[falcor84]

Yes.

Absolutely.

If there are invaders who are killing everybody around me and telling me that they'll stop and generally let me be if I surrender and agree to live in a democracy, I expect that I'll be very inclined to accept. Maybe afterwards, if I see it's not working out, I may still consider guerrilla resistance down the line, but I don't see the benefit of fighting and most likely dying just for the sake of defiance, and to then allow any survivors a chance to continue in their resistance for another decade or so, until eventually they might be able to start rebuilding a nation from the rabble.

In what world is surrender, keeping our lives and infrastructure, not a more rational approach?

EDIT: To be clear, while I occasionally have pacifistic thoughts on pretty spring days, I'm not arguing for pacifism here - fighting is absolutely rational when you have a clear path to victory, but if you don't, then I think it's just an absolute waste of human lives.

[trick-or-treat]

Wasting human lives in war is the goal of jihad. This is the part that westerners have a hard time understanding.

Why does Hamas hold hostages in tunnels under their own civilian populations? Not because they think Israel will hesitate to bomb there, they know they won't.

It's because the death of their own population is a goal in itself.

[donkeybeer]

If wasting human lives in war is the goal of Jihad then America and Israel are the highest and most supreme jihadis in the world for several decades.

[falcor84]

I believe that the argument was that jihad is about wasting the lives of their own citizens; America and Israel generally manage to reduce that.

[WalterBright]

Fighting is rational when the alternative is being killed.

FDR made a big mistake announcing that he was going for unconditional surrender. This resulted in Germany fighting to the bitter end. Hitler dragged it on to the last few hours - he knew what was going to happen to him when the war ended.

[watwut]

It was not mistake. Nazi dragged because they had to due to own ideology.

But allies had to achieve clear military victory, because of WWI aftermath. Germany did not believed it lost, it believed it was betrayed and wanted do-over. No surrender thing was to prevent next round with WWIII as Germans feel like betrayed again.

[WalterBright]

The Germans had a saying at the time: "enjoy the war because the peace will be hell".

They were correct.

> Germany did not believed it lost, it believed it was betrayed

The citizens were not that stupid. They knew by 1944 that they were going to lose. All they had to do was look up, and see the ever-growing endless streams of B-17s overhead. They knew what the Red Army was going to do to them. They knew payback was coming from the Allies.

[watwut]

> If there are invaders who are killing everybody around me and telling me that they'll stop and generally let me be if I surrender and agree to live in a democracy

I mean, that is not what is happening or was happening tho. No one is saying they want to build democracy in Iran ... and Iranians would be dumb if they believed such claim. Because of Irans history itself, but also because if Israel history/ideology and because of how USA behaved last year.

And in addition, the only one who can surrender is the Iranian regime itself (not Iranians in general) and that regime would gain nothing in such deal (if such deal was offered).

[donkeybeer]

Yes and its much more rational to see that the invaders are natural born liars and they installed puppet dictatorships while talking "democracy" and very literally a few days ago backstabbed and invaded you while in the pretense of doing peace negotiations. Logically for an Iranian the most rational response would be to always kill Americans or Israelis in this case.

[falcor84]

> Logically for an Iranian the most rational response would be to always kill Americans or Israelis in this case.

For what definition of rational? Do you believe their killing of Americans and Israelis has or will benefit Iranians?

[donkeybeer]

What? What else is a military supposed to do to an invader's soldiers and agents in an active war? War means killing the enemies.

[falcor84]

War is about achieving political ends, which killing may or may not be instrumental towards. It's very unclear to me whether Iran's killing of Americans and Israelis, either directly via missiles or via their proxies, had realized any benefits for the nation of Iran, let alone for the average Iranian.

[donkeybeer]

American and Israeli soldiers are invading Iran currently. So just like standard procedure for any war, killing as many enemy combatants as possible is the point and beneficial for Iran as it aids toward repelling the invasion. America at least can be pressured to withdraw as the general populace is ambivalent about the war.

[corimaith]

Iraq is many things but its not a puppet dictatorship, if anything it suffers from too much democracy in secterianism.

[donkeybeer]

Iran itself in the past, Iraq as Saddam, Pinochet, Batista, ....