What the Sheep Remember About War Crimes

Military officers are now worrying about something no democracy should treat lightly: whether they may be asked to choose between obedience and legality.

The sheep have been thinking about a phrase that sounds abstract until somebody tries to make it practical.

A war crime is not simply an especially ugly act committed during war. War is ugly by nature. A war crime is a violation of the laws and customs that nations have developed, painfully and imperfectly, to place some limits on organized violence. The…