War and Law

[Sgt Barker]

Rules in war reduce the suffering of war. A lie about war is that “it’s all the same.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Just as any two acts, though named the same, are not the same, two conflicts each called wars are never the same. While generally true that “war engenders suffering,” the level of suffering varies greatly. The rules of the specific war are what have the greatest impact on that, and are at the root of the major differences between wars.

In short the notion that “they all end up dead” justifies “there should be no rules in war” is flawed, both logically and in practice. Logically, because there’s no logical link between one effect justifying an infinite number of causes. (They’re dead, so it doesn’t matter if they died of old age in a camp, were shot, were killed by disease, or tortured to death over weeks.) In practice because the effect of a “no rules” philosophy is much greater suffering than if there are rules.

Not to flame here, but a couple of your other assumptions are inaccurate:

1) The idea that ‘no one wants war’ is demonstrably untrue. Throughout history the evidence shows that a majority of folks do want war a lot of the time.

2) Terrorism is not the same as collateral damage. Terrorism has a long and storied history, and is a specific strategy aimed at specific ends. A death from a terrorist action is not the same as an unintended killing.