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Notes -
"Outgroup vs. Fargroup" comes to mind here. Fighting a bunch of people on the other side of the world who you are somewhat sympathetic toward, versus fighting the useless, inbred, gap-toothed, room-temperature-IQ, religious fanatic, every -ist and -phobe, Klanazis that make up the hated enemy tribe?
Which means they had nothing to fear from giving up and going home. When "home" is where you're fighting, it's win-or-die, so the motivation is much stronger.
I don't remember where it was, but I remember a year or two ago reading an editorial online from a retired general, ostensibly about the possibility of civil war in the US (though he ultimately used it to lay out his — IMO ridiculous — position on counter-insurgency), where he gave this as one of the arguments as to why whichever side of a second civil war the military pics simply cannot lose — the US military, since the 20th century, has not been and cannot be defeated, the politicians have merely gotten tired and called it off; but since doing so in a civil war is suicide…
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