On surrender

 Nobody enjoys losing, even when there are no real stakes.  Once upon a time, I enjoyed a nice game of chess.  The stakes are zero, but nobody enjoys losing.  The higher the stakes, the less enjoyable losing becomes.  What of surrender?  In game theoretic terms, we model "war of attrition" or "brinksmanship" with a "surrender" option such that a player strategically selects that option, and sacrifices something because the cost of surrendering is outweighed by the cost of continuing in the game.  Surrender can be rational, if unpleasant.  The irrational will fight past the point of rational surrender, for whatever reason.  A conception of honor, the perceived virtue of the cause, whatever.  Yet rationality will sometimes demand surrender, regardless of the virtue of your cause.  Confederacy apologists used to refer to "The Lost Cause," bitter about being forced to surrender, even though their cause was as evil as a cause can be.  The problem was that they believed in it, in addition to their bitterness about the necessity of surrender.  They still surrendered, after a war that killed a horrifying 30,000 or so.  Genocide numbers.  Oh, wait.  No.  600,000+.  Maybe 750,000, depending on your sources.  With 19th Century weapons.  Sorry.  Back to the land of facts.

Yet surrender becomes rational.  Necessary.  The death/murder of Alexei Navalny and the fall of Avdiivka have brought renewed attention to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  I repeat what I have been saying for a long time.  Ukraine is already dead.  Ukraine is dead because the Trumpified Republican Party has the moral fibre of the ex-KGB psychopath under whose thumb they are.  Regardless of the reason, though, Ukraine is dead, and never really had a chance, because the Republican Party was always destined to ride to Putin's rescue.  The idea of Ukraine's surrender has been broached and always rejected, based on the moral reprehensibility of Vladimir Putin's invasion.  Ukraine, as nearly everyone recognizes, has a right of self-governance and self-defense.  Yet it will lose.  What does it sacrifice for the morality of the cause?  I despise the question.  The Confederacy was wrong in its lost cause, but Ukraine is right.  Yet it will lose.  How many die?  I despise this question.  In the longer view, I console myself with the fact that Russia will never be able to keep Ukraine.  With or without our help (probably without), a post-Putin Russia will not be able to keep Ukraine, but many lives, many more lives will be lost because the moral concept of surrender seems to outweigh the inevitability of loss and the actual cost of fighting.  I don't think that's rational.

Yet note how frequently we at least talk about the idea.

Consider, in contrast, the war in which the bad guys are losing, and nearly the entire world tells the good guys to cease fire.  Nobody even considers telling the bad guys to surrender.

They lie about the death toll, where it fits in the historical pattern of deaths in war, lie about "genocide," using the standard anti-Semitic trope of "Holocaust inversion," and deny the good guys the right of self-defense, but never even consider telling the bad guys, while exaggerating the scale of death and destruction, to surrender.

Here's how war works.  If Country A and Country B are at war, they each fight in order to force surrender.  How?  By killing and destroying.  War is mass violence.  You fight and destroy until the other side either has no resources to fight anymore, or lacks the will to fight anymore.

Treason, by the way, has a technical definition.  Giving aid and comfort to your enemy during a time of war.  Giving stuff to the country at which you are at war-- which attacked you-- which you are trying to defeat.  Yes, this means that the entire world is demanding that Israel commit treason against itself rather than defeat the enemy that attacked it by invading and literally raping women to death.

Give them stuff and rebuild after you defeat them.  If you give them stuff during the war, you have committed treason, by the technical, legal definition.  No, Israel should not be giving them anything.  Israel should tell them to surrender if they want stuff.  Remember.  "Treason."

You fight them until they cannot fight anymore, by lack of resources or will.

Gaza is getting pummeled.  Why?  Their elected government, whose charter stated that it was committed to the genocide of the Jews, sent terrorists across a border-- not a "prison wall," a national border-- targeted and slaughtered over a thousand civilians, literally raping women to death, burning and dismembering children, taking hostages, and you know the rest.  72% of Palestinians agreed with the attack, and the opposition was not moral, but rather, practical.  Support was higher in the West Bank than in Gaza, because the response would come to Gaza.

And now, a nation is fighting a defensive war with, as I noted yesterday, a remarkably small death toll.  Yet Gaza is getting pummeled, and if anyone were truly concerned (nobody in the Arab world really is-- they hate the Palestinians, and just use the cause to manipulate useful idiots around the world), such a person would tell the Palestinians to surrender.

You're losing.  You never built anything, except tunnels from which to launch terrorist attacks, and what little you had is getting destroyed.  People are dying.  If you truly care, then surrender.

Of course, Hamas is happy to see literally everyone in the territories die.  As far as they're concerned, any Muslim killed goes to paradise as a martyr, so there's no bad there, and then the world gets angry at Israel, and that's good too because maybe then there will be a mass uprising and more Jew-killing.  Will they surrender?  No.

We consider, though, the observation that no one in the outside world even broaches the idea of a surrender.  Why not?  Is it a recognition of this psychopathic mindset?  Acceptance?  The problem is that anyone who recognizes the mindset would then recognize the need to defeat Hamas because once you understand this mindset, you understand the horrifying and destructive nature of it.  That is precisely why Israel must defeat Hamas rather than "cease fire."

Rather, consider the moral outrage with which so many respond to any suggestion of Ukraine's surrender.  I admit, I share the outrage, although currently, I think it may be necessary since the United States has fallen into the moral pit.  Those who originally suggested Ukraine's surrender did so during a period of support from the United States, and were clearly Russia partisans.

I am not.  I'm just a pragmatist.

Yet note the split.  The Russia partisans were the ones telling Ukraine to stop fighting, surrender, or at least, "negotiate."  Hence, the moral outrage, and the conflation of the suggestion that Country A surrender with one's moral stance regarding Country A.  If you are on Country A's side, you will object to any notion that Country A surrender, regardless of the strategic or practical situation.

I am on Ukraine's side, 100%.  But they'll lose, and it is time to recognize that.  Putin will fall, Russia cannot keep Ukraine, and I don't know how to deal with this, but Ukraine will lose, because my country is morally bankrupt.

We see, then, moral blinders with respect to the Palestinians.  No one even considers telling them to surrender.  Why not?  If you are on Hamas's side, then it doesn't matter how many people are dying to you.  Lives don't matter.  What matters is that you cannot tell your side to surrender.

I get it.  Ukraine is losing.  Ukraine will lose.  I see no way around it, keeping in mind the constraint of the Republican Party and their descent into the pit, or... The Pit, but the only thing holding back Israel is the fact that contrary to the lies that basically everyone is spreading using the Holocaust inversion trope, they are humanitarians to the point of their own detriment and self-destruction.  They are still going easy on Gaza, but Hamas cannot win, and Gaza is getting pummeled.

Anyone who truly cared about the people there would tell them to surrender.

No one will.  The new Lost Cause, and just as righteous.  The difference is that the Union fought hard enough to win outright and just end it.

I'm glad they did.

Time for some Drive-By Truckers.  "Surrender Under Protest," from American Band.