There’s a popular meme that during the Clone Wars, especially as depicted by the Clone Wars TV show, the Republic committed tons of war crimes. People joke about how the Republic used the Geneva Conventions as a checklist and will unironically point to these alleged war crimes to claim that the Separatists were justified.
They’re wrong. Red Five makes lists of ten Star Wars things and tried to get in on the meme – and he wasn’t even able to find ten actual examples of Republic war crimes. Let’s run through them real quick to see how many of them actually qualify:
- False Surrender. Obi-Wan famously fakes surrender negotiations on Christophsis to buy time for Ahsoka and Anakin to destroy the Separatist shield generator and swing the battle in favor of the clones. Anakin sort of does this later at Ryloth, although it’s not clear if the fake surrender was a necessary part of the ploy or if he just wanted to set up his “you can still have my ship” quip, and then more unambiguously on Yerbana, where he fakes a surrender to lure the enemy commander out for an assassination prior to an assault. So we’re starting strong here with an actual war crime committed not just by Anakin Skywalker specifically, but by by-the-book Obi-Wan Kenobi, who we can assume is acting with the Republic’s blessing.
- Torture. By “torture” what Red Five mostly means is “threats of execution,” which is still (usually) a war crime, but also it’s done almost exclusively by Anakin and Ahsoka, and especially in Anakin’s case it’s often a point made that he’s doing it where other Jedi and the Republic in general can’t see. The old Republic never had a chance to try Anakin for war crimes because they were dissolved before they found out about them, and the New Republic is probably perfectly happy to slap some war crime charges on top of the long list of crimes Darth Vader committed. There is still the scene with Cad Bane where Obi-Wan and Mace Windu join in. Technical nitpick, Cad Bane is asked to identify himself as an enemy combatant and does not do so. Torturing a non-combatant is a crime against humanity, not a war crime. But in general this is an actual bad thing done by the Republic, not by Anakin Skywalker acting alone.
- Illegal Weaponry. If you thought those first two were undermining my point, then don’t worry, we’ve reached the stupid part. No, using flamethrowers is not a war crime. You are responsible for the fires you start on purpose which means using a flamethrower can lead to war crimes if the fires spread into civilian areas, but that doesn’t happen during the second battle of Geonosis. This is not a war crime. And the reason Ki Adi Mundi is excited when he tells the clones to bring up the flamethrowers is because the flamethrowers are (correctly) expected to be the final blow – he’s excited because the battle is nearly over.
- Killing Fleeing Combatants. What?! Of course killing fleeing combatants isn’t a war crime. Why would you think this is a war crime? You are not required to wait until your enemy feels confident about the superiority of their position before you’re allowed to fight them.
- Killing Unarmed Enemies. Also not a war crime. Assassinating enemy officers who don’t currently have their weapons on them is not the same as killing soldiers who are attempting to surrender, Mace Windu wouldn’t be a war crime anyway because Chancellor Palpatine is part of Mace Windu’s own nation, and no, Mace Windu is not legally required to fall for Palpatine’s fake surrender. Assassinating the Chancellor is undoubtedly a regular crime, but, y’know, so what? The galaxy would unambiguously have been much, much better off if Mace Windu had succeeded here, so this is neither technically a war crime nor is it in the general spirit of the “Jedi commit tons of war crimes” accusation.
Also in this section is killing a medic – that’s only a war crime if they’re actively engaged in medical duties and are clearly marked as such. General Grievous’ medical droid A4-D has no such markings and wasn’t providing medical assistance to Grievous, but was shouting warnings, monitoring cameras, and operating door controls. No, you cannot paint red crosses on all your frontline infantry and thus make it impossible to fight any component of your army without committing war crimes, the Geneva Conventions aren’t that stupid, medics are only protected when they are actively being medics. - Use Of Child Soldiers. Ahsoka Tano is indeed just under fifteen when she is deployed to the front lines of Christophsis as a combatant. She’s just barely been assigned a mentor, so we can assume that most padawans in the war zone are older than her, but some significant chunk of Jedi padawans actually are child soldiers. The clones do technically count, but that’s because the Geneva Conventions were written under the assumption that none of the signatories have access to alien species or genetic hypertech. The Red Five video is pretty upfront about that, though.
- Use Of A Slave Army. There are no specific war crimes regarding slave armies, but slavery is a crime against humanity. It’s also against Republic law. Palpatine orchestrated a situation in which the Republic would be forced to choose between accepting slavery or being eradicated, and while there’s not anything written into international law that specifically carves out exceptions for Sith conspiracies, there is obviously an enormous gap between “the Republic was blase about slavery” and “the Republic could be pressured into accepting slavery temporarily if a Sith conspiracy had arranged a sufficiently dire alternative.”
- Violating Neutrality. No, it is not a war crime to invade Darth Maul’s coup de’tat regime because the Republic had signed a treaty with Mandalore’s previous government. Death Watch made assassination attempts against Duchess Satine Kryze while she was on Coruscant. The Republic has casus belli even if we accept that the treaties with the old government apply to Maul’s new regime. Just because Darth Maul is not a part of the Confederacy of Independent Systems doesn’t mean that the Republic isn’t allowed to declare war on him. It is not a war crime to be at war with two different countries.
- Training Terrorists. By “terrorists” what Red Five actually means is “guerillas,” and no, it is not a war crime to train guerillas. The Onderon Resistance never attacks civilians, uses threats of violence to influence domestic policy, or otherwise uses terror to accomplish their goals.
- Ordering Friendly Fire. Pon Krell was a Separatist. He was an infiltrator who ordered friendly fire because he sold out the Republic to the Separatists. The Jedi are not responsible for war crimes because one of their members betrayed them. That’s not how legal culpability works.
So when attempting to come up with a list of ten war crimes, what Red Five actually manages is two actual war crimes, two crimes against humanity (close enough), one of which was under very contrived circumstances, five things that are not war crimes, and one war crime committed by a Separatist defector.
I think this meme got going because almost all the war crimes/crimes against humanity that the Republic actually does commit, it commits in the movie that started the series. False surrender, child soldiers, slave army, there’s no torture but Ahsoka does pull a lightsaber on a civilian under pretty minimal provocation. So that first movie is genuinely a war crime-a-palooza. And then there’s almost nothing for the entire rest of the series, but the meme is entrenched and so people go fishing for anything that has sort of a war crime vibe to it and don’t bother doing the thirty seconds of Googling required to check. Like, the Geneva Conventions are online, you can CTRL+F for “incendiary” and read the relevant laws yourself.
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