I actually wildly disagree with this.
Part of this is maybe Crunchyroll's translation choices; he didn't say "Kill them anyway," he said to disregard surrender. Which, yes, amounts to the same thing, but more focused on his subordinate's actions and evaluations and strategy than it is the kids dying.
Like, look, Stan committed a war crime, and I'm not glossing over that. But it's not because he doesn't give a fuck.
This is pretty much the only time Stan and Xeno are on different pages, and it's not because they're having a disagreement of values, it's because they have a different set of information they're working with. Xeno doesn't know Stan's out a radio, and Stan doesn't actually know what the KoS is cooking up, other than that Xeno's been warning him about it for a while.
Stan has also spent the last 100 days reminding his subordinates that these people might be younger than them, might be more idealistic than them, but they are smart and clever and capable of things that his subordinates are not willing to consider. A very harsh order to give his subordinates absolutely no leeway to lose because they once again fell for the kids puppy faces...makes sense. It's not okay, but it makes sense.
Because it's not just Xeno's safety and goals on the line here. He's got a whole cadre of soldiers, and, yes, he does want the KoS to lose. He's not behaving selfishly, imo. Not really.
It feels very Realpolitik more than anything.
And the only people he killed were enemy combatants. He refused parley with Gen, yes, which he's not supposed to do, but it's also true that perfidy is also a war crime because it does happen. He doesn't have a radio and I wouldn't want to get in throwing distance of them with a Who Knows What up their sleeve, either. And Stan's a sniper. Snipers are uniquely at risk of war crimes (summary execution), and there's no way that wasn't drilled into him.
I think it's less "he doesn't give a fuck" and more that Stan is, actually, very cautious and risk averse, and has been this entire arc. Stan doesn't say he can do things he can't, and he's very calculated in his tradeoffs and exchanges.
There's a thing, in swordfighting but in really any kind of brawls, where if your opponent is fighting to kill and you're fighting to get away or disarm...you are very likely to get hurt because you tried to play nice with someone who wasn't playing nice.
Stan follows the rules of war up until it's dangerous for him to do so, and even then he still sticks by most of them pretty closely. He doesn't touch the prisoners of war and claimed civilians until it becomes blatantly clear they're not civilians or bystanders and they start participating in the battle, even if not violently.
So, IDK. Stan definitely violates the code he holds himself to, but he does break it, as ever, in very calculated, precise, and minimal ways. Minimizing causalities, as Xeno would point out.
It doesn't make what he did okay, and he shouldn't have done it, but he's not a ruthless monster for doing it.
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