This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Under traditional international law, it's illegal to engage in "classic guerrilla warfare" if by that you mean "not wearing uniforms" or "wearing the uniforms of the enemy," which are both traditional guerrilla war tactics. (The latter was a big sticking point during the US Civil War, as Confederates would sometimes wear captured uniforms.)
I'd need to dig more into how this applies in the Israel/Palestine conflict (especially given Palestine's ambiguous status), but the whole "not wearing uniforms" was something which lots of combatants in the GWOT did. There's a reason that, AFAIK, none of the people who were getting waterboarded were surrendered Iraqi POWs was because the people who were getting waterboarded weren't part of a traditional lawful combatant and thus arguably not protected by the laws of war – my understanding is that that was the logic used by the GWB administration.
I'm not saying waterboarding was the correct decision, but there was a legal reasoning behind the decisions the Bush administration made. They didn't just decide "well we don't have to obey the law because our enemies are evil."
NB, there's provisions in the Geneva Convention, IIRC, for spontaneous resistance to an occupying force.
Technically the rule doesn’t say uniforms, does it? It says ‘recognizable emblem’.
I believe the standard is that combatants must "clearly identify themselves as such"
More options
Context Copy link
I believe something like a green cloth armband fits the standard, for pseudo-militaries that can't do better
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, I believe that's the case in modern international law.
More options
Context Copy link
This was notably the case in the Winter War in 1939 when Finland was so poorly resourced that many soldiers couldn't be equipped with proper uniforms. They used their own clothes and were only provided with a belt and a hat with the official emblem sewn on.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Right, that provision provides as follows:
ART. 4. — A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
...
6) Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory who, on the approach of the enemy, spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
Hamas and Hezbollah emphatically do not qualify under this paragraph, as they are pre-existing organizations which do organize themselves into regular units, e.g. Hamas's "Qassam Brigades" and Hezbollah's various specialized units such as the "Radwan Force," yet still engage in combat without uniforms or otherwise making themselves distinct from civilians, among other violations. Also, they aren't spontaneously taking up arms because they're drawing from long-established and disguised central arms depots, in a conflict they started.
Yeah, it seems like the clear implication here is that such forces are supposed to convert themselves into regular armed units in a timely manner. So in the GWOT context, it seems very clear that insurgents operating 5 years into the war, dressing like civilians, hiding their weapons, and not conducting themselves as a "regular armed unit" aren't conducting themselves as expected by the laws of war.
And from the context of Hamas and Hezbollah, it seems to me that (for the reasons you describe) there's no excuse for their forces not to conduct themselves as regular armed units (to whatever extent that they do so) except that it's inexpedient for them, which isn't a justification under the laws of war.
(I should note that I'm not necessarily claiming the Geneva Convention is 100% aligned with morality – there might be instances were guerrilla warfare, like spying, is morally acceptable. But if you're a spy, and you get caught, and executed, you can't very well complain about it – you knew the risks when you signed up. I'm hardly a fan of Hamas or Hezbollah, but my fact claims about the customs of war are just that.)
Right; the Geneva Conventions aren't meant to turn men into angels. They're supposed to be clear rules of the road so that everyone knows what to expect if they behave in a particular way. If people elect not to behave in the specified ways, they don't get the benefit of those clear rules. It's really simple at root.
Remember also that the Geneva Conventions are from a time when war was still something peer nations did.
The world has changed, as has the ways wars are fought- Hamas operates the way it does to exploit the fact that everyone else in the West adheres to obsolete and incorrect ideas of what modern warfare is and are very uncomfortable with reality (example: are women who make weapons for men legitimate military targets?).
Ironically Hamas has done what liberal Westerners only ever dreamed of- they made the average Palestinian women just as capable a fighter as the average Palestinian man (with respect to how their enemy limits itself).
I dunno. Some of the international customs, though, for instance around executing people out of uniform, not conducting false surrenders (and respecting noncombatant status of POWs) predates the Geneva Conventions considerably. The Civil War, for instance, is full of screeching about international law – the North threatened to hang Southern privateers as pirates, for instance, under the logic that the Confederacy wasn't a real state. And guerrilla combat was part of the Civil War (and many wars before that).
Even during the Second World War – which was the birth of the modern Conventions – partisans and guerrilla fighters were very commonplace. So while I agree that the world has changed – it might not be the world the Conventions anticipated – a lot of these problems are very old and in fact predate modern international laws.
And the way they were dealt with was reprisal killings until the population actively rejects the insurgents (and in so doing integrates with the occupying force). Which is what Israel is doing- you can't challenge a militia like this to a set-piece battle because they'll just instantly lose; they've tried that a few times already (and lost every single time).
You have to beat it out of the population, like the US did to the Germans post '45. You do that by running decapitation strikes (that's what Nuremberg was for, and that's why the Israelis settled on exploding pagers) on the previous elite and only focus on destroying the elements of the enemy population that are legitimately intolerable or otherwise not useful to you; it wasn't necessary to destroy all of the underlying Nazi tendencies of the German population (and would have been harmful considering the country was to be the first line of defense against the Soviets), just the ones that brought them into conflict with American interests.
So it is with the Palestinians. They lost the war, now they're trying to avoid being subsumed and, in absence of any competent people, are unable to do this through soft power. (What Blue states try to do to Red states in the US when/as they have the opportunity is exactly the same; part of the Blue civil religion is to deny they do this, which is naturally why they seek to deny any of their provinces the right to do it- something the Palestinians, as their fargroup, are able to exploit.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link