Boko Haram admits abducting Nigeria girls from Chibok

[The Magistrate]

44. You Gave A Defense, Sir: A List Of Reasons Why They Are Right, And A Claim Others Behaved Worse

You are clearly unable to engage on substance regarding behavior of fighting forces.

We can begin by saying that the line you express makes it impossible for you, if you actually believe it, to denounce any force for atrocious behavior. If 'the only rule is kill or be killed' then you cannot denounce the Nigerian government, it is at war with Boko Haram's rebellion, and free to do anythinmg it pleases, just as the U.S. government is free to do or to have done anything in regards to Islamic radicals or in Viet Nam, just as the crowd in Odessa was perfectly within its rights to burn the building, and did not do one thing wrong, since there was a war between mobs, and 'kill or be killed' is the only rule anyone can be held top.

So the reaction of anyone from here on out to your criticizing the conduct of anyone involved in armed conflict should range from a hearty laugh to an invitation to pull the other finger.

In fact, all wars, and most particularly guerrilla wars and rebellions, are not just military but political struggles, and the behavior of armed forces in them have profound political effects, and can for that matter have some influence on the purely military side of a struggle. Where a guerrilla movement or rebellion aims to gain mass following, it must be very careful to calibrate it use of violence; it must aim well, and do things which will madden the state foe into over-reactions, so that common people come to see the guerrillas as 'better' than the state, as less of a danger to them than the state presents, while at the same time elite elements the state would normally count on for support are brought to disown the state's measures as 'too much'. If a guerrilla or rebel group simply aims to impose itself, it will take a course of attempting to behave more atrociously than the state can or will behave, and if it can manage to continue in existence over such an endeavor, may succeed in bringing about a condition in which it is more feared than the state, at which point it more or less becomes the state, first locally and perhaps later nationally.

Your idea that there is neither political consideration nor moral calculation in the conduct of war is risible, it is the worst sort of comic-book faux hard-boiled 'realism' imaginable, and when it guides policy or thought, always guides it straight into a ditch.

"When idealists come down from their ivory towers, they generally head straight for the gutter."