Soldiers of BOTH sides honoured? please help i'm confused:S

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Seeing that Rememberance Day is coming up again, I want to ask a question that i have been always struggling with. How can soldiers of both sides of a war be honoured? The soldiers used to kill each other. Please help i'm so confused. Like does all sides of all wars always have the right to remeber their war dead? Like does Al-Qaeda have the right to remember and honour their war dead? What about the Taliban in Afghanistan who are fighting American, Canadian, etc... soldiers? For example i know that germany has some day to remember their war dead, but so does america and the allies, whose war dead used to kill germany's war dead. I really want to understand this concept of Rememberance Day...Please help

thanks for reading this long post

Theyre more just saying it in consideration of those other countries.

Sometimes the soldiers of other countries dont get to chose to go to war they just get caught up in it. Im thinking German soldiers in WW2, most of which probably werent 'evil' at all, just got forced into the army and fed the wrong information by propaganda.

Its also tradition to honour the enemy. All through history people have done it

ya, but what about the so called "fighting for their values" concept. So should the Taliban be honoured for fighting for what they believe to be good for afghanistan (strict Islamic Law)? Should Hamas soldiers be honoured for what they see as "resisting occupation" while Israel remeber its war dead for what they see as "self-defense from rockets targeting civilians"? You have to remember that not all Hamas fighters are rocket launchers and not all Israeli soldiers follow international law when fighting.

We call it "Veteran's Day" in America, but the concept is the same.
Thinking of soldiers that have fought in wars, as well as their families and loved ones.

I think that the idea of honoring soldiers of BOTH sides comes with the passage of time.
The First World War happened almost 100 years ago. Such a heavy, emotionally-charged conflict leaves scars on society. But those scars fade over time. People forget why they were so angry at the other side. Generations pass. The war becomes less personal and more historical. To most of us now, the First World War is nothing more than a dry historical event. We don't feel personally connected to it.

Look at what happened with the American Revolution. Or even World War II. Recent enemies become friends, or even allies. We dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan 50 years ago. Now we drive the cars they design and use the technology they produce.

Time eventually erases the emotional content from war. So we remember soldiers of both sides in a historical, humanistic way... "Here were people who suffered. Let's think of them favorably". That kind of thing.

Honouring the enemy is easier if that enemy fights with honour themselves. The Wermacht fought as any army is supposed to do, and generally fought by the accepted rules of war, and fought with honour. There are exceptions, but then there are always exceptions. People tend NOT to speak of honouring the men of the SS who slaughtered American POWs, as to do so was to fight without honour. Likewise, generally things like IEDs, carbombs, civilian shileds and the like are not considered honourable forms of warfare, so people do not speak well of their proponents.

Of course that system suffers when it collides with other "honour systems".. like that of the Japanese, who by their standards fought with impeccable honour. Standards that were simply not recognised by their foes. The system also suffers when taken outside the conventional. However, it is usually possible to show respect for an enemy that has fought bravely, and well.

Think of it from an individual soldier's point of view. You either volunteered or were conscripted into the military, which then orders you to go to some place to fight. So you go there and fight. In WWII, this happened in the same way in America and in Germany. Why can't we honor someone who fought bravely and well, even if they were on the wrong side?

I think a very clear distinction can be drawn between a country that fights honorably, and one that commits war crimes routinely, and in the same way, a distinction can be drawn between guerilla forces that try to blow up enemy bases and terrorists who try to blow up civillians who were just minding their own business.

I don't think that's true. In a real war you fight to win. If that means killing civilians, using torture, or summary execution of prisoners then that's what you do. That's what we (as in the allied forces) did during WW2. When people talk of avoiding war crimes and collateral damage in recent conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan they do so in the context that these are nothing more than minor skirmishes where our military fight with their hands tied behind their backs for much of the time. For us they are political battles, not wars for national survival. When we're next faced with a WW2 type conflict, nobody will worry much about honour or war crimes, except the ministry of propaganda, until it's all over.

You obviously know nothing about military history.
The rules of war were not invented by sentimental civilians, but by soldiers looking out for thier own military interests.

By mentioning ww2 you slit your own throat a demolished your own point.

Even when were defending our own soil the western allies were never as criminal as the axis in World War Two. Even when had an excuse to be that criminal - we still essentially fought by the rules.

There are very few documented cases of western (allied) troops committing "war crimes" during WW2. Even less so in WW1. They are the exception, not the rule. Likewise the majority of war crimes committed by the Germans were not, it seems, committed by Wermacht units in the field, but by occupying forces, the Gestapo, higher state officials, and the SS.

Even the notorious Waffen SS could not be counted on to act with brutality all the time, as in the case of the battle for Arnhem. Allied troops captured at Arnhem were treated incredibly well by the SS troops they had faced, as respected and feared warriors and opponents, in the immediate aftermath.

Of course the Soviet front was rife with inhumane acts, but this is hardly surprising given the behaviour of the German occupiers towards the Russians in the first place.

Painting the whole allied military with the same broad brush of inhumane bestiality is not only inaccurate, its downright insulting.

Is there an honorable way to murder your fellow man?

There is no honor in war, and can not be. It is a contest of trying to kill other people before they kill you. I see no way to extract honor from such base brutality. The very term "war crime" is redundant.

disagree to an extent. Killing civilians generally turns the survivors from potential conscripts to definite enlisted men. the 'T' word should not even be open to discussion, period. sumary execution of prisoners depends precisely on why you're doing it; for example the US forces in the Pacific theatre, loaded up to the eyeballs on the anti-japanese (and deeply racist) propaganda, would at times execute Japanese soldiers who surrendered on the spot - once other Japanese soldiers got wind of this they thought it better to fight to the death or take their own life than walk into an execution, hence in part the fercoity of the war in that theatre. On the other hand in the Russian Civil War many of the old Tsarist army officers were executed - though given the sheer stupidity of the British officer caste in WW1 (and often in general) I wouldn't have thought they'd be missed by the rank and file there either. At all. Also regarding killing civilians, I understand it is generally regarded that the bombing campaigns of both the Allies and the Luftwaffe against civilian population centers was also largely counterproductive and the Dresden bombing had no military application whatsoever so far as I can see and little if any political as Germany was already being rolled up on both fronts by that point.

It's possible to question the efficacy of the actions I described, but the point is that if the survival of your nation and way of life is at stake, then you'll take whatever action you consider is necessary at the time. Currently, the wars we are fighting to the likes of Brown, Obama et al., are nothing but games. If they fail, they and their families will not be swinging from a rope. Nor will any of the bleeding heart liberals, or tabloid newspaper editors who criticise the actions of our troops who are forced to fight with their hands tied behind their backs, so to speak.

I don't think there were any rules in ww2. And anyway, the final decision on operations like carpet bombing cities were made by politicians. As for military history, although I have not formally studied it, your assertion is completely innaccurate. I have also talked to several people who served in WW2 and other conflicts. In particular a chap who was involved in bombing Dresden. He was still racked with guilt over fifty years later. I couldn't understand that as a youngster until I read accounts of what it was like on the receiving end. I'm not making any judgment on whether it was right or wrong; but without doubt it was terrible. The Yanks did a similar thing with Japanese cities before they used nuclear weapons. It could be argued that any nation who commits such acts forfeits any right to accuse others of wrong doing.

Anyway, perhaps it's an innapropriate time to discuss such things. On the other hand maybe that's not the case because I'm not criticising individuals who served their country. What i would criticise is the way politicians attempt sanitise war for public consumption. I'm not a pacifist, though. War is necessary on occasion.

Winners write the history books. If the Axis powers had won WW2 i think a lot of information about allied forces war crimes would have come out. To say that the allied forces did not commit any relevant atrocities is blatantly ignorant. Read about what the Russians did to German women, read about British carpet bombing of residential areas and hospitals etc. etc.

there were three Geneva conventions upto and including the one in 1929 as well as the Hague conventions.



my point is that they can be counter-productive, massively so at times - the ends justify the means, but only if the ends are justifiable.



tell that to the 1.3 million who have died in Iraq, to the thousands who have died in Afghanistan - I've found it very hard to get any kind of figure on the overall number of civilian casualties there.



I'm not sure I follow, are you suggesting we crucify all who oppose us there? It seems to me that NATO troops don't have there hands tied at all, in fact they seem to be firmly grasped around Afghanistan's neck. So far as I can tell the point of invading Afghanistan is to set up permanent US bases to control central asia and deny the oil pipeline to China, all else is secondary. Fairly successful so far.

In the USA, we generally celebrate Armistice Day (now called Veterans' Day) by shopping at the mall.