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On Friday, a European Union conflict expert said in an e-mail obtained by the AP that Ethiopian and Somali forces may have committed war crimes during heavy artillery shelling against the Islamic insurgency and that foreign donors could be complicit.

People have to get over the idea that you can litigate war.

The war crime was committed by the insurgents who attacked from among civilians. Its the usual modus operandi for jihadists. The penalty, of course, should be death, but death visited on the battlefield.

These conflicts can't be settled in a court room by competing men with brief cases and suits. If they could, it isn't war. If jihadists can be served subpoenas, and they will meekly submit themselves to the authority of the law, then it isn't war. It is war precisely because civilian peacetime law is insufficient to contain the conflict.

When the conflict is beyond law, you send in the men with guns, and you settle it directly. People die when this happens, good and bad, soldiers and civilians alike, the innocents right alongside the guilty. The original war-crime is the fact that the jihadists do not submit to rule of law. There can be no peace until either they have been forced to submit, or they've been dealt out of the game for good.