Its more that you make it clear that you will kill anyone who doesn't surrender. Then most people end up surrendering.

In modern militaries though, the expectation is that you will just leave civilians alone.

There are some terrorist states that indiscriminately kill civilians though, such as Israel and the USA.

The worst thing people would do is surrendering in those cases.

As opposed to who? Iran fired missiles at Israeli (and Arab) civilian areas, so did Hezbollah and Hamas when they used to have that capability.

	▲	surgical_fire 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's precisely what I expected. That people would pop up defending US atrocities by equating them with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah. And you know what? You're right. Those are all terrorist organizations.