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Since when does the Federation act like war criminals and Nazis?

C

CardassianAssassin

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
Watched the first two episodes, and wasn't too impressed. The acting is a little wooden, the technology just seems wrong (Hello super cool holograms, that will completely disappear in the near future!)

But really bugged me was
when the captain and Burnham decided to booby trap the Klingon corpses with a photon torpedo.

Say whaaaaat?

During the 2nd world war, Waffen SS soldiers were notorious for attaching grenades and explosives to dead soldiers, that would explode if you tried moving the corpse. It was also a favorite tactic of the Vietcong, and there are lots of reports from Iraq about ISIS employing similar tactics.

Which obviously leads to some troubling questions: Weren't the Federation supposed to be the good guys? Or is it merely Burnham and her captain who have gone... Well, war criminal.

There isn't even any discussion that what they did, is a war crime according to the Geneva Convention:

Geneva Convention IV
Article 16, second paragraph, of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV provides: “As far as military considerations allow, each Party to the conflict shall facilitate the steps taken … to protect [the killed] against … ill-treatment.”

Additional Protocol I
Article 34(1) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides: “The remains of persons who have died for reasons related to occupation or in detention resulting from occupation or hostilities … shall be respected”.

If that's a little vague for you here's another protocol from the Geneva conventions that specifically forbid what they did:

Article 6 of the 1980 Protocol II to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons provides:

1. Without prejudice to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict relating to treachery and perfidy, it is prohibited in all circumstances to use: (a) any booby-trap in the form of an apparently harmless portable object which is specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material and to detonate when it is disturbed or approached, or (b) booby-traps which are in any way attached to or associated with:
(i) internationally recognized protective emblems, signs or signals;
(ii) sick, wounded or dead persons;

And before somebody says: "Well the Geneva conventions don't apply in space!" Wasn't the Federation supposed to be the good guys?

What's in next weeks episode? The Federation starts throwing neutron bombs on civilian targets cause the laws of war don't apply in space, and they want to put the fear of God in them Klingons? Perhaps Lt. Burnham gets the bright idea to load a transporter with explosives, and fly it into a civilian convoy?
 
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Kirk surrendered as a trick to lure the Klingons onto the Enterprise and self destruct to kill them.

Picard was planning to wipe out The Borg with a virus, not a bomb, but the same thing.

Sisko made a planet uninhabitable for decades to make a point to Eddington.

Starfleet regularly bend and break their own rules.
 
This is an interesting point. But if there's any finger pointing to be done, it would be at the Discovery writers, not Star Trek in general.
 
Yeah, "violating the Geneva convention" doesn't look good on anybodys résume. On first view I didn't catch it. Once I read about it, it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. I think the writers simply didn't catch this one.
 
Wasn't that immediately after the Klingons destroyed a Federation ship while under truce? Granted, I don't know what the rules are vis a vis "one good war crime deserves another," but it doesn't seem to be an era of civilized warfare, to say the least (we're ten years away from Romulans attaching bombs to their own corpses, after all).
 
Rahul said:
Yeah, "violating the Geneva convention" doesn't look good on anybodys résume. On first view I didn't catch it. Once I read about it, it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. I think the writers simply didn't catch this one.
Click to expand...

This wouldn't be the first time it happened on Trek.

They probably threw out/re-wrote the Geneva convention in the next 200 years.
 
At this point people are just intentionally picking nits with discovery. Yeah because Picard wasn't chastised for NOT sending a possibly genocidal virus to the BORG, and Sisko didn't make a planet uninhabitable :rommie:
 
urbandefault said:
War is hell.

This is a TV show.
Click to expand...
"There are rules, Garak, even in a war."
"Correction. Humans have rules in war. Rules that tend to make victory a little harder to achieve, in my opinion."

It's an interesting question. Perhaps Captain Georgiou would have been tried for war crimes if she'd lived.
 
What they did isn't really out of line with some things that happened in other series.

Humanities morals seemed to have changed in the future.
 
It's not as though they did it for kicks. They were disabled, weaponless, vulnerable. It was a last ditch attempt to gain the upper hand and survive. (This after T'Kuvma agreed to a ceasefire and then destroyed a starship full of people.) I'd do it too, even if it made someone feel a little ooky.
 
Archer committed theft and torture, Janeway nearly killed one of the Equinox crew, Sisko engaged in chemical warfare and was complicit in two murders, Section 31 was involved in biological warfare and attempted genocide, Red Squad was part of a false-flag attack and military coup...

Since always, at least in a dire enough situation?
 
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