Conclusion

Summary

This brief conclusion surveys the history presented in the preceding chapters and demonstrates how that history supports the conceptual framework presented in Chapter 1 and the primary themes of Leaving the Fight. These themes include the evolution of state, military, and individual surrender from the Middle Ages to the present and the origins and development of the treatment of prisoners of war and detainees. This last can be seen as growing out of medieval honorable surrender, becoming formal cartels between combatants, and then becoming international conventions, from the second half of the nineteenth century into the twenty-first. The conclusion also argues that detention operations instituted during the Iraq Surge serve as a source of lessons to be learned in future conflicts.