You aren’t supposed to slit the throats of men who you capture alive, but some missions still call for such things.
“You aren’t supposed to slit the throats of men who you capture alive, but some missions still call for such things.”
Actually, according to LOAC and our western moral code, that is not allowed and therefore not called for.
Bravo 20, the British Special Forces unit in Iraq in 1991, was compromised (discovered) by a child and was faced with such a situation. They chose the moral and right thing to do and did not murder the child that discovered them.
Murder is not killing in war. Soldiers kill all the time—it is what they are supposed to do. Murder is the unlawful taking of a life—and slitting the throat of a captured enemy is such an act.
There are complex and difficult situations that muddy the waters terribly and this means each situation must be taken on its own merits and weighed in accordance with Just War. Things such as double-effect, proportionality and strategic devastation all wander into this challenging area.
If you slit the throat (murder) the prisoner you are committing murder. That is undisputed.
What separates us from the murdering pig-scat dwelling muslimes from our Christian and moral way of war is the fact we do not murder and we do not deliberately inflict suffering upon the innocent (balanced by the aforementioned caveats listed above).
Muslimes make the suffering of the innocent the primary aim of their evil.
We are not them.