tried to do something awful to someone else and that they said, you can't do that in war. Right. And so then then they said, oh, well then let's think of something else awful we can do. Right. Then they said, well, you can't do that now either. Well, in this article that Julia Layton wrote, how the rules of war work, she makes

the point that as the technology of war progresses, it usually means that we're going to, we are figuring out more horrible ways to inflict damage on one another. Yeah. And so as that happens, as technology progresses, the people who oversee the rules of war are trying to come up with new ways to stem that progression. Right. But yeah, that's a little mopeier way of looking at it in mind. That's weird because you're usually the mopeier one. Usually. Interesting. Chuck, let's talk about the rules of war. Where'd they come from? How long have they been around? Well, they've been around for a long time. But prior to the 19th century, they were established per battle in per countries participating in that battle. And that was where they ended. They're

like, for this skirmish, where you can do this, this and this, but you can't do this, this and this. Once that skirmish was over, or once that war was over, then they would say, all right, forget all that then. And let's just, we'll make up a new set of rules if we fight again. The next time they were like, no scalping that was messed up last time. Do not scalp in this one. Finally, at some point, well, actually, we know exactly the point. In 1859, a guy named Henry Donant, who went on to found the Red Cross and was one of the was the co recipient of the first Nobel Prize. I understand. Oh, really? Uh-huh. Came upon a battlefield after the Battle of Salafarno in Italy in 1859. The Battle of Salafarno? Yes, Chuck. That's German and Italian in one

podcast. He came upon this battlefield, I guess, right after the battle that happened. And there were all these dying wounded soldiers laying around and he gathered up the villagers around the countryside and said, we have to treat these people and treat everybody both sides, because we're human beings and that's what we do. That's one of the things that the Red Cross still does today in wars. They're a neutral party, not on either side, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. And they treat everybody regardless of what side they're on. Sure. Right. So that happened in 1859. It gave birth to the Red Cross and it gave birth to the first Geneva Convention, right? Yes. And I think I told you at some point we were chatting about this that the whole

convention aspect of it kind of cracks me up a little bit because I always picture like a bunch of world leaders with their name tags. Hi, my name is Kaiser Wilhelm. Right. Mullen about some Hilton conference room. I imagine that's how it went down. But with the first Geneva Convention is when they, in 1864, did you already say that? No. They started becoming an international thing where it crossed boundaries, it crossed time frames and there were solid rules for everybody for any war. They were just standing rules of war. That's more succinct way of saying it. Sure. And the first Geneva Convention produced the convention for the amelioration of the condition of the wounded and sick and armed forces in the field. Yeah. That was the first one. There's four of them.

Like you said, over time as we saw new atrocities take place, they went and created and amended the existing conventions, created new ones. So there was a convention that addressed the sick shipwrecked members of the armed forces at sea. Yeah, they forgot the seamen in the first one and they said, yeah, we got to think about those guys. Exactly. There's the rules governing the treatment of POWs. Yeah. And then the fourth convention, which is ratified in 1954, was the treatment of civilians. Not surprisingly, shortly after World War II. Yeah. And actually, after World War II, the first Geneva Convention and actually the first three were all created before World War II. Yeah. And people were like, that's really nice. We like that. That's a great

idea. And then World War II happened and everybody came to the table under the auspices of the UN and said, we need these. So 190 countries have ratified the Geneva Conventions. And you get the impression that if you want to be recognized as a sovereign nation internationally, that's one of the steps toward being an independent nation. Absolutely. You've got to ratify the Geneva Conventions. Yeah. Otherwise, what are you doing? You're just some rogue jerk. Jerk country. Yeah. So that's the Geneva Conventions and we'll get more into those later. But they're also, everyone's heard of the Geneva Convention. Not many people have heard of the Hague Conventions. Yeah. Although they should because they were just as important. They were, the Hague in the Netherlands is where these took

place. And they were also called the International Peace Conferences. Yeah. About the same time that the Geneva Conventions were being held, right? Yeah. And they had one in 1899, 1907. They were going to have one peace conference and then they decided to cancel it and have a World War instead. Yeah. And that was World War I, obviously. And they, the Hague Conventions fall into the categories of combat, weaponry, property rights, and duties of neutral countries. But in addition, so a lot of the, a lot of the rules established in the Hague Conventions are similar to the rules of the Geneva Conventions. They overlap. But one of the things that defines the Hague Conventions specifically is that there are steps outlined to prevent war. Yeah. Right? So there's, in the lead-up,

the build-up to war, there's steps you have to take to be in step legally with the Hague Conventions, which are, there's like a 30-day cooling off period. Well, time out. Right. Arbitration, mediation. Yeah. Liberation. No. Sorry, that was in excess. Committees of inquiry. Yeah. Basically, you have to also declare war formally or you have to declare an ultimatum saying like, give me back my sandwich and pull your troops out of my South Asian territories or I'm going to come at you. And that's after they've gone through all the previous steps, the 30-day time out in the corner, and everything else has failed, then you have to officially send the evite saying, we're going to attack you at some point and then not to distance you. Surprise attack? Illegal.

Pearl Harbor. And actually, I would say illegal, right? That's illegal. Oh, yeah. That's one of the reasons why the, the democratic peace theory works. Yeah. What's all that about? So democratic peace theory is based on the idea that democracies, especially democracies that follow these conventions are so transparent that two democracies will never go to war because they're both following the same transparent steps in the lead-up to war and communication will be much more open. One of the, a surprise attack is impossible, not only illegal, but impossible because they have vibrant independent media. Yeah. Right? So, so democratic peace theory says that two democracies will never go to war. I don't know that's necessarily true, but it's based in part on this

Hague convention. Gotcha. Thanks. So combat and weaponry in the Hague conventions, they're pretty obvious things like you can't fly a white flag and then shoot someone in the face. Which apparently, Iraqi soldiers did in 2003 when the US invaded. Not very nice. No. Illegal. You cannot, if a person has surrendered or is injured, then that's it for them. You can't go shoot them in the face. I mean, you got to treat them well. We'll get to that in a minute too. If a person has a visible or an audible speech impediment, you can't make fun of them. That's very true. You can't attack a defenseless person. You can't like attack a hospital or a building being used as a hospital. No, that's what they call using a human shield. That is a huge no-no.

And it's, yeah, that's big time jerk quality right there. See, this is what I thought was kind of interesting. National and cultural symbols are protected. So you can't desecrate a flag or use the enemy's flag or dress up as a soldier and say, I'm really a Nazi, even though all those movies, they always did stuff like that. Well, it's illegal. And glorious bastards. It may be sensible, but it's illegal. Yeah, the whole movie they were dressed up. Well, not the whole movie, but a significant portion of it. Yeah, they dressed as Nazis to kill Nazis. That was pretty awesome. Chuck, you also can't hide out in museums or libraries. Well, yeah, you can't certainly can't bomb them. Just like, just like a hospital, they're protected as well.

That's right. We'll talk a little more about later. And there's certain weapons you can't use. The Higgs specifically says the right of belligerence to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited, right? So basically, you can't use poison bullets. No, you can't use poison gas. Yeah, can't use weapons that are designed to inflict further harm beyond the initial injury. Yeah, like they have those bullets that once they get inside of you, start doing all sorts of wacky things for further damage. Yeah, like they have the bow ties that spin around flapping dickies. Chemical and biological warfare is made illegal all the way back in 1899. Yeah, sarin gas, chlorine gas, mustard gas, all those are old timey poison gases.

Smallpox. Yeah, can't do that. So we were talking about wounded and sick. Basically, the Hague Convention spells it out pretty clearly. If you're wounded and you're sick, or if you see another soldier, an enemy that's wounded or sick, you got to help them. Yeah, and we should probably say about at this point that you can, you can break down the Hague and Geneva conventions by like combat, weaponry, treatment of civilians, or you can look at the rules for overarching as they apply to the different groups involved. And the group with the least amount of protection are active combatants, right? But once you're injured or you're sick and you're no longer capable of fighting,

you slip into the sick or wounded soldier category and you suddenly enjoy far more or protections than if you have a gun and you're coming at somebody, right? Well, yeah, and like I said, not only can you not shoot the guy in the face, you have to help them or at least allow them to be helped by like the Red Cross. Right, and Chuck, like you can't just walk away, right? No. Like after a battle, you can't just walk away from the battlefield after you've won. You can't just release the chow's, which did you know that that's what chow's were originally bred for in China? I did not know that. They would release them onto the battlefield,

only to the throat side of survivors. Really? Yes. Is that why the suckers are so puffy and mean? Uh-huh. We used to have chow's actually. They're not mean. So you, but they are protective. They can do some damage. True. Um, but you can't release the chow's on the battlefield, but not only that, you can't just walk away from the battlefield. You have to help injured soldiers. You got to help with the injured and you got to clean your plate. You can't just leave the deadline around everywhere.

No. As a matter of fact, you have to give the enemy soldiers that you've killed a burial that's appropriate to their religion. Yeah, you're supposed to. You're supposed to. And at the beginning of every war, there's supposed to be a graves registration service, which is neutral party like the red cross is possibly operated by the red cross, where you bury a bunch of soldiers and you say, you contact the graves registration service and say, there's a bunch of dead soldiers here. Yeah. We killed and they're buried here and here are the coordinates. Right. And then the graves registration service provides each side with these

coordinates after the war. So the bodies can be exhumed and sent home. Well, yeah, not only that, but you're, you're supposed to return all property found on the body. So you can't like you see in the movies where you go looting the body of, of trinkets and things to take home. Right. Like a brooch. Right. Let's say you can't do that. You're supposed to mail that to their next of kin, which kind of wonder about that. How fun that happens. I wonder myself. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy

award-winning artist Michelle Williams, and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You cannot perform experiments on a womb-neuter sick person like the Nazis love to do. That's a big one. Oh, yeah. And that's about it for the sick and wounded. And it's biological experiments, but I think also brainwashing. Sure. I'd say any kind of constitute an experiment and you're not allowed to do that either. Yeah. So let's say that you

have been caught. You received treatment from the enemy. Yes. And they're like, well, you're well. Now you're a POW. You still have some pretty wide protections, actually. Yeah, this is a fact at your next cocktail party that you should pull out of your hip pocket. If you're a POW, you're a prisoner of the country, not a prisoner of the soldier or the platoon or the commander and chief of that region. You're a prisoner of the United States of America. If that's who is fighting against you. America. America. But not only that, your detention is legal under international law. Therefore, an escape is illegal and can be punished unless you make it to your other side, to your side. Yeah. Then they wipe the slate clean, right? It's totally clean. Like you were

never captured in the first place. So if you're a spy and you're caught and your hell is a POW, you're going to be tried as a spy and possibly hanged. If you escape to say in occupied territory that your army controls, your detention is just wiped off the map. And if you're caught again, say as a regular soldier, you can't be tried as a spy. It's like it never happened. Isn't that interesting? That's kind of cool. Tell them about name, rank and serial number. Yeah, you've often heard that in movies. That is definitely a part of the Third Geneva Convention, but it is not merely for name identification, but you are awarded privileges if you are an officer in your POW. Like you don't have to dig the latrine ditches, like the privates and the corpals do. If you're

an officer, you have a little bit of a, I don't know about cushier life, but you could drink ticket every day. You can turn in for a nice vodka Gibson. Sure. But it's like when you see all the World War II movies, like The Great Escape, the officers, they were always had a little bit better deal than their men. Right. Like they were the ones, like Hogan's heroes. Hogan was always meeting with the, what was with clink. Colonel Clink. But the rest of the guys wouldn't meet. It was always Hogan. Because he was the main man. Did you ever see autofocus? I knew you were going to say that. It's hard to watch Hogan's heroes ever again if you've seen autofocus. Yeah. God, I love that movie though. Yeah. It's right up your alley. The other thing about POWs is

they are prisoners much like a civilian prisoner would be, and they're innocent until proven guilty, supposedly. And you have to treat them as such. So if you are captured as a POW, you are, or if you're captured, you're required to grant this person POW status. If you're supposed to err on the side of caution, if you're not sure whether they're POW or not, right? But there's very specific qualifications that you have to classify them. If they're obviously members of the armed force, they can be a member of a militia or a volunteer corps. Right. Still got to be a POW. Right. They could be some guy who happened to be carrying a gun out in the open. Sure. And you still have to say, we're going to treat you like a POW until we set up a tribunal. And they say, no,

he's not a POW. He's a common criminal. Members of the media traveling with the armed forces. Really? They have to be granted POW status. Awesome. And that's about it. Crews of Merchant Marine and Civil Aircraft. So they're working with the army. One of the reasons why Abu Ghraib and the treatment, the degradation at Abu Ghraib was so illegal was because these combatants weren't granted POW status right off the bat. Yeah. These captured combatants were treated as criminals. Basically, they were imprisoned. So that's one. You can't imprison a POW. You can intern them in an internment camp. Yes. So they have borders, but not a cell. Yes. It's another one. Unless they're like a specific danger, then you can work around that. Okay.

Which is probably what they said. You can't subject them to degrading treatment. Interrogation basically amounts to you asking them a question and it's up to them whether they want to answer it or not. Yeah. And if they don't want to answer, then you, that's it. You can't ask them again even. They can't be coerced or tortured under any definition of torture. And you can't, they can't, their detention can't be paraded in front of the media. Right. That was another thing too. I mean, you remember Lindy England, right? Oh yeah. Pointing and like, did you ever see the Mad Magazine one or is Alfred E. Newman is there? No. That's pretty good. So there were several reasons why Abu Ghraib was just so horrendous. Well, yeah. And you also have to grant

them any rights that your own soldiers get like food, water, shelter, clothing, exercise, correspondence. Like you have to let them know exactly where they are and you have to make them available to receive mail from their families. Yeah. Not only do you have to tell them where they are, you have to give them the mailing address so that they can receive care packages, letters, whatever. Crazy. So Chuck, that's POWs, right? Yeah. Pretty much. Let's talk about civilians. You remember Red Dawn? We've talked about this often. I should say that recently when we were hanging out with our friend Chad, he remarked after I said that I had just recently seen the fly, David Krodenberg's the fly for the first time. Yeah. That he had just seen

Red Dawn for the first time and you, I thought you're going to beat him up. I thought you're going to punch him in the face. I just don't understand how you could, he's our age. At least my age. I get it too. And that was between our ages. Yeah, he seems like it. He should have seen Red Dawn long before this. That's like saying you hadn't seen war games if you were a child, like a teenage boy in the 80s. Right. So back to it, Red Dawn. Well, okay. So you remember Harry Dean Stanton? Oh, yeah. Where Jed and Charlie Sheen come to Jed and who? It was Swayze and Sheen, wasn't it? Yeah, but I can't remember. See Thomas Howell too? Did they all three go? Possibly. But it was definitely Jed and his brother. Yeah. And they go to see their father

who happens to be Harry Dean Stanton. Interned. He's interned. Notice he's not in a cell. They've put up fencing around the drive-in, right? And they're projecting propaganda up onto the screen and they're playing like Russian Soviet music. That's legal, right? Yeah. When he passes by, I think Arturo's father who's getting like a German shepherd to the face. Yeah. That's highly illegal. Can't use the dogs? No, you can't. The chows? No, no chows, no German shepherds, no dogs of any kind. When the Russians landed and opened fire on the unarmed high school students, that's highly illegal too. I mean, they just flat out shot up that teacher. Remember that? Yeah. And that kid too. Yeah. The kid is hanging out the window. That was one of the most disturbing

images of my young life. Very impactful. See, I wanted to be a Wolverine. Oh, yeah, certainly. And I guess all little boys like playing war, but I mean, I didn't know it was going to be a peacenik later on. But at the time, man, I was like, bring it. I'll get a gun, I'll go to the woods, pack a football and some can beans. Exactly. I wish that you could take the video of your life and edit it because I would make a montage of all the times I shouted Wolverines in the woods as a kid. That's what I would do with my time. It was more than once. So Red Dawn, somewhat on, the Soviets took care of the civilians to a certain extent. Yeah. They legally interned others. They illegally attacked some with dogs. But let's say you were Daryl's dad, the mayor. And you're

riding around with the Cuban commander. What rights do you have as just a general civilian who's not been deemed a threat? Let's say, could Daryl's dad talk to Daryl's mom? Is open communication legal? Well, yeah, it's a basic right that you're supposed to have. It can be curtailed if they think that there could be a detrimental effect on the correspondence. But even then, they allow you to tweet, basically. Not really tweet, but they allow you 25 words. Right. There's special forms that every occupying force will have or should have that people can fill out to communicate with one another if free speech is curtailed. And 25 of those words have to be freely chosen by the person. You cannot be removed to another

country unless it's for your own safety as a civilian. And you can't bring in your people as the occupying force. You can't bring in your civilians to settle. That's right. No. You're not allowed to do that. Not allowed to do that. No. They can force you to work, but they do have to pay you and it can't be work for your military against your own country. Right. You can't be made to make bombs that are going to be used against your peeps. Exactly. And if you are working and you're not making bombs, you can't be made to physically punish your own countrymen if you're a middle manager forced laborer. Right. Right. And you can force kids to work, too. Why, really? Yeah. And, Chuck, it's illegal to tattoo civilians for the purposes of identification,

yet another one that came out at World War II. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Boy, Hitler, they just went gaga after that. Like with genocide. That had never probably, well, no, there was genocide before that, but after Hitler, they said, no, we can't do this genocide thing. Right. So, Josh, let's talk about cultural property, because I think it's one of the lesser known aspects of these conventions. I didn't know about it until I read this stuff. Okay. It's absolutely protected, like your museums, your works of art and science, like, remember when Saddam's statue was toppled? The American forces couldn't do that. The Iraqi people did that. Right. But if the Americans had toppled the statue and, like, looted his palace, big no,

no. Right. Because, like you said, both the Hague and Geneva Conventions specifically outlawed genocide, which is the systematic extermination of a group of people in much the same way that Hague conventions are like, you can't do that to their culture either, their cultural legacy. And not just statues. Books are included. Oh, yeah. Scientific achievements, works of art, archaeological areas. Yeah. And then the buildings that house these things. Remember, we said, like, you can't go hide out in a museum or a library because these are culturally protected too. Yeah. But it's on the state to provide identification. They're these special symbols and it's up to the country to identify these places as such so they don't get bombed.

Right. So what happens if you break these rules? The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like

looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Harden, Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma

surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood, and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Let's say you're just like, you know, I don't want to follow these rules. I want to I want to shoot this guy's face in even though he's wounded already. Yeah, I don't like the way he looks. Yeah. Or he's dating my girlfriend. Are those awful things you've seen in the in the Vietnam war movies? When one like the My Life Massacre? Yeah, when they just go nuts and just start doing bad bad things. So neither the Geneva Convention nor the head convention specify what kind of punishment should be doled out, how offending parties should be charged, right? They basically say, hey, everybody who's like on the side of the law, take these people to international court, and then dole out whatever punishment you think is necessary. So for example, after Nuremberg,

yeah, before actually the Geneva Conventions were ratified. The the I guess France, Great Britain in the US and Russia all formed this international tribunal where they tried these Nazi war criminals and hanged, I think they executed 11 of them. So in much the same way, we formed tribunals for Yugoslavia, the Balkan war for Rwanda. But it's up to the country that has been offended. It's not not offended. It's up to the country that has been impacted to do the legwork to make this happen. Like, there's not some big general body that's gonna say, yeah, we heard this happens. So we're gonna make sure they get prosecuted. No, but there is a standing body in the Hague called the International Criminal Court. And these are the this this body hears these

war crimes trials. This is where you go to have a war crimes trial, right? And there's a lot of debate over the legitimacy of this body. Some people want this body to take up more issues than it has. Now, are they already up and running? Actually, I don't think so. But there's a big movement to get it going. Yes, there is one that's standing, right? Already. The world court basically. Gotcha. Yeah. The other cool thing is I got one more. You got anything else? I have a little more, but go ahead. Okay. One thing I found interesting, Josh, is that these rules don't just apply to the armies, but militia and volunteer corps, and we'll go back to Red Dawn here just for the sake of continuity. If you have a person in command, Red Dawn, who was that?

Jed. Swayze. Jed. God rest his soul. Yeah. If you have a representative symbol that can be recognized from a distance, if you spray paint Wolverine, that's your representative. So what they were doing, they were basically kind of putting themselves in the corner. They didn't realize it. Right. If they carry weaponry in the open. Yep. They definitely did that. Yeah. Powers Booth showed them how to do that with effectiveness. He was the pilot, right? Yeah, he was the guy that crashed and kind of headed things up for a little while. Yeah. And then they got to follow the laws and customs of war. So if you meet those criteria as a militia, so if we just formed our own little pack of House of Orcs ruffians, if we were attacked and you are our

leader and we carried open weaponry and we had our symbol, which would be Wolverines clearly, then we would be subject to the same rules just like we were in the army. Well, that fourth one in particular is a little ticklish because it basically says if you follow the rules of war, the rules of war apply to you. Yeah. So what happens if you don't? And we asked this guy who's a professor of international law. His name is Michael Matheson. We talked to him actually about it. Yeah, from GW. Yeah, George Washington University. And he said, we asked him how are these followed? How are these enforced? Why would anybody follow these if you didn't really have to? Right. And he basically said the idea that if you don't follow them,

the other person doesn't have to. And all of a sudden you can be tortured. Right. Right. Or you can be attacked by dogs or humiliated, degraded, whatever. The slippery slope that forms, if you don't follow the rules of war, keep both sides in line, actually, and that these rules are indoctrinated into the military rules on each side already. So basically, each side regulates itself in the hopes that the other side will too. You know what they call that where I'm from? What? The golden rule. That's right, John. We're going to end it with that. All right. If you want to learn more about the rules of war and see what the cultural property emblem looks like, we know where you can find it.

Type rules of war in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. That means now it's time for the listener mail. Josh, I'm going to call this handpicked by you. Yeah. You picked this one out. It's a good one. It was a big day and it was a really good email. Actually, it was on my list too. So this is from Clovis and Clovis had some thoughts on the addiction podcasts that were very relevant and I think made some great points. I agree. Guys, in your podcast on addiction, I thought you treated the issue fairly with a couple of exceptions. First of all, Josh, you said that AA was radically successful or something to that effect. The truth is no one really knows how successful it is. It might be successful at helping someone obtain sobriety for some amount of time, but it might not

be any stronger than if a person just cycles out of drinking on their own. Also, AA's goal of lifelong abstinence is a setup for failure with some studies showing that only about five percent of people remain completely abstinent for the rest of their lives. Well, Clovis goes on to say, it also seems like you bought into the idea that was cultivated by our government that rates, use rates are the best measure of the harms that drugs and prohibition do to our society. So if use rates are up, that's bad. If they're down, that's good. Not quite true. Use rates are actually a terrible way to measure the success or failure of a drug treatment and drug policy. Meaningful data would measure the increases and decreases in drug-related death, disease,

crime, and suffering. All of these things can be significantly measured and in some cases, even more accurately than self-reported use rates. Use rates are especially useful to politicians who use this quote-unquote evidence to say use rates are down, we're winning, you should increase our budget to help keep this fight. Or use rates are down, we're losing, so you need to increase our budget to put us to stamp this thing out. So either way, they're trying to get more money. And I guess the point about addiction, that's the point about addiction and treatment, our society has defined both way too rigidly. Addiction is really drug use plus problems. What do we do for those people who can't use drugs without causing problems?

The addicts, we should give them treatment and treatment can be anything that works for them. It can be AA, it can be heroin-assisted treatment, it can be knitting. But if it lessens the death, disease, crime, and suffering associated with the drug use, then it should be considered a successful treatment. Putting them in prison cells is about the worst thing we can do for them. With all respect, Clovis. Thanks for that Clovis for one of the better emails we've ever received, I would say. Yeah, it was a good one. If you have something you'd like to point out to Chuck and I, that we've maybe erroneously bought into something and you want to tell us how it is, we always love that. Always. Wrap it up and send it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The HowStuffWorks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David Boring. I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting ground breaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more new episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners, conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or

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