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

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.