Poll: All's Fair In Love and War?

[Stone Cold Monkey]

I couldn't find a debate on the internet on the subject of the Laws of Armed Conflict (Rules of War) that was debating the validity of such a concept. I had a debate with a co-worker on the subject. He believes that LOAC is a silly idea and the only way to truly defeat an opponent is to become more brutal and monstrous than them. I disagree, believing that while war is sad and unfortunate facet of human existence, it needs rules particularity in the modern age where absolute obliteration of life in now possible. I think his tactic will simply lead to a never dying enemy or more opponents in the future and is doomed to failure. I think that he misjudges the human capacity found in everyone to commit the darkest of atrocities in needed believing everyone has a line they won't cross. His reference was Vlad the Impaler using his savage tactics to hold off his enemies despite being a relatively small faction. I pointed out that all (or nearly all) oppressive regimes are overthrown (even if they are replaced with another oppressive regime).

I wanted to field this question to this forum because I think I have a larger than average chance of people supporting my co-worker in war should have no rules. I want to know what you think and please give some arguments for your stand.

 

[Fire Daemon]

All is fair in war. You might not think this when you consider war but when you are fighting for your life and the life of others any thought of what is good and what is wrong will go out of the window. You will do anything to survive, under the right circumstances a nun would kill a group of school children to live.

So yes all is fair in War. It might not be fair after the war however.

Love on the other hand is not. You are not fighting for your life in love, you are fighting for the atention of an other. Killing another man for the love of another is not allowed while killing a man in war is allowed.

 

[000Ronald]

Hmm...

Having rules in a war is a moot point; what would the reprocussions be? One side is going to lose, anyway, so why can't they take out as many bogies as possible?

That being said, I think that there should be some guidelines. My understanding is that everything that the current rules are simply declarations, not rules, and any willing country can show a stiff middle finger and nobody can do anything about it (besides declaring war, which would defeat the purpose). Individual governments should regulate themselves, not everybody intruding on everybody elses business.

What you have to ask yourself is what would the purpose be, and, more importaintly, would making the rules serve the purpose?

Apologies for taking so long to type; my cat wants my milk (I'm a sad and lonely person...)

 

[JakubK666]

Indigo got it right.There are some rules(such as a mutual agreement not to attack Field Hospitals etc.) but during a war, hardly anybody cares.

 

[Fire Daemon]

Indigo got it right.There are some rules(such as a mutual agreement not to attack Field Hospitals etc.) but during a war, hardly anybody cares.

Really, the only restriction is that if one side breaks the rules, the other side will too. Its just easier for both to simply stick to the rules and save themselves the hassle. However, as i've said, modern warfare is not so intelligent or sophisticated.

Under the right circumstances this can be changend. For example if a field hospital held vital information than it would be attacked because that vital information could be used to win a battle that could be vital to the war.

 

[Necrohydra]

Indigo got it right.There are some rules(such as a mutual agreement not to attack Field Hospitals etc.) but during a war, hardly anybody cares.

Really, the only restriction is that if one side breaks the rules, the other side will too. Its just easier for both to simply stick to the rules and save themselves the hassle. However, as i've said, modern warfare is not so intelligent or sophisticated.

Under the right circumstances this can be changend. For example if a field hospital held vital information than it would be attacked because that vital information could be used to win a battle that could be vital to the war.

...which in effect, could win the war earlier with less loss of life for that country, or possibly both. If breaking one "rule" can save thousands of lives for both sides, I can see why the rules are broken. Granted, some people also have the mentality of doing anything to win...

@j-e-f-f-e-r-s - You do know that the alternative to the U.S. bombing Japan was a land invasion of Japan, right? Which would have taken countless lives on both sides and dragged the war on for another year or two? I'm not saying bombing Japan twice was justified, but given the alternative, I can see why that decision was made.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

My brother and I had aa debate over this about a year ago when he was doing a history project and one of the subjects was the German use of Mustard gas in WWI, where he agreed with the historians who believed it to be unethical. I've thankfully never known the savagery of war firsthand, but to me it represents the ultimate failure of civility when two or more nations agree that the only way to settle their differences is the worst possible way. Why, then, are certain weapons and strategies considered 'unethical'? Isn't all war unethical by definition?

Sure, a rule banning the targeting of civillians would be great... except that soldiers will understandably do anything they can to survive, including taking cover behind civillian targets or buildings. This isn't sports. When you're fighting for your survival, most rules and niceties go out the window pretty fast.

 

[Lukeje]

@j-e-f-f-e-r-s - You do know that the alternative to the U.S. bombing Japan was a land invasion of Japan, right? Which would have taken countless lives on both sides and dragged the war on for another year or two? I'm not saying bombing Japan twice was justified, but given the alternative, I can see why that decision was made.

Hmm... so it wasn't just a test to see what would happen to a real live population? Why they detonated it in the two places where they did, with the best testing conditions? The murder of many innocent civilians (remembering that only one bomb hit america, and that was a fluke?), as opposed to soldiers fighting?

As far as I can see it, the only reason to have rules in war is to make allies, which can help you to win the war (i.e. reaching out to fellow minded countries). Many atrocities have been carried out by many (if not all) countries in times of war, but they have to know that at the end they will be held accountable by their people...

 

[EmperorDude]

There should be. America bombing Japan not once but twice during WW2 makes me feel pretty ill. But then again, the stuff that Japan did to POW's during WW2 makes me sick as well. It would be lovely if countries could agree that there are rules to abide by whilst fighting each other. But, as we know, politicians are a desperate bunch, and if nuking an enemy into submission is the easiest way to claim victory, they'll do it. That's human nature for you.

Yes 100,000 Japenese dead is awful but is it not nearly as awful
as it would be otherwise? When you have a convential combat invasion
and you combine that with their fanatical honor code alot more Japanese civilians
and allied soliders would have died.

 

[JakubK666]

Yes, it's all true...

...but assuming that (hypothetically) Japan had nuclear weapons and used it in it's counter-attack, we would have a Nuclear Winter in 1945 and the war would continue for years until both countries would be unable to carry on.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

To thieve from Lois Bujold's work, the point of war isn't just to win the war... it's to create a better peace than existed before war broke out. Rules of war (hopefully) limit the frightfulness so that some sort of better peace (or at least a peace no worse than the one before war broke out) can result out of the conflict. Atrocities and the resulting ill-will tend to make post-war peace negotiations somewhat difficult.

As to the ethics of the Nagasaki bombing, it's a thorny issue but I lean towards the interpretation that it was justified as an attempt to prevent the million-plus Allied and civilian casualties that would've resulted from Operation Olympic, the conventional invasion of Japan. I just wish the Japanese war cabinet had capitulated earlier and made the dilemma moot when it became clear that their cause was defeated... though I also understand their reluctance to accept unconditional surrender, given the atrocities committed by Japan's own occupation troops in their conquered territories. (Another argument for "laws of war", that.)

-- Steve

 

[propertyofcobra]

War should have rules. War DOES have rules. However, when some jackasses play outside the rules by, say... fake surrender or torturing POWs (the latter one being a big problem in real life right now)...Yeah.

The Geneva convention exists for a reason.

As for the Japan thing, that is a very blackly humorous event, really.
"Okay, we surrender! But we want to keep our emperor in charge!"
"Unconditional surrender, or else"
"No"
*BOOM. BOOM*
"How 'bout now?"
"Fine! We surrender!"
"Haha. Morons. Keep your emperor"
"....."

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Yes, it's all true...

...but assuming that (hypothetically) Japan had nuclear weapons and used it in it's counter-attack, we would have a Nuclear Winter in 1945 and the war would continue for years until both countries would be unable to carry on.

Um, no. The US nuclear arsenal for all of 1945 amounted to at most 10 warheads of 10-20 kilotonne yield apiece. Even had Japan matched that, and had some sort of delivery mechanism for them, that's far too few warheads to trigger a "nuclear winter"; that level of colateral damage takes hundreds of megatonnes' worth of detonations over a significant fraction of the Earth's surface, not just a dozen or two ruined cities. (After all, Allied strategic bombing had already levelled most German and Japanese industrial centers using good ol' high explosives; burning cities are burning cities as far as smoke and ash are concerned.)

Besides, Japan's industrial plant was far too ruined by conventional bombing and blockade to support any sort of extended nuclear exchange.

-- Steve

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Plus the fact Japan had no heavy bombers to deliver that warhead also makes it a moot point.

Personally, I would rather that the nuclear bomb had never been created. I don't know why, but the idea of such a small thing causing so much devastation offends me.

But in truth there are no rules in war. Win, lose, you will have to kill some civilians somewhere.

 

[Nugoo]

All is fair in war. You might not think this when you consider war but when you are fighting for your life and the life of others any thought of what is good and what is wrong will go out of the window. You will do anything to survive, under the right circumstances a nun would kill a group of school children to live.

Yeah, uh... not everyone is willing to kill to survive. There are things worse than death, and I suspect the guilt of mass murdering children is one of them.

I think the problems with our current system of rules of war is not that they're ill-defined, it's that they're ill-enforced. There are ways to enforce international law, like trade embargoes (which are actually pretty effective, depending on who participates), but they require a lot of international cooperation in order to work well. Unfortunately, that's exactly the kind of cooperation that tends to avoid wars in the first place.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

But why, after the US had already flattened Hiroshima with one bomb, did Truman then decide to flatten Nagasaki as well. He'd already wiped one major city from the face of the earth. Anything more was, for lack of a better word, overkill.

Because Japanese military leaders were still making propaganda broadcasts (that American intelligence could hear) instructing the civilian population on how to resist American invaders even with their nukes, that the US must have only one bomb to drop, that Japanese troops had developed anti-flash protective gear to fight on a nuclear battlefield, and that they'd never surrender. And they'd had no diplomatic contact indicating that the Japanese military would accept unconditional surrender.

From the Allied (not just US) viewpoint, Japan looked to be seeking to prolong the war in the hopes of making the Allies give up out of frustration or bankruptcy. The Allies were dead-set against allowing the Japanese war cabinet to remain in power; they feared a resurgeance of another Pacific war as happened in Europe after World War I's inconclusive end. They (Churchill especially) also feared what would happen if Stalin invaded Japan, after his shennanigans in occupied East Europe.

Besides, the incendiary raids on Tokyo had already killed more civilians than nuclear attacks combined. "Thousand bomber raids" had been common in the European theatre, razing entire cities in order to destroy Axis industrial production... because, despite the war-time propaganda, massed bomber formations were so inaccurate they had to select targets as big as a city and drop saturation quantities of bombs in order to hit vital targets. The RAF learned this bitter lesson in 1942; the US, with its later involvement and despite it's superior technology, in 1943 (if I recall correctly).

World War II was an ugly war; it's glamourisation is a disservice, in my opinion, to every veteran of it. It's a shame that people get mesmerised by those two single raids at the end and miss that they weren't dramatically new... just perfections of a terrible, cruel, and yet (arguably, though arguably not as well) necessary strategy.

-- Steve