Conclusion

Abstract

Now that we have reached the end of this volume, I would like to go back over Stanley Hoffmann’s assumption regarding the “inevitable” perpetration of war crimes “on a more or less massive scale” by a democracy fighting guerrillas. This book shows that there is no “fatality” that inescapably leads a democracy toward this outcome. First, democracies do not all behave the same way. There are considerable differences in the way that countries such as the United States, France, Great Britain, India, or Israel conduct, or have conducted, their fight against armed groups. Some democracies, such as India in Kashmir and the United States in Iraq, have committed massacres. Repression in Kashmir has resulted in the deaths of 40,000 civilians. Others, such as Great Britain and Israel, have managed to avoid them. The French army, during the Algerian war, behaved in a much more brutal manner than the British army in its war against the IRA, and even the United States during the Iraq war. In Algeria, torture was used systematically. It had become a “political weapon.” There are differences, often considerable ones, in the nature and scope of the violence committed