Last week I had the opportunity to hear about the international laws that govern several terrorist and violence issues from the perspective of Professor Ohlins. As a naïve person who really only knows about terrorist issues and other war crimes through TV crime shows such as NCIS and the Blacklist, I am not the best informed citizen about these topics. I hardly read the news and do not know about many current events on international cases. Thus, this discussion with not only talking about the issues but also how to deal with them legally was a great intriguing and enlightening topic for me. For example, he informed me about the United States bombing a hospital in Afghanistan by accident thinking it was the location of a terrorist.

This issue was a perfect case study to talk about the implications of the wrong action done here. Professor Ohlin talked about how the concept of collateral damage can come in with war crime in which by basic definition a war crime is targeting civilians purposefully during a war. However, it is not a war crime if those civilians were accidentally killed when soldiers carry out a strategic mission for taking down terrorists or enemy groups. Then the deaths of those civilians become collateral damage. However, the big issue is that every time a similar story like this occurs overseas it becomes a subjective issue in if the United States or another country had committed a possible war crime. It is sad to see people die if they were not the targets of the mission and thus automatically by human emotions we think our actions were wrong. However, others seeing from a strategic perspective might feel their losses as collateral damages to reach our ultimate goal in the war and prevent any bigger –scale violence.

Thus, I enjoyed the engaging discussion on the current issues that are occurring internationally and also bringing the issue back to the root opinions of the issue. It has encouraged to try and stay engaged with more current events.