"Good guys" committing perfidy (fake surrender) and it's treated as a clever heroic ploy instead of a war crime or something morally dubious

[u/AporiaParadox]

1. Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Anakin pretends to surrender to the enemy multiple times during the Clone Wars. And no, it's not used to indicate that Anakin is falling to the Dark Side, other characters like Obi-Wan do it too.
2. The Iliad. The Trojan Horse was a real dick move, a fake surrender compounded by a fake peace offering, followed by a massacre. I get that it was a different time, but still, most modern adaptations just treat it as a cool thing. One thing I'll give Nolan's The Odyssey credit for is that Odysseus recognizes that what his "clever plot" was wrong.

Perfidy is a serious war crime, because morality aside, in exchange for one victory, you're dooming all of your allies who might want to legitimately surrender in the future because now the enemy is just going to execute them, not to mention that now the enemy won't surrender to you and will just fight harder.

[u/thissexypoptart]

It's literally not perfidy lol. Words have meanings. I think OP was just confused on that one.

Edit: Gotta correct myself and mention that you can't really fault people like OP. Even the Wiki article about perfidy features the Trojan Horse as an example. It's just a societal misinterpretation of an ancient story.

In the original Odyssey, the greeks feign a retreat (or, more accurately, pretend to lose interest in the cause and just leave), not a surrender, and the wooden horse is left behind as an offering to the gods for safe travels. The Greeks anticipate the Trojans taking the offering as a way to disrespect their retreating foes, and thereby infiltrate the city.

It's a Ruse de Guerre not perfidy, but even Wiki is confused about that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy

Edit2: Lmao the Wiki entry for Ruse de Guerre also prominently features the Trojan horse example as its first image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruse_de_guerre

Ruse de Guerre and Perfidy are in fact distinct concepts. If it's perfidious, it's not a Ruse de Guerre, by definition.

[u/Paleodraco → u/thissexypoptart]

My whole thing with it is whether the surrender is intended to lure the capturing forces into a situation where they can be attacked. The Trojan horse is definitely not that. I'd need to look up the Star Wars examples, but I recall those being more varied. I recall some being a distraction or to buy time, which would be perfidy I think. Others were more like the Trojan horse, surrender to infiltrate a base or get info.

Also, they were fighting droids. Droid sentience and how it relates to war crimes is a separate debate, but if you do consider them machines and know they are easy to confuse with complex tactics like that shrugs shoulders why not use that advantage.

[u/thissexypoptart → u/Paleodraco]

That’s really a good point about the droids

Pretending to surrender to non sentient war machines is a different discussion vs pretending to surrender to living combatants.

[u/Pokeirol → u/Paleodraco]

Droid soldiers were clearly sentient, considering they had personalities wich were actively detrimental.

[u/NeedToVentCom → u/thissexypoptart]

It really is amazing that so many people don't seem to understand the difference between "we surrender" and "well apparently they just left, let's take this big wooden horse." Isn't it?

[u/These-Weight-434 → u/thissexypoptart]

I think they say a recent movie that a particular stance on the horse and thought they'd look clever if they presented it as their own.

[u/thissexypoptart → u/These-Weight-434]

Sure, but apparently it's a popular misreading in modern times, as evidenced by the wiki article about perfidy