"The Burmese are primarily Buddhists and come from a nation influenced by Thailand, China, and India." nope. burma is one of the most horrible sytates in existant. far from budhist morals. right now aside from oppressing, killing and torturing (yay!) their own people they have a habit of gassing them too. one of the most secret nations on earth as well. a truly horrible country ran by a military junta. it has labour camps, state sanctioned rape, child soldiers, no freedom of speech, iraq didn't touch it. it also used to be a british colony.
I'm talking about the history of the country, not the modern state. My point is that the history of a country determines how they'll view an action. A country that has a history that is more peaceful would understand a "heart and mind" approach, while a war-like state will view the same approach as a sign of weakness. In other words, what works in one place won't work in another.

"My point is that what Geneva is is an arbitrary standard, one that never considers the circumstances under which it might be violated" exactly. because there is no excuse or justification. torture is not heavily used by the iraqi insurgents anyway. and even if it was is that our best excuse? "they started it"? "they're doing it as well" "the big boys get to do it?" you can fight a war without it.
Well, I'm not asking to use it because I want to. But there are circumstances where following the letter of the law will cause so much death that it would be immoral to do so. And any law that doesn't allow for such a possibility is an irrational law. It doesn't have to mean that the violators comepletely get off, just that in some situations the results of not breaking the law would be so severe that a just judge might take into account the circumstances and lessen the penalty.

Suppose a state were to outlaw meat eating. Now if there was a famine and the only food available was beef, would you say a judge should be able to pick up on that and set the penalty appropriately? Or should he simply follow the letter of the law and ignore that following the law would have meant certain death for the defendant and his family? I don't think justice would mean ignoring the law altogether, but it also doesn't mean that if the sentance is death, that the full penalty is justice either. This is why we have judges.