Vae victis - woe to the vanquished

Or, Rule No 1 in War: Don't lose!
Mary B discusses the conduct of war, lies and leaks in relation to Afghanistan today, and puts it all in a historical - Roman and Greek - context.
http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2010/07/civilian-casualties-leaks-and-the-ancient-view.html

I added this comment:

I give you Clausewitz... I give you Macchiavelli. It's still a question of fighting as though you want to win at any cost, including deceit and "excessive" force (the adjective is superfluous ;-). The Mytilene example is a beautiful example of the transition from war mode to peace mode on the part of the combatants and especially the victors. You leave the vanquished some dignity and room for recuperation. Vae victis - but not too much.
Trotsky tells us about the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk between the new Bolshevik government and the Germans. The German generals, lolling around drinking schnapps with their boots on the table, were thunderstruck by the earnestness of the Bolsheviks, their unlaidback style and their refusal to envisage secret diplomacy. This wasn't the way it was done. And no one was supposed to know of the cynicism and intimacy of the victors and the vanquished during the horse-trading.
Must have been a bit like the Royalists negotiating with Cromwell and his New Model generals...
This, by the way, is a big reason why nuclear war is shunned... there's no one left to trade horses with, nothing to plunder now and for ever.
It's also a reason why the capitalists don't just exterminate the workers once and for all.
Hmm... it's also a reason why Mary's blog is both wicked and subversive... for some.