“...It sounded like you were saying that our US soldiers should have executed the ones who surrendered w (hands up no weapons),...”
No, I said If you catch a guy planting IEDs, sniping at our guys, actively engaged in combat against our people, he should not be treated to a taxpayer-funded vacation at Club Gitmo. You waste him on the spot.
But - It DID happen in WWI and WWII as well. German machine gunners in BOTH wars were notorious for firing their weapon until it ran dry, killing our guys by the score, then throwing up their hands and yelling “KAMERADE!!!”. They were killed on the spot. Hell, I have a book about the PA 28th Infantry Division written in 1919 about combat in the Argonne, by soldiers who were there, and it says it was commonplace to just shoot those gunners outright, surrendering or not.
And in the Pacific in WWII, the Marines - my uncles included - didn’t try to take them prisoner unless they were ordered to for intelligence purposes. They KNEW that Bushido demanded that the Japanese kill himself rather than surrender. So they didn’t bother with formalities. That guy’s job was to kill as many Americans as he could, then die gloriously for Dai Nippon and the Emperor...
It’s difficult to say what one should or shouldn’t do, when we weren’t there. We can only speculate how we would react.
But as a personal policy... for me, it would matter a GREAT deal to me that my buddies and I would come home alive, rather than worrying about the other guy.
If his hands are in the air, and he so much as BLINKS the wrong way, well... too bad. Would you take the chance that he DOESN’T have a suicide belt on, or a grenade taped to his stomach under the shirt?
Patton had it right. Make the other dumb bastard die for his country, or ideology, or whatever.
That comes very close to what my take on things would be.
I’m not in favor of killing people who have surrendered on the battle-field. In certain circumstances, it might be advisable.
Some operations are carried out by the rules of war. If you capture someone under those circumstances, then treat them by the rules of war.
If they have been breaking the rules of war, simply execute them as an example of what happens to people who don’t play by the rules of war. It’s very simple really.
Live by breaking the rules of war, die for breaking the rules of war.
I guess its the word ‘catch’
Catch could mean he's armed in which case in war you go right for the kill. Its war.
Catch could also mean they surrender with hands up and you execute him, maybe ask him to turn him around so you don't see his face when you shoot him in back.
That's much like Stalin's treatment of Polish army in that Forest ~ 1939. He saved USSR taxpayers lots of $$$ too, not feeding those dead Polish soldiers.