jdtinIA wrote:Anton's defense is: It was an act of war, carried out by an agent of Torch.
Torch has declared war on Mesa. There is no textev that it is a limited war. Anything or anyone one Mesa is a target.
Therefore no crime was commited.
Really?
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/31/0The Eridani Edict has some points in common with the rule of the "practicable breach." Essentially, the Eridani Edict says that no star nation may engage in the wholesale and wanton slaughter of civilian populations using any weapon of mass destruction. The actual language of the edict is clearly oriented towards nuclear or kinetic strikes, but it applies more to the intent and purpose of the weapon than to its actual characteristics, except inasmuch as those characteristics may define the… controlability of its area of effect.
Under existing interstellar law, the phrase "wholesale and wanton slaughter" has a very specific meaning.
"Wholesale" means civilian casualties which go beyond the collateral damage associated with legitimate military operations as defined under the "laws of war" applicable to the Honorverse. "Wanton" means that those casualties were inflicted deliberately, or that prudent precautions to prevent them from happening were not taken. The Eridani Edict does not prohibit the use of "weapons of mass destruction" against inhabited planets. What it does do is to establish the parameters under which those weapons may be used.
First, they may only be used by an attacker who controls near-planet space. That is, a raiding squadron which dashes in, passes within weapons range of the planet, and then lopes off again before a relief force can turn up and kick its butt, cannot pop off a few missiles at the planet as it passes without violating the Edict. Before it can fire at targets on the planetary surface, it must have established that the planet has no immediate prospect of relief, and that they (the attackers) are in a position to send down assault forces if they choose to do so. At that point, the attackers are entitled to summon the planet to surrender upon pain of bombardment from space. If the defenders choose not to surrender, then the attackers are justified in using bombardment to take out specific military targets rather than sending their assault forces down to be slaughtered trying to take them with infantry or armored units in an effort to prevent civilian casualties.
The military targets which are legitimate candidates for bombardment are also clearly understood to fall into specifically limited categories. They may be command-and-control nodes, such as planetary military and/or political command structures and facilities. They may be tactical weapons positions or troop concentrations. They may be civilian communications facilities which have military applications. However, all of them must have immediate, tactical applications and capabilities.
What this means is that a planetary defense missile battery, wherever located, is a legitimate target. The defenders can't stick the missiles in the middle of Central Park in New York City in order to protect them against attack under the terms of the Eridani Edict. If there are weapons there, then they are legitimate targets for attack. By the same token, if two armored divisions dig in to defend New York City and their commander refuses to surrender, then they become a legitimate target. The White House in Washington, DC, would be a legitimate target, as would the Pentagon, because of their command-and-control functions. A civilian powerplant being used to provide electricity to weapons systems, or sensors, or electronic warfare platforms, would also be a legitimate target. However, a factory which produced missiles but had no capacity to fire them, would not be a legitimate target because it poses no immediate tactical threat to the fleet in orbit around the planet or to the assault troops which it might land to take possession of the factory. Similarly, an orbital bombardment attack on the basic economic or industrial infrastructure of the planet would not be justifiable under the terms of the Edict, nor would a "demonstration strike" on a population center intended to terrify the rest of the planetary population into submission.
Note that to a very great extent, the exact nature of the weapon used is not really relevant. Certain weapons, because of the impossibility of reliably limiting their areas of effect, are more likely to be considered a violation of the Edict, of course. A neurotoxin used against a specific, legitimate target (like, say, a palace where the enemy star nation's monarch and top military commander might be hanging out), would not be considered a violation of the Edict unless it was likely to spread throughout a surrounding city, or something of the sort, and inflict truly massive casualties. The use of a biological weapon -- say, anthrax or the Ebola virus -- very probably would be considered a violation of the Edict because it would probably spread far beyond the immediate, legitimate military target to the civilian population at large. Put another way, a biological or chemical weapon [attack] on the White House which took out everything between M Street to the north, Marine Avenue to the south, the Potomac River Freeway to the west, and 9th Street to the east, would not constitute a violation of the Eridani Edict, but the use of a weapon which spread beyond that area to the city at large, and possibly beyond that to Baltimore, Fredericksburg, etc., would.
