"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/NerdHoovy]

Almost every ‘clever strategy’ in stories are just war crimes.

Disguising yourself as the enemy, fake surrender, poisoning the food supplies. Using medical and religious institutions and vehicles for combat purposes.

Always just war crimes.

In fact the real life CIA even had a rule against certain disguises during foreign undercover missions because the risk of eroding trust is too high.

[u/Accomplished_You_480 → u/NerdHoovy]

The CIA will never (well, they say they will never) hire/use anyone that was formerly part of the peace corps and the peace corps won't take people who served in the CIA 

[u/lordaezyd → u/Accomplished_You_480]

if I remember correctly, the CIA claims to never use fake identities of: journalists, religious officers and peace corp members.

[u/NerdHoovy → u/lordaezyd]

And medical personnel.

[u/Sanguineyote → u/NerdHoovy]

In 2011, the CIA ran a fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan as a cover for intelligence operations, which severely fractured public trust in healthcare professionals and fueled widespread vaccine rejection. This enduring suspicion, along with subsequent militant attacks on medical workers, remains a primary reason why polio has still not been fully eradicated in the country.

CIA fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan - Wikipedia

The restrictions you are talking about are governed by internal directives rather than an absolute statutory ban, and it permits high-level exceptions.

[u/supermonistic → u/lordaezyd]

Unfortunately I find it hard to trust the CIA

[u/Icarium-Lifestealer → u/NerdHoovy]

And yet the CIA abused a vaccination program to search for Bin Laden in Pakistan, leading to vaccination skepticism after it was revealed.

[u/a_wasted_wizard → u/Icarium-Lifestealer]

A US government agency abandoning its few principles in the aftermath of 9/11 as part of the "War on Terror" and causing an erosion of trust, general disillusionment, and blowback? Boy, I sure hope that isn't part of some larger, society-eroding pattern!

[u/Llayanna → u/Icarium-Lifestealer]

Maybe they had some anti-vaxxers in their rank?

[u/AllsWellThatsNB → u/NerdHoovy]

IIRC, disguising yourself as the enemy is acceptable so long as you drop the facade before attacking.  At least that was the deal with flying false colours during the Napoleonic wars. 

[u/TheDotCaptin → u/NerdHoovy]

Then there is The Saga of Tanya the Evil.

That makes everything technically not a war crime. Or is the reason why new rule are added to the list of things not to do again.

[u/kaiserkaarts → u/TheDotCaptin]

One of my favorites for the reversal of this trope.

My favorite "technically not a war crime" in that show would be her using her voice, which is literally that of a child's, to announce an evacuation order of a city with civilians. The enemy, not taking the voice of a child seriously, were blindsided when she pushed through with the attack and shelled a city full of civilians.

Technically legal, because she announced an evacuation order and made her intent to attack clear.

[u/SocranX → u/NerdHoovy]

And in video games, "aim for the healer". Although there may be different rules in settings where a healer can actively extend how long a soldier can stay on the battlefield.

[u/Brossof → u/NerdHoovy]

Empty fort from the Romance of three Kingdoms

Zhuge Liang managed to survive an attack while holding an unarmed fort

[u/Cyan_Tile → u/Brossof]

What kinda war crime would that be?

Seems more like the fault of the enemy for not realizing "hey that fort doesn't look defended"