There are strict rules of combat, too.
Dozens of duelling codes, fencing manuals, and treatises on courtesy soon materialized, prescribing the dress, manners, and rules of combat appropriate to the courtier.
The separation between war and peacetime law enforcement immunizes soldiers from culpability, so long as their acts comport with the rules of combat.
Mr No says he saw American pilots cross into Manchuria, in violation of the rules of combat, to attack enemy planes, including those of his colleagues, as they landed (the air force would try to cover this up for decades).
Ms. Morton's Martha, unusually, comes across as a sometimes tentative antagonist, as if she senses that the game truly has changed and isn't sure she wants to fully engage under the new rules of combat.
The populous, precisely choreographed battle scenes, which use 7,500 Civil War re-enactors, transport you directly to the front lines of a conflict whose mid-19th-century rules of combat bring an antiquated code of manners to a barbaric enterprise.
How is it that a government that took such bold steps to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions and update the rules of combat did not pay closer attention to how its policy changes were carried out on the ground?
"What we hope to have achieved within two years, in conjunction with our partners, is to help train an effective Iraqi regular army that is at the disposal of the legitimate government of Iraq and is able to gain and hold ground and do so in accordance with the ordinary rules of combat," he said.
Re "General Says 2 Pilots in Errant Bombing Broke the Most Basic Rules of Combat" (news article, Jan . 22: It is both curious and distressing that the only time that American service personnel have been called to account for the war in Afghanistan is when four Canadian soldiers are killed.
At the moment work is under way on developing a control system for military robots "to make sure they abide by the rules of combat", and creating robots for use in the care of elderly people.
That's one of the primary rules of combat.
