No he “got away” with decades of war crimes by becoming disillusioned of the society he was born and bred in and becoming a political enemy of the state and putting his physical wellbeing at risk to free the people his country had waged war on all while mentoring the person who would take over that country and try to create a better country and a better world. One of the most poignant moments is when he says he didn’t realize his visions of conquering ba sing se would be him taking it back for its own people.
The Mikhail Bakunin of Nickelodeon cartoons.
Which is why this is fictional, and he’s allowed to have a narrative story arc.
However, if this was a Nazi SS Officer, who fled to South America, and then went on to redeem himself by [insert narratively compelling redemption story], he’d still be a war criminal.
But again, it’s a cartoon, and we don’t have to treat his character as if he were an actual Imperial General commanding troops during wars of conquest, especially one from the IJA.
Pretty big difference in your scenarios there yours has a Nazi war criminal fleeing after the war is ended. Yeah it doesn’t really hit as hard when it’s after the fact and there’s no skin in the game. A person who realizes his nation is wrong and fights to stop his Nation during the war has a lot more redeeming qualities than someone who claims to have changed his mind after the war is over and while they’re running and hiding.
There’s evidence he was trying to prevent worse things from happening. He hid the last dragons, he joined a extremist group, he was WAY ahead of Azula capturing him, his prison escape plan was likely a long term thought process he already had. Iroh was never going to be fire lord.
He was first in line to be Fire Lord until his son died.
I don’t think Iroh would have been as ruthless as his brother. But he did see conquest as a sort of duty.
But then his son died, and he realized that it was all pointless.
