What a great point. Can't imagine we'll ever see the day... or maybe "peace treaty" is the new surrender ceremony?

Ralphie:

Amos was a fine officer and an acute observer of war and art. That conversation on a rainy afternoon has stayed lodged in my mind like a thorn. He was oh-so-right. And of course, Hamas and Fatah use ceasefires when their losses start to pile up and become really painful. During the lull they rebuild, resupply and prepare for the next round. Peace treaties without surrenders are simply more deadly ceasefires.

Amos was absolutely right.

That's what's wrong with Marathon Man: at the end, after all he's been through, Dustin Hoffmann tosses his pistol away into the Central Park Reservoir.

Jeremiah:

Yes, well, Hollywood in the 60's and 70's was devoted to blood-soaked action films that ended on notes of peace and/or pacifism. Not just stupid but dangerously stupid.

Yeah. I watched Bridge at Remagen a week or two back; it was from that era. The historical accuracy was not bad; Hitler really did shoot the officers in command at the bridge. But the film engineered an excuse to show a semi-nude woman, for no good reason, and it would have been awfully tough for a visiting Martian watching this film to tell which were the good guys, and why this was a great victory for civilization.

On the larger issue: One of the reasons the Pacific half of WWII was so barbaric, while combat in northwest Europe never quite hit the bottom in barbarity, is that the two sides in northwest Europe shared a concept of honorable surrender. (Behavior behind the combat lines in Germany is a very different matter, of course.)

Re Kent's comment. Let's not obfuscate here. The barbarity in the Pacific was not two-sided. The policies of vivisections and slave labor and rapes were, as I understand it, specific to the Japanese military.
But as to the larger point, it certainly is true that, as Robert has said many times, some wars are won by demonstrating to the rational mind of the enemy that the cost in pain and lost life outweighs the likelihood of gain, and some wars are only won when one side is forced to personally face the possibility of wholesale and horrible destruction.

Israel cannot permanently defeat its enemies any more than an Angkor or a Tikal can permanently defeat the jungle. As far as the various Muslim states of the Middle East are concerned, the existence of Israel is only a historical blip. Even if Israel were to win a war against them in dramatic fashion, they would never accept that Israel has a right to exist in anything like its current form. As long as Israel exists, it will never be secure.

Even if Israel were to win a war against them in dramatic fashion, they would never accept that Israel has a right to exist in anything like its current form.

That is based upon speculation. Let Israel fight. Let it truly unleash the gates of hell without interference from the UN and watch what happens.

There is a reason why certain countries signed a peace treaty.

The possibility of Israel "releasing the gates of hell" is not cause for optimism. The adversary would fight back, the way they know best. Both sides would continue with round after round of retaliation. People would die. Israel would be roundly condemned by its critics. Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. would bide their time. No problems would be solved.

Barzilai,

I'm not obfuscating. American troops were vastly less barbarous than their opponents in either theater. It's clear they were on the side of civilization. However, both sides were more barbarous in the Pacific than their counterparts in Europe, and I think the Japanese military cult of death is largely responsible.

American troops in the Pacific were known to mutilate enemy corpses, primarily by removing gold teeth but occasionally taking other remains (putting Japanese skulls on jeep headlights, and so on.) Yes, the Japanese did far worse; for example, they did not always feel obligated to wait until their enemy was dead before commencing the mutilation. The American behavior was mild retaliation for what they had seen the Japanese do, but still wrong. By contrast, I don't know of any widespread mutilation of Germans by American troops.

American troops were not usually reluctant to accept German surrender, except in places like the Ardennes where German misbehavior engendered a "take no prisoners" mentality. On the other hand, the Japanese had pretended to surrender -- then produced a hand grenade or machine gun -- often enough that entire American divisions in the Pacific adopted a policy of "take no prisoners." Since few Japanese surrendered anyway, I'm not sure how great the practical effect was, except that Allied intelligence considered Japanese prisoners extremely valuable (a surrendered Japanese felt so ashamed that he sang like a canary) and were hurt by "take no prisoners" attitudes. Again, treatment of Japanese prisoners by the Americans cannot be compared to treatment of Allied prisoners by the Japanese.

The comparison is Americans in the Pacific to Americans in Europe, and Japanese to Germans -- not Americans to Axis, which is no comparison.