#this is the same universe with zero child labor or protection laws though so it's not really a surprise

[clonecumber]

The fact the Star Wars universe doesn’t actually have an equivalent of the Geneva Conventions or really any sort of actual law of war really fucking shows sometimes.

I rambled a bit so I’m cutting it here.

I mean, it makes sense in-universe. Not even getting into that the last(?) major major conflict the Republic had to deal with was against Sith and that would definitely leave a mark on their approach to warfare, I’d imagine, the Republic around the time of the prequels and a bit before that period probably wouldn’t really see the need for international (you know what I mean) laws mandating conduct in warfare. War up until the Clone Wars was sort of treated as...well, very “what happens in your house stays in your house” and you could be as awful as you wanted to each other on your own planet provided it didn’t go spilling out on the street to bother the neighbors.

Inter-planetary conflict just didn’t happen in the form of traditional (”traditional”) warfare (when it did happen, it seems like it was almost all economic volleys, targeted mercenary jobs, and the occasional angry insurgent group that made its way off-planet), and the Jedi were really the only ones who cared to go wandering around and sticking their noses in to single-planet problems. There’s no way in hell the Senate was going to regulate warfare. “Why is your mess my problem,” was probably their thinking.

(Palpatine did his job way too well.)

Which means we roll into the Clone Wars with zero Republic-wide systems in place to mitigate the damage what-so-fucking-ever. The Separatists sure as hell aren’t going to open “let’s not be total fucking animals about this” talks that might lead to a universe-equivalent of at least the Geneva Conventions, after all. They have droids. They don’t care. The ones who would have to open those talks would be the Republic, which they maybe might have if they’d had to draft their own citizens into the shiny new GAR beyond some officers and a bit of the supporting staff, but.

I don’t even think I need to continue that. We all know not a single person in the Senate is required to give a single flying fuck about the clone troopers, which of course means they don’t, and they’ve already been conditioned to think of civilian casualties as someone else’s problem, which means The Clone Wars is a literal fucking free-for-all. 

You literally can’t commit a war crime because the laws defining a war crime don’t exist.

this just in: star wars is a literal dystopian hellscape i fucking