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Not prosecuting your own side after the end of the war is a good policy since you're trying to maximize your psychological potential of success at winning the w

Not prosecuting your own side after the end of the war is a good policy since you're trying to maximize your psychological potential of success at winning the war in the first place. The cloud hanging over your head at thinking you might get prosecuted for some necessary maneuver at a later date would be pretty discouraging. The distinction between necessary and unnecessary would be meaningless since it would be out of your hands. Basically, if you start a war of aggression, you have created a giant mess you can't control, so expect your people to be bombed and raped with no consequences to the victors. Winning is the most important thing in a war because it is literally us or them. There is no shared humanity to appeal to, that already went out the window. Being bombed or raped is the cost of engaging in aggressive war.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> Being bombed or raped is the cost of engaging in aggressive war. I could make the argument that the people being bombed and raped aren't generally the people who decided to start the war, but here's the better one: "They started it" is no excuse for inhuman behavior. We're supposed to be the good guys.
- A_COMPUTER 11y ago
  I'm not arguing it's moral, I'm arguing that you should only as a policy prosecute people on your own side of a war if such a policy wouldn't make your chances of winning worse. Because if you lose, your morals are worth nothing. I'm talking about total war like world war 2 here, not something like gulf war 1 where the USA completely outclassed Iraq and the goal was to push Iraq back into its own borders. Conflicts where if you don't win you're dead, there's no point in going back and punishing individuals for what happened in chaos. The goal should be preventing wars in the first place, knowing that wars enable terrible, uncontrollable circumstances.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

> Being bombed or raped is the cost of engaging in aggressive war. I could make the argument that the people being bombed and raped aren't generally the people who decided to start the war, but here's the better one: "They started it" is no excuse for inhuman behavior. We're supposed to be the good guys.

A_COMPUTER 11y ago
I'm not arguing it's moral, I'm arguing that you should only as a policy prosecute people on your own side of a war if such a policy wouldn't make your chances of winning worse. Because if you lose, your morals are worth nothing. I'm talking about total war like world war 2 here, not something like gulf war 1 where the USA completely outclassed Iraq and the goal was to push Iraq back into its own borders. Conflicts where if you don't win you're dead, there's no point in going back and punishing individuals for what happened in chaos. The goal should be preventing wars in the first place, knowing that wars enable terrible, uncontrollable circumstances.