Originally Posted by kehenry1 But, I would challenge you all directly to point to a historical victory that was won through and honorable or chivalric act. I don't mean the last act where a leader accepts the parole or sword of another with honor and chivalry, but that the battle or war itself was predicated on such acts. I think we could name a few defeats or really horrific death tolls that occurred because an act of "chivalry" where the survivor of such an encounter returned to destroy the offerer.
One for a specific:

North Africa 1942 with regard to the Vichy French after limited combat between US and French forces

In general terms, I would offer that any conflict resolution based on reconciliation has elements of honor and chivalry built into it. That was true on the frontier wars of the United States and elsewhere. Tribal conflicts in the past often used ritualized combat as a limitation. The concept of blood feud and blood money draws on similar themes.

In my personal experience, I saw it take place in Rwanda between former Rwandan military whose government and fellow soldiers committed genocide and former rebels who won the war militarily and stopped the genocide. Acceptance of the idea that while accountability for genocide could and should be 100%, universal punishment was in the end self-defeating was and is very much a moral as well as practical position.

On the latter, moral positions and chivalry are in that sense quite practical. such terms are defined culturally; honor to an Arab sheikh is quite different than honor to one of us. Yet we have used a combination of self-interest, money, and honor as means to leverage greater accomodation between us and former insurgents.

I would agree with Malcom Nance about the moral hard deck; if you don't set it some folks will feel for the ground. But I would add that there are military and political benefits to setting that hard deck that are in the end imminently practical.

War is indeed hell. War without moral limits is absolute hell. Everyone does face their own test; group codes and morals frame those tests. When there are no limits, human beings are far worse than any animal.

Tom