The problem seems to me to be far more complicated. Since Napoleon inaugurated the "nation in arms" as a model, the mobilization of an entire country for war is standard. While the Geneva Conventions, etc., have tried to keep civilians separate, when you are fighting nation against nation, the capacity to fight is increasingly not the individual soldiers, but the basic capacity of the society. In World War II the argument was increasingly made that industrial cities were full of industrial workers who weren't civilians. And so it goes. We can remember in Vietnam all the metaphors about "drying up the enemy's swamp" and all that -- if everyone is part of the struggle, who is an innocent?

We find a version of this argument in the rationale of the IRA and other supposed "armies" that no one is innocent -- they are complicit, or obstacles, or whatever. So they are acceptable targets.

And then there is the morale issue, touched on above. Stop the support for the war by punishing everyone who thinks they can get away scot-free.

All this starts with Napoleon, was worked over by Sherman, and we are still in the middle of it. After all, we -- that is NATO countries and the Russians -- spent the last 50 years holding each other's citizens hostage at missilepoint.

I don't pretend to have an answer: but it is a really hard one.

yours, Peter T.