I attended Professor Ohlins’ lecture on what war crimes are and who qualify as war criminals. He started the hour by giving us two equally valid perspectives about the Doctors without Borders hospital that the United States recently bombed; one said the U.S. should be held accountable for killing innocent civilians and the other that the actions were justified because loss of civilian lives is a natural part of war. I found it interesting that Professor Ohlin justified the inevitable casualties of war by citing rules of war. Actually being one of those soldiers on the ground, realizing they had just killed innocent people for no reason would be horrible. I can’t imagine the guilt they must feel. The rules that govern war, the idea that casualties are acceptable if the ratio is proportional, is convenient; it lets people off the hook. I haven’t made up my mind about how justified this rule of proportions really is because you can’t quantify a life.

I’m interested how we approach the loss of lives in a war zone versus somewhere like the United States. A death is a death and yet in one situation, we justify the death so that we can sleep at night while the other, we treat it as the tragedy that it is. I have learned a lot in classes about the impact of technological warfare on how killing psychologically affects people. There is a valid concern that as technology takes over how we conduct war, the justification that war is a game of ratios will become stronger.