In the past few weeks, at Bricker Jr.'s behest, we have seen several of the summer movie crop: Madagascar, Ice Age, and Brave.
During previews that run before each movie, we saw a preview for something that looked like Battleship, Navy Lego characters version, vs. Lego aliens, with all the ships built with Legos.
The enemy’s weapons are defeating the brave Navy Lego fighters, but then they hatch a plan. “We surrender!”
As the victorious alien enemy accepts their surrender, they launch a surprise attack! Boom! Caught unawares, the aliens are destroyed, and our Navy Lego admiral is victorious.
The theater crowd was thrilled.
I wasn’t.
That’s an ambush under perfidy. It violates the laws of war. Admittedly, the aliens are not signatories to Protocol I of the 1949 Geneva Convention, but the underlying rational is of course not merely Geneva based. Assume the rest of the aliens get word of this tactic: future combatants’ surrender will not be accepted or trusted.
So am I crazy for thinking this is kind of an odd “heroic” message to be sending?
After watching the linked video, I agree. This doesn’t portray the Navy very well, it’s definitely not in the “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” vein.
I know this is a ludicrous cartoon with Legos, but Justin is quite right. Fighting aliens, we would not be bound by the international laws of war. Anything and everything would be fair game if we were being invaded by non-humans. (I know, I know…the likelihood of being invaded by aliens is nil. I write science fiction, I know that you can get everything you want from uninhabited planets, moons and asteroids and that invasions by aliens make little to no sense. But this is a what-if, so…)
I don’t know… just because there’s a species difference, I think that some ethical questions still pertain. As Bricker pointed out, our actions have consequences, and what goes around comes around. I wouldn’t want humans to get a reputation for being lying, duplicitous SOBs across the galaxy.
Of course, I haven’t seen this preview, and circumstances do alter cases. Is the survival of humanity literally on the line? (Or our freedom, in a permanent sense?) Also - have we had evidence that the aliens are using such tactics themselves? Meeting them on their own level can still be bad, but not as much as if they’re actually honorable on our terms.
While it might be a war crime, it is only a war crime. If a civilian was being attacked by an aggressor and feigned non-resistance to make their attacker lower their guard, there would be no crime.
Aren’t most of the Geneva Conventions binding even when fighting non-signatories? (ETA: On googling, apparently only if the non-signatory is acting in accordance with the convention)
In any case, its gonna suck for the next navy commander that tries to surrender honestly and has his entire crew of annoying, dancing lego-sailors slaughtered because the aliens “aren’t falling for that again”.
(of course, I was kind of rooting for the aliens, so I might be biased)
Me too. Why assume that the aliens will have the same moral impulses that we do? In an inter-species fight, all bets are off particularly when the other side’s initial response is one of aggression.
Add me to camp ‘better off playing by the Geneva rules’.
And een though Lego has let their standards slip a bit, their goods are still officially anti-war. It’s a bit of a shame that plenty of people think this was their commercial.
