{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "I love when people are like \u201cthis character is a war criminal\u201d and show a character from a setting where we have no idea what...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/660010474700783616/", "html": "

mugasofer:

derinthescarletpescatarian:

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hobbitguy1420:

petitiontoburntumb1rtohell:

derinthescarletpescatarian:

I love when people are like \u201cthis character is a war criminal\u201d and show a character from a setting where we have no idea what the rules of war are. Like yeah they\u2019re a torturer or murderer or whatever but if you wanna call them a criminal over it you gotta back it up with some kind of indication of what things might be in their conventions.

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They don\u2019t even have a Geneva

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\n#like Obi Wan#who uses surrender negotiations as a stalling tactic until Anakin and backup can bust through the droids#surrender under false circumstances is a war crime#idk it\u2019s just interesting the way we think about these things\u00a0

I don\u2019t Star Wars so I have no idea about Obi Wan\u2019s surrenders but I think it\u2019s worth pointing out that in general, people often misunderstand that particular rule. It\u2019s illegal to falsely surrender, as in, you can\u2019t pretend to surrender to let your enemy\u2019s guard down and then ambush them or attack them during the surrender or use it to get close to their base for a sneak attack or anything. Once you have properly, genuinely surrendered, it is NOT illegal to try to escape, or take advantage of opportunities to spy and sabotage that are handed to you by your enemy, or just generally be an inconvenience in ways that aren\u2019t violating the terms of your surrender. A POW escaping a prison camp isn\u2019t committing a war crime. A POW who overhears their captors planning and manages to get a warning out to their own army isn\u2019t committing a war crime. Someone who surrenders their unit because they know they know that doing so will stall the enemy more than fighting or fleeing, and give the rest of the army a better fighting chance, is not committing a war crime. If the enemy decides to take prisoners and then can\u2019t control those prisoners, that\u2019s their own fucking problem; if they weren\u2019t prepared or equipped to deal with prisoners, they should\u2019ve taken the territory and made the surrendering party retreat peacefully instead. the surrender itself must be genuine but once the surrender is complete you are under no obligation to continue to be cooperative outside the terms of that surrender.

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Yeah, no, Obi-Wan literally pretended to surrender as a \u201cclever trick\u201d to stall the enemy leadership negotiating the surrender terms until Anakin could reach him and help kill them all, IIRC. It\u2019s in the first Clone Wars episode I believe.

Like, it worked for the story, but that\u2019s definitely going to undermine any legitimate surrenders the Jedi ever need to make and potentially get people killed because it \u201ccould be a trick\u201d if you think about it.

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Peasant uprisings were repeatedly crushed by nobles offering a parlay to the leaders and then capturing/executing them, because the riled-up illiterate peasants were unlikely to have even known about something that happened on the other side of the country 50 years ago.

Like it’s not just “ooh Marx, nifty!” the 19th century really did expect, on a reasonable basis, that a permanent international network linking commoners with literacy and historical education would be able to turn the tables

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