Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict
- 2 Friends, Foes, or Brothers in Arms? The Puzzle of Combatant Equality
- PART I COMBATANTS IN ASYMMETRIC WAR
- PART II NONCOMBATANTS IN ASYMMETRIC WAR
- PART III CONCLUSION AND AFTER WORD
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
2 - Friends, Foes, or Brothers in Arms? The Puzzle of Combatant Equality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Torture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict
- 2 Friends, Foes, or Brothers in Arms? The Puzzle of Combatant Equality
- PART I COMBATANTS IN ASYMMETRIC WAR
- PART II NONCOMBATANTS IN ASYMMETRIC WAR
- PART III CONCLUSION AND AFTER WORD
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
World War I: The Western Front, 1915: Comrade, I did not want to kill you. … But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response …. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony – Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western FrontNapoleonic Wars: Borodino, Russia, 1812: The French have destroyed my home and are coming to destroy Moscow; they have outraged and are outraging me at every moment. They are my enemies, they are all criminals to my way of thinking …. They must be put to death.
Leo Tolstoy, War and PeaceQuestions about the status of enemy soldiers are not the sole purview of asymmetric conflict (or of attitudes about the French). Remarque, speaking through Paul, a World War I German infantryman, presents the classic view of modern war: all soldiers are moral equals and brothers in arms. Each may use armed force to defend himself against attack from the other.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Moral Dilemmas of Modern WarTorture, Assassination, and Blackmail in an Age of Asymmetric Conflict, pp. 26 - 50Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009