It’s not just terrorists. Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Genghis Khan, and many of the ancient Romans didn’t have that problem either. In the olden days, you didn’t bother trying to tell insurgents and civilians apart; you just massacred the population until there wasn’t anyone left who was willing to fight you.
Telling the difference between combatants and non-combatants only matters if you care whether or not non-combatants are killed.
If you are referring to terrorists, they generally claim that democracy or whatever makes us all complicit, IIRC.
It’s not just terrorists. Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Genghis Khan, and many of the ancient Romans didn’t have that problem either. In the olden days, you didn’t bother trying to tell insurgents and civilians apart; you just massacred the population until there wasn’t anyone left who was willing to fight you.
Telling the difference between combatants and non-combatants only matters if you care whether or not non-combatants are killed.
That’s a serious ethical argument, by the way.
Well, it persuaded them …
It requires some confusion as to the purpose of refraining from killing civilians, I think.