• Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    64
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    “the law requires every graduate to be an officer, so killing officers is actually killing the intelligentsia”

    wtf-am-i-reading

    Um, maybe if you don’t want that to happen, just… don’t have that law? This is like conscripting child soldiers and then complaining that your enemy is murdering children. Like, if you’re actually fighting a truly desperate conflict against a genocidal foe, like the Soviets against the Nazis, some desperate measures can be justified, but this is interwar Poland we’re talking about here.

    We’ve fully entered the “killing soldiers is actually genocide” phase of rhetoric (except when Western countries actually kill civilians, that’s just regrettable but unavoidable collateral damage).

    • Um, maybe if you don’t want that to happen, just… don’t have that law? This is like conscripting child soldiers and then complaining that your enemy is murdering children.

      Egh, this comparison seems a bit iffy… (Context: look at Israeli rumours about child soldiers in Gaza, and thus justifying killing children)

      You could put in women there and that makes sense, while not being as problematic…

      Other than that, I agree somewhat… though I believe the Soviets aren’t the perpetrators…

      • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        Egh, this comparison seems a bit iffy…

        I sort of agree, but that’s why I added the bit afterwards about desperate measures - Gazans are in exactly such a situation, fighting a foe that openly declares its intention to exterminate them. In such circumstances, a lot of things are justifiable that otherwise wouldn’t be. The various rules of war can be useful in “normal” conflicts where a negotiated settlement can be reached, and following those rules can limit escalation and thus minimize damage to all parties involved, but if one side seeks to completely slaughter the other, that framework kind of falls apart - things have already escalated to one of the highest levels possible.

        Poland was, until the Nazi invasion, not fighting a genocidal foe, and in fact had been the aggressor in their war against the Soviets, had participated in the partition of Czechoslovakia, and had some pretty wild expansionist ideas. So their case is rather different.

    • Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      36
      ·
      7 months ago

      It’s just the Polish nationalistic narrative (also including such delusions how if Poland hadn’t been attacked by Nazi Germany and the USSR, it’d be a world power) - they could have gone away with citing some crackpot from the IPN or something.