politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
People like Hegseth like to think that the rules of warfare are woke gay bullshit designed by losers to hamper the natural winners (i.e. them), but they don't understand that prior to being codified by the Geneva convention, the rules of war were customary, and existed for reasons other than purely humanitarian ones.
For instance, when surrendering a city or fort, the defenders would be typically given something called honours of war, in which they would be permitted to march out bearing their arms and waving their flags, thus avoiding humiliation. They would then surrender their arms and be taken as prisoners of war, or, supposing that the attacking army doesn't have the facilities to keep POWs, would be granted free passage. Now you could simply let them march out and then massacre them, thus avoiding either having to care for POWs or having a bunch of enemy troops that you have to deal with in a future battle, but you can only pull that trick once - the next time, the defenders will fight to the death rather than be massacred. So you pull a dirty trick to win this battle, but it makes every future battle harder, and it also means that they will not be likely to take you prisoner. Even the Mongols would typically honour the surrender of a city (provided no resistance was offered after the ultimatum), because besieging or storming a city is much costlier than making it surrender.
You see this effect in action in the present war, where the US twice used diplomatic talks as cover for suprise attacks, and thus Iran no longer has any reason to see any diplomacy with the US as legitimate, so even as Trump wants to pull out, he can't.You can assassinate their civilian leaders, but now you have to keep your head on a swivel as you're also suddenly a legitimate target. You can sink their defenceless ship and leave the survivors to drown, but now they have no reciprocal obligation towards your crews. You can strike their embassies, but now your embassies are struck in return. You can launch attacks on them from nominally neutral countries, but now those countries are legitimate targets.