Resistance, guerilla warfare and terrorism

[dps]

Is it actually a war crime if Japan was not signatory to the Geneva Convention?

Was that intended purely hypothetically?  Because the Japanese were signatories.

[Siege]

Something that has been bothering me lately.  It's about resistance movements in the past and present.  When I was younger I thought of resistance movements like the French Resistance, who were depicted as brave heroes fighting the Nazis.  In the aftermath of the Iraq war, I got a different impression.  Sure the Iraqi insurgents would attack US soldiers (typically ineffectively), but they seemed to do the most damage murdering and terrorizing the civilian population.  Civilians who had no choice in what they were doing, who were simply stuck between the US forces and the insurgents.  It occurred to me that these attacks had the purpose of enforcing political loyalty in the populace through terror. Ignoring the issue of occupation and whether it was just or not, that sort of behavior seems difficult to defend (though I'm certain there are plenty of people who do defend it).

What I wondered, were other "resistance heroes", like those in Europe fighting the Nazis engaging in similar activities.  Are these tactics an integral competent of asymmetrical warfare?

One word: Muslims.

Diferent culture, diferent value of life, diferent view of what's right and wrong.
WW2 was an ideological war, but had it been a religious war, for at least one side of the war, things would have been exponentially worst.

The main reason the long war have not produced cassualties in the range of the wold wars, is precisely the asymetrical diferences between the combatants. The one with the ability to mass kill does not want to, and the one with the desire to mass kill does not have the capability. Even so, they do manage to do quite the damage on their local enemies that don't have the ability to resist, like civilians.

[Queequeg]

WW2 was an ideological war,

Eradicating entire ethnic groups-maybe most of the population of the planet-was a core tenant of National Socialism.  This is in no way unambiguous. 

[Siege]

WW2 was an ideological war,

Eradicating entire ethnic groups-maybe most of the population of the planet-was a core tenant of National Socialism.  This is in no way unambiguous. 

Good point.
It is still an ideological war, and it is easier to compromise with a secular ideology than with a religious ideology.

[Queequeg]

Ottoman Dar el-'Ahd was invented. Things change. Ideology has the benefit of being younger.