this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 86 points 3 months ago (2 children)

There’s a lot of people who seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to this “that’s a war crime!!1!”, but it really is not. Incendiary weapons (like thermite, white phosphorus and napalm) are not illegal to use against legitimate military targets, including enemy combatants. It’s only a war crime when it’s used indiscriminately against civilians or in civilian areas.

Lot of misinformation out there on this it seems.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I looked it up and you're 100% right. Incendiary weapons are allowed as long as it doesn't hit civilians or start a forest fire

https://www.weaponslaw.org/weapons/incendiary-weapons

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Incendiary_Weapons

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You can start a forest fire if said forest is used for cover or concealment by enemy military forces. All feasible precautions must be taken to limit the damage to military targets only.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Lot of misinformation out there on this it seems.

I wonder why? 🤔

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

Honestly war crimes just have a lot of misinformation generally. Even in the military. There were people who thought we couldn't shoot someone with a .50 cal machine gun. While this spawns funny jokes like aiming for their uniform buttons, it just isn't true.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Honestly, I think it’s more that people take this info from movies and just run with it than malicious (Russian) misinformation bots (although they don’t mind giving this an extra push I imagine).