When my dumbass learned waging a war of aggression is not a war crime and all those soldiers on the ‘bad guys’ side are not necessarily war criminals ( or even criminals ) via ATLA / TLOK and then I applied this to the 2022 chess candidates ( 2022Jun )

Part1 – ATLA/TLOK on 2022Jun09

Official poll: Is there any good reason besides Mako that the death of war criminal Lu Ten is sadder than genocide of the air nomads? This is worse than ‘1 death is a tragedy. 1 million deaths is a statistic’ because here the 1 million are innocent, but the 1 is guilty. – by me on 2022Jun09 in r/TheLastAirbender post ID v89ysj

  • and r/FireNation post ID v8g4po
  • and r/ATLAverse post ID v8g1ew
  • and r/cartoons post ID v8g5c8

Part2 – Chess on 2022Jun30

At the Candidates, are players allowed to discuss the tournament situation with each other? (…) everyone else needs Nepo to lose. Are the other players allowed to discuss how to achieve this collective goal? (…) can they suggest openings to whoever is playing Nepo | from chess stackexchange – by me on 2022Jun30 in r/chessbeginners post ID vobl57 and in r/chess post ID vobl5q

Part1 – ATLA / TLOK – Lu Ten & Iroh are not (necessarily) war criminals.

For some reason re the 4th Nuremberg principle and re Just war theory, I had thought — well not really ‘thought’. I hadn’t given it much thought — rather I had assumed that everyone on the ‘bad guy‘ (cf what Bobby Fischer said) side of a war was automatically a war criminal. But then yeah actually not all wars necessarily have like a ‘bad guys‘ (cf my bad guys vs good guys in chess) side. Guess I never really gave it much thought. But eh as Terry Tao said Ask yourself dumb questions – and answer them! So yeah the 4th Nuremberg principle refers to if your superior orders you to commit war crimes. What I meant was ‘unjust war aggressor’.

1.1A – Quote from Wikipedia – Just war theory – Christian views – First World War

At the beginning of the First World War, a group of theologians in Germany published a manifesto that sought to justify the actions of the German government. At the British government’s request, Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, took the lead in collaborating with a large number of other religious leaders, including some with whom he had differed in the past, to write a rebuttal of the Germans’ contentions. Both German and British theologians based themselves on the just war theory, each group seeking to prove that it applied to the war waged by its own side.

1.1B – Politics SE question

Why isn’t any unprovoked act of aggression considered a war crime? – Politics Stackexchange question posted on 2022Apr14 (obviously posted in re the Russia – Ukraine war; hell my own posts were obviously re the war lol) – post ID 72613 by Barmar user ID 13966

– Sooo yeah…’war crime’ refers to ‘cheating’ when you’re already in a war eg mistreating prisoners of war, attacking civilians, etc.

– And also I guess nowadays no one (publicly) views themselves as aggressors even when they’re the ones who declare the war eg US/UK Vs Iraq or Russia Vs Ukraine … Like each side believes that they’re defending. Sooo yeah who’s the judge really ‘who’s the aggressor?’ ? Even for the fire nation… What if they instead didn’t commit any war crimes and just fought justly and stuff?

1.1C – From 2011 X-Men First Class

Professor X (Charles Xavier) : Erik, you said yourself, we’re the better men. This is the time to prove it. There are thousands of men on those ships. Good, honest, innocent men! They’re just following orders.

Magneto (Erik Lehnsherr aka Max Eisenhardt) : I’ve been at the mercy of men just following orders. Never again.

Yeah I guess Professor X doesn’t really emphasise the difference (at least in Professor X’s opinion) between ‘following orders’ in the Holocaust vs ‘following orders’ in (this particular instance of) killing mutants.

1.1D – Quote from Preventing Unjust War: The Role of the Catholic Church ROGER BERGMAN Creighton University

Simply put, an impermissible act becomes permissible when it is carried out under orders. It is possible for combatants, but not for leaders, to fight an unjust war justly. It is because McMahan rejects this paradoxical core doctrine of the war convention, as canonically expressed by Walzer, that McMahan’s work has become the focus for debate on this issue.

1.1E – CAN A CHRISTIAN FIGHT IN WAR?

The Second Vatican Council stated, “Those who are pledged to the service of their country as members of its armed forces should regard themselves as agents of security and freedom on behalf of their people. As long as they fulfill this role properly, they are making a genuine contribution to the establishment of peace.” (Gaudium et Spes, No. 79) So no, a soldier does not necessarily need to confess his killing of other soldiers in combat. Provided that the war is just, this killing is not a sin as it is not the taking of an innocent human life; it is stopping an unjust aggressor for the sake of the common good.

But “merely” to kill one’s enemies in a just war is no sin, and there is no need for a soldier to repent or confess those actions.

1.1F – Luckily in my tweets

I don’t say (I think) that Lu Ten or Iroh is a war criminal. Lol. Try looking up my tweets for ‘Lu Ten’ or ‘war criminal’.

1.1G – ‘On Following Orders in an Unjust War’ by David Estlund Philosophy, Brown University

Quote :

Is a soldier morally obligated to obey ordinary (including lethal) commands, even when the war is unjust? I will argue that under the right conditions, the answer is “yes.”

1.1H – Actually I can’t seem to find

Idk maybe it actually wasn’t a Catholic site, but I can’t find this article I think I saw before that had the phrase ‘rank-and-file’ like ordinary soldiers are not only not (necessarily) war criminals but also not (necessarily) criminals just for fighting on the ‘bad guy’ side of a war.

1.1I – Actually, you can even be a war criminal but not a criminal based on what 9LX creator Bobby Fischer said re George Bush & Junichiro Koizumi. Lol.

1.1I.1

Quote from Wikipedia :

Ben Ferencz, former chief prosecutor for the United States Army at the Nuremberg Trials, has stated that Bush likely committed war crimes in relation to the Iraq War.[478][479][480]

Oh wow THE Nurembug Trials … what living history. Ben Ferencz died only this year 2023Apr07.

1.1I.2

Oh also I found out about this Saleh v. Bush … uhuh 2013, 5 years after Bobby Fischer died and 9 years before this lawsuit : Hypothetical Bobby Fischer resurrection interview on Magnus vs Hans: ‘What goes around comes around even for Magnus Carlsen’ ( 2022Oct21, Philippine podcast )

1.1I.3

Another quote from Wikipedia :

In this vein, he suggested in an interview given on August 25, 2006, that not only Saddam Hussein should be tried, but also George W. Bush, because the US had begun the Iraq War without the UN Security Council‘s permission.[15] He also suggested that Bush should be tried in the International Criminal Court for “269 war crime charges” related to the Iraq War.[20][21]

1.2 – But idk fire nation did do war crime of air nomad genocide

while Iroh & Lu Ten are part of the royal family not just random soldiers. Should they have refused to fight until the air nomad civilians got justice? Well, there was propaganda against the air nomads sooo…eh myb there was no justice needed in their view…

1.3 – I did get ‘All-Seeing Upvote Award’ described as ‘A glowing commendation for all to see’ at least hehehe :

1.4 – captainfalconxiiii on 2022Jun10 in r/FireNation

There was no Genocide, and Lu Ten was not a war criminal, that traitorous prince Zuko, now that is a war criminal

LOL nice. In case you don’t get the joke captainfalconxiiii is pretending to be a Fire Nation soldier during ATLA s2. As part of this, I guess the air nomad genocide is being denied like how the Holocaust was denied eg by Bobby Fischer.

Posted on 2022Jun30 :

1.5 – BGBigMax ( the same person from Eating crow re Korrasami ) explains on 2022Jun09 in r/cartoons

This isn’t about tragedy or impact, it’s about sadness. It’s about when you watch this scene in a cartoon, what scene makes you feel sad. Seeing a 100 year old corpse is sad, and watching a man crying over his son while singing a lullabye is more sad. You can rationalize why any of these moments should be sad, but as the text presents them Leaves from the Vine is the more heart breaking scene.

This is way off topic but the saddest scene in the Harley Quinn movie is when her breakfast sandwich gets destroyed before she can eat it. It’s not about what is happening, but instead how it is presented.

1.6 – Testimony in r/ATLAverse

1.6A – Duelephant explains on 2022Jun09

  1. We really have no reason to believe Lu Ten was a war criminal. There is a line between soldier in an colonizing was and soldiers in a colonizing was who committed war crimes. Am I saying Lu Ten isn’t a war criminal, no. Just that we don’t know if he was.
  2. I think the biggest reason is the narrative writing of the scene. While the event itself might be more or less tragic the Leaves from the Vine scene happens a) later in the story when we have gotten to know the characters more, b) is given more time than Aang discovering about the air nomads, c) is intertwined with the stories of Iroh and Zuko who hold a lot of the emotional weight of the story. As such for many people that moment is more tied to their emotional reaction to the series rather than Aang finding out about the air nomads which for many serves as more of an initial shock in the story rather than an emotional moment.

1.6B – BokerBigBanana explains on 2022Dec06

To be a war criminal you have to violate a law of the Geneva Convention. Being a soldier doesn’t make you a war criminal.

Also, he would only be a war criminal in our world anyway since the GC doesn’t exist in Avatar.

1.6C – kidra31r explains on 2022Jun09

I feel that labeling Lu Ten as a war criminal is disingenuous. Unless there’s been something in the comics or other expanded material that I’ve missed, all we know is that he was a soldier in the army. Being on the wrong side of a war doesn’t automatically make you a war criminal.

My dumbass response on 2022Jun09

Really? Why don’t you just refuse to participate? 4th Nuremberg principle. Also, Lu Ten is a member of the fire national royal family right?

Then responses on 2022Jun09

Just being a soldier doesn’t make you a war criminal, and as far as we can tell Lu Ten was just a soldier. If we had evidence of an actual war crime, such as attacking those who had surrendered or the torture of prisoners, then we could call him a war criminal. Yes, Lu Ten was a member of the royal family, but that doesn’t mean he was in command of anything. He was serving under Iroh. If we use the Nuremberg trials as a precedent we can say that Iroh could be a war criminal since he was directly in command. But as far as I can tell the only time lower ranking soldiers were held on trial was when they were specifically involved with things like concentration camps.

Again, merely being a soldier on the wrong side doesn’t make you a war criminal. Unless we have record of Lu Ten specifically commiting a war crime, we can’t say he was a war criminal.

And on 2022Jun10

The fourth Nuremberg principal says they’re criminals if their commanding officer commanded them to torture prisoners or rape civilians or commit other specific war crimes. But again, just being a part of a war isn’t itself a war crime. That doesn’t make it the morally correct decision, but we’re talking specifically about whether or not Lu Ten is a war criminal not whether or not his actions were moral.

If you can find a specific example of sometime being convicted or even charged with a war crime for simply being a soldier then I’ll accept your point, but every example I can find is for something more extreme.

Me on 2022Aug26 :

oh ok thanks for the clarification. i mixed up war criminal and unjust war aggressor. lol.

1.7 – Testimony in r/TheLastAirbender

1.7A – ciki_melon on 2022Jun09

bro compares iroh to putin and expects us to agree with his take 💀

me on 2022Jun09

What? Not Iroh. Sozin. Sozin/Ozai to Putin.

  • But yeah Zuko’s Uncle Iroh is as much of a ‘villain’ in ATLA (‘The Last Airbender’) / TLOK (‘The Last Avatar’) as Kylo Ren’s Uncle Luke Skywalker was in Star Wars 8 (‘The Last Jedi’). Lol.

1.7B – Aradjha_at on 2022Jun09

Well specifically on the subject of Lu Ten, are you implying by your response that every fire Nation soldier is a war criminal? Because heads of state and military leaders are accountable for the actions their subordinates take while under their leadership. Is every Fire Nation citizen complicit in the War with BSS? Or more critically, the Genocide of the Airbenders?

Are the children of the world guilty by association, for all the crimes committed by their ancestors?

1.7C – OnlyFansBlue on 2022Jun09 makes a similar mistake in calling Lu Ten a war criminal. But yeah. It’s unjust war aggressor not war criminal. Lol.

Leaves from the Vine is considered sad to many because up until that point in the story, Uncle Iroh is a man you have come to love, respect, and look up to more so than anyone else in the show.

It is true that Lu Ten is a war criminal. It is true that he may have caused the deaths of countless innocent people.

But this moment transcends that. Upon Lu Ten’s death Uncle Iroh realizes first hand that what the Fire Nation was doing was unethical. He then spends months of his life trying to reconfigure himself spiritually and become a better person.

And he does, eventually, become a better person. He helps Zuko become better throughout his journey. He helps Toph understand that people don’t care for her because they think she’s weak, but because they want to care for her. The Tales of Ba Sing Se itself has Uncle Iroh helping several people.

But unfortunately, his spiritual awakening came too late. Had he been a better person before his son’s death, he could’ve helped his son become a better person, which would’ve prevented his son from losing his life to the war.

And that is his biggest regret.

That is why it’s sad. Uncle Iroh was a man raised with Fire Nation propaganda throughout his life. He chose to become better after the death of his son rather than doubling down on Ba Sing Se. He chose to become better even though it was hard for him.

And it is very hard. That is a fundamental truth. It’s hard to be a good person when the past weighs down on you, when everything you do seems to go the wrong way, when you get no immediate rewards for being good as you would with being bad, when you don’t see a real point with it because you were comfortable in your old life, and when you get based and beaten despite your goodness. We see that through his nephew, Zuko.

I’m very sorry to hear about you losing your relatives. I truly am. But Leaves from the Vine isn’t about the death of some relative of Putin. It’s about the death of a relative of a character who genuinely tried to change for the better and atone for his sins, which Putin has not. It’s in a world entirely displaced from ours, allowing us to see all sides of the story without our judgement being clouded by immediate biases in regards to our feelings of loss, as valid as they are in the real world. Ultimately, if it’s hard, you should just take it at its face value. It’s a fictional character crying over the loss of his son, which is sad no matter how you frame it. And to some people, it becomes even sadder because of their attachment to Uncle Iroh.

and then

We don’t know for sure whether Lu Ten was a war criminal or not, as his life story is left pretty unclear and told through Iroh’s feelings about him. The comment you linked raises a fantastic point but I read your comments about the situation with your relatives so I was moreso trying to be sensitive towards your feelings whilst talking about my own. They just put it in words I did not think of when I wrote my comment.

As for the propaganda aspect of it, I think that how you were raised as a child has the potential to impact who you are as an adult even years down the line. Emotions are messy and complex, and 18 isn’t some magical age wherein you transform into a completely different and significantly more mature person.

Maturity is something that occurs when you experience feelings and situations that drive you to be a better person. For most people, leaving their homes to go to universities (which occurs often at the age of 18) and gaining a boatload of responsibilities is when that occurs. Even if you stay at home with your parents, you would only mature when you start being responsible for your own life and contribute to the family in a meaningful way.

This is void in the lives of Iroh and Lu Ten. They were never truly challenged as people because they were heirs to the throne upon conception and only really had to carry out responsibilities they knew for a fact they would have to as they grew up in the Fire Nation. It’s presumable that nothing was a surprise in the life of Iroh–until the moment of Lu Ten’s death. That gave him a reason to look inward and as himself the big questions: who are you and what do you want? And he certainly did not want to wage a war that caused so much death and destruction in the name of glory after he realized the true consequences of said war personally.

If you told your child repeatedly that they were worthless and could do better, they would grow up not despising you as a failed parent, but despising themselves as a failure of a child. Had Zuko not gone through what he had in the second and early third seasons, he would never have come to the realization that what Ozai did to him was wrong.

I think ATLA itself is a good representation of this fact through Iroh and Zuko, although there are a plethora of characters in shows like BoJack Horseman that represent the same fact. I would highly recommend giving it a watch if you want to get into the heads of people who were messed up by their childhoods.

Furthermore, the propaganda was structured very well. Sozin’s ideology was imperialism so it isn’t far off to believe that the Fire Nation citizens were groomed into thinking of their actions as some kind of glorious spread of technological advancement. The fact that it could extend even to a general is a testament to how well the ideology was implanted into the minds of the Fire Nation soldiers.

But essentially, it is as you said. Childhood is an impressionable period and it is reasonable to assume that they were, to a degree, brainwashed. You hit the nail on the head there as to why Leaves from the Vine was so sad: Iroh and Lu Ten were good people at heart, just raised in a terrible environment that enabled them to do wrong things. The tragedy here is how they thought they were doing good when they were the villains of the story, even more so that it took them so long to realize sit that they couldn’t do much to change it.

Zuko was Iroh’s only remaining hope. If he could help at least one member of his family the way he wished he could’ve helped Lu Ten, he would be doing justice to his son’s death. It would mean his efforts did not go in vain. This is why he cared not whether Zuko was fighting for what was right or whether he was a mere assistant in a tea shop. As long as Zuko wasn’t fighting on the wrong side of a pointless war and craving for the pointless approval of his father, his death would not be in vain like Lu Ten’s was. He would die doing what he loved, not what was expected of him.

Thank you, OP, for reading through my comment. I’m glad I got my points across in a way that was sensitive to your situation yet still helping you understand my side of the argument. That was my intention. And I’m glad you’re engaging in a healthy, productive discussion and trying to understand all sides of the argument. I wish the best for you and your family. I only hope you were not demoralized or grief-stricken by this thread any more than you were before. I’m always here if you want to talk about the effects of said wars on your relatives. I don’t know how good I would be at giving advice on how to cope with the loss, as this is all very foreign to me, but I promise I will listen and try to help to the best of my abilities. You are strong and brave and I wish nothing but success for you ❤️❤️❤️

1.7D – MarcelZenner on 2022Jun09

Lost me the moment he wrote “war criminal” Lu Ten. How is every soldier a war criminal? Many soldiers are pressured, brainwashed or coerced to fight in wars. I always saw “Leaves from the vine” as a lament to sending his son into a pointless war. If you want to draw parallels to the Ukraine war: Someday more Russians will realize/accept how horrible Putins actions were. And they will mourn their sons who died, fighting in an unjust war. Sons, of which we don’t know, if they agreed with the orders they got or if they even knew what they were doing until it was too late. But I guess, in your book, they are war criminals too

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Part2 – Now the 2022 Chess Candidates Tournament

deleted user (cannot find out username since camas reddit search is down since API is down)

How should this work? At the moment, Ding is in second place, and Nepo plays against Nakamura. So you believe Ding should help Nakamura prepare against Nepo? How should he do that? Send him his opening files? Ding would hurt himself more by giving up his analysis to a competitor. Furthermore, Nakamura would do best to play his own openings instead of playing what Ding plays.

Regarding the other players, like Radjabov, Duda and Rapport… they can’t win the tournament anymore, so why would they care about who takes first place?

me

Good questions. IDK with OP there except for what OP already said eg suggesting openings. In any case I think anything legal is collaboration isn’t going to be helpful. The only thing I can think to be helpful is collusion which is of course illegal.

deleted user

What’s the difference between collaboration and collusion, in your mind?

me

collaboration is if they discuss stuff to help each other genuinely improve, even if it’s aimed against bringing down another player. it’s a legitimate war strategy.

collusion is if they do something not genuine like fix a match result. it’s a war crime.

does that make sense?

user

Yes, thank you. I agree with your point then.

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