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tollertwins.bsky.social
@tollertwins.bsky.social
570 followers 250 following 1.7K posts
Retired artist wannabe. Trying hard to keep from having to retire my pony, too.
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annabower.bsky.social
“Should we follow the Geneva Conventions?” Pete Hegseth asked in 2024.

It’s almost as if there were signs!

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We never got an answer. Only more war. More casualties. And no victory. Should we follow the Geneva Conventions? What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us? Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: If you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs. Makes me wonder, in 2024—if you want to win—how can anyone write universal rules about killing other people in open conflict? Especially against enemies who fight like savages, disregarding human life in every single instance. Maybe, instead, we are just fighting with one hand behind our back—and the enemy knows it. This is a big reason there hasn't been a war
November 29, 2025 at 3:05 AM
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annabower.bsky.social
It’s almost as if there were signs!!
want to fight us toe to toe; civilians are central to their strategy. Making such a presumption endangers American troops and gives an advantage to savage enemies-who don't play by the rules. Citing no new evidence, the Biden administration simply reversed course in July 2023. Now persons and objects in combat zones—in places where US troops are fighting —must be presumed to be civilian. They must be assumed to be innocent. In short, this means our troops are going to have to hesitate every time they fire. This change reminds me of the stupid legal brief we received at FOB Falcon in Baghdad in 2005. Bad ideas have been around for a long time, but now they're fully institutionalized. When you send Americans to war, their mandate should be to lethally dominate the battlefield. If that makes you uneasy, keep us at home. I could write five thousand more words on the ins and outs of the philosophy of warfare, the folly of international law, and the crazy maze of rules of engagement. I've heard it
November 29, 2025 at 3:25 AM
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annabower.bsky.social
It’s almost as if there were signs!
gutting their militaries and yelling at America for help. History regards the Greatest Generation not for their poetry, artistic endeavors, or their culinary brilliance. That title was bestowed because they were two-time world war champions. They were great because they understood they were at war and that the consequence for losing the war was annihilation. They killed the enemy. Sometimes in ways that would offend modern sensibilities. Two nuclear bombs ended a war that could have dragged on for years, costing millions more American lives. They won. Who cares. We have watered down the last twenty years of armed conflict into morality plays over what
November 29, 2025 at 3:22 AM
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annabower.bsky.social
Hegseth included the below in a chapter titled “The Laws of War, For Winners”

It’s almost as if there were signs!
10:12 Japanese anu vennan sumers anu uncers lu death in the aftermath of the conflict that it had so egregiously failed to prevent. Article 51 of the United Nations made war legal only if you were attacked. The escalation of that war was left TBD-to be determined. Illegal wars continued, and violence still escalated. If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren't we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?! Who cares what other countries think. The question we have to ask ourselves is, if we are forced to fight, are we going to fight to win? Or will we fight to make leftists feel good-which means not wining and fighting forever. In this context, the Europeans are the worst. Outdated, outgunned, invaded, and impotent. Why should America, the European "emergency contact number" for the past century, listen to self-righteous and impotent nations asking us to honor outdated and one-sided defense arrangements they no longer live up to? Maybe if NATO countries actually ponied up for their own defense-but they don't. They just yell about the rules while gutting their militaries and yelling at America
November 29, 2025 at 3:16 AM