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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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I don't know. I kind of think that you should ant the guy that's in charge of the actual fighting to buy in to the whole Conan The Barbarian meme about "what is best in life?" unironically.

I also think that if I were President Truman in the spring of '45 I would want to keep Morgenthau and his plan on hand, in part because the whole "Good Cop, Bad Cop" cliche is a cliche for a reason. That reason is that it works.

I do know. Assuming for a second that this does end with ground forces coming to grips with the enemy, a declaration of "no quarter, no mercy" is both profoundly stupid and profoundly evil.

Stupid, because we'd like Iranian footsoldiers to surrender. A process made more difficult when we're handing them ready made, authentic propaganda in which the American government declares that they will be summarily shot if they surrender and no prisoners will be taken. Stupid, because setting that standard makes turnabout fair play when a Marine is captured, and I don't want captured American troops torture-murdered. I'd like to see PoW conditions on both sides closer to the Western front than the Eastern front.

Evil, because it's obviously evil to murder a surrendered enemy soldier on the spot. It serves no purpose beyond the gratification of base human desires. This is a betrayal of American tradition dating back at least to the Lieber Code in the Civil War:

Art. 49: A prisoner of war is a public enemy armed or attached to the hostile army for active aid, who has fallen into the hands of the captor, either fighting or wounded, on the field or in the hospital, by individual surrender or by capitulation. All soldiers, of whatever species of arms; all men who belong to the rising en masse of the hostile country; all those who are attached to the army for its efficiency and promote directly the object of the war, except such as are hereinafter provided for; all disabled men or officers on the field or elsewhere, if captured; all enemies who have thrown away their arms and ask for quarter, are prisoners of war, and as such exposed to the inconveniences as well as entitled to the privileges of a prisoner of war.

Art. 52: No belligerent has the right to declare that he will treat every captured man in arms of a levy en masse as a brigand or bandit. If, however, the people of a country, or any portion of the same, already occupied by an army, rise against it, they are violators of the laws of war, and are not entitled to their protection.

Art. 56: A prisoner of war is subject to no punishment for being a public enemy, nor is any revenge wreaked upon him by the intentional infliction of any suffering, or disgrace, by cruel imprisonment, want of food, by mutilation, death, or any other barbarity.

But then you say

I also think that if I were President Truman in the spring of '45 I would want to keep Morgenthau and his plan on hand...

Which makes me wonder if you understand what a declaration of "no quarter" means exactly, and are using it just to say "we should be meaner."

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