“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.
Bravo Two Zero was in Desert Storm, we don’t know what their failed mission cost us, but it was incredibly bloody McNabb claims hundreds died and he lost three men but that is neither here nor there.
In Europe with a team hundreds of miles into the Soviet Union and WWII chaos behind them there would not be the options that the US Army Special forces LRRP team had in Desert Storm when they canceled their mission and fought their way out with air support with no losses.
When a silent, invisible team is moving alone, truly alone, hundreds of miles behind enemy lines carrying 160 pounds of irreplaceable gear on their back, hoping that they can complete the all important intelligence mission and that they will be able to be picked up in a week or ten days, what do you want them to do when they bump into a couple of soldiers, surrender, take them prisoner?
LRS missions are some of the most valuable, complicated, silent, and invisible missions in existence and they end once sighted, in some situations like the European theater in a WWIII that meant certain death for the entire LRS team of which few people exist in and who take a very long time to replace, and the total failure of the Army level intelligence gathering mission, does each one end at the first appearance of a civilian or a wounded or captured soldier? Everybody just throws up their hands and discards the all important mission, and calmly dies either in gunfire in a futile effort to fight or under torture?
By the way these are 4 to six man teams I am talking about, not the mass of Merrill’s Marauders.
How do you think the Merrill’s Marauders dealt with prisoners?