JMA: You mentioned in another conversation that you were not acquainted, when in RLI service, with the term "rules of engagement". I don't question that, as such, since our own current FM 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare, does not use the term "rules of engagement" once.

Of course, FM 27-10 is full of ROEs for different situations - as have been US service regulations and doctrinal publications since the 1863 Lieber Code (which is mostly ROEs). In both the US and UK, the ROEs have come under different names from before WWI - e.g., U.S. War Dept. Doc. No. 467, Rules of Land Warfare (1914), and J.W Spaight, War Rights on Land (1911).

So, unless Rhodesia was a rara avis in British colonial terms, it should have had "field service regulations" (including "rules of engagement") for both its police and military services. De Boer's sin was not one of illogic, as such - though, of course, one cannot over-extend or violate rules that do not exist. His sin was in not researching to find the rules that probably did exist for both military and police. If he couldn't find such rules, then he should have said so - and altered his conclusions.

Of course, just because written rules exist does not mean that everyone is aware of them (much less that people are really trained in them). So far as ROEs are concerned, I think Spaight's joke is on point (and perhaps not really much of a joke today):

..... for an ambitious subaltern who wishes to be known vaguely as an author and, at the same time, not to be troubled with undue inquiry into the claim upon which his title rests, there can be no better subject than the International Law of War. For it is a quasi-military subject in which no one in the army or out of it, is very deeply interested, which everyone very contentedly takes on trust, and which may be written about without one person in ten thousand being able to tell whether the writing is adequate or not.
cited here (in a prior conversation with you).

As to MR, I think the discussion here justifies the article's publication. I also could name a half-dozen writers who would say the article is just great - based on their own articles re: "war crimes", etc.

As an aside, I went back to Bruce Hoffman's 1991 RAND piece on Rhodesia. His Appendix C, Cross-Border Raids, summarizes several dozen raids in Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique and Angola. A study of those raids (if there is more available factually than Hoffman's brief summaries) seems presently material in light of the loosening of restrictions by two US administrations on those direct actions.

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Another topic - briefly. Going into what soldiers call their enemies is not going to be useful here. I don't need an education on what those terms mean. If you want to know where I stand, I stand with Randall Kennedy (my gosh, JMM agrees with a Princeton, Oxford, Yale Law grad, who teaches at Harvard Law). If you want to know where he stands, buy and read his book. I'd suggest termination of "gook" posts.

Regards

Mike