Honourable Poison

 In a vacuum, killing by ambush or poison is dishonourable. Doesn't give them a chance to fight back, which is irresponsible. They're not aware of your beef with them before they're already dead.

 Killing a dastard with poison is not dishonourable. It's poisoning him before he has a chance to poison you. Personnel is policy: defending the honourable and killing the dishonourable promotes honour and must be honourable. It upholds honour, regardless of the means used to carry it out.

 "But isn't this abusable? Whenever you want to poison someone, you accuse him of dastardy. A blank cheque."

 No, that's Sophistry. Namelessness. An honourable man isn't going to abuse it, now is he? He won't lie. A dishonourable man isn't going to follow the rules in the first place. He was never restrained. 

 What's the point of criticizing a rule for failing to control antinomians? The only rule that matters to them is the fact physically separating their head from their neck prevents them from carrying on with their cowardly treachery.

 Indeed we could see the rule as a honeypot. Employ posthumous trials: if the corpse is found to be honourable, then you suckered a treasonous dastard into revealing himself. If you make a habit of only offering traitors the rope, they will become a minority, and you can afford a few bugs and glitches now and then. Each tit for tat reduces their population by a higher percentage than yours loses.

 Come to think, you don't want to scare them straight. They might accidentally succeed at staying on the narrow, and end up breeding. You want to gull them, you need to con them. Make the rules as tempting as possible, so you don't miss any.

 In an environment of obligate defectors, tit for tat looks like a degenerate. It defects on everyone...just like everyone else. There is nothing dishonourable about betraying a traitor. 

 You don't behave honourably toward the honourable man because of duty or anything resembling morality. You do it because losing access to his honourable behaviour results in regret. You want him to display his virtues in your direction, rather than his violence. 

 Logic is just math. Functions, f(x), have domain of applicability. In school, it's something simple, like x > 3. In life, somewhat less simple. The strictures of honour do not apply to regions of outlaws. That's not part of the domain. They only offer violence, preserving their virtues is impossible because they don't have any, and behaving as you would to an honourable man is nothing but retardation. 

 P.S. All civilizations are outlaw civilizations. Inherently criminal.