On wars and rules

There exist rules on how wars should be fought, and it looks like the rules are about to be rewritten. Terrorists say that they don't care about the rules since rules were written and ratified by states at the times when war were fought by states against each other. Also, perfectly sensible people are wondering if there is any sense to following and enforcing the rules, since people indeed don't generally like a bomb that is thrown on them by a state from the sky anymore than they like a bomb that is blown up by a terrorist on their bus.

I think the existence of rules of warfare is somehow counterintuitive to most people (myself included) because, first of all, warfare as such is very much against modern Western values, and also because it makes one think that if people manage to agree on the rules somehow, couldn't they also manage to agree on whatever they are fighting about without resorting to the actual fighting?

Still, I think that the rules of warfare are there for a reason, and the reason is to protect a lot of people from a lot of trouble. I wish that everyone (especially the terrorists themselves) who thinks that terrorists don't have to play by the rules because they are the small guys and because the big guys have invented all the rules anyway gave the thought to the following idea: what exactly will happen if the big guys stop playing by the rules too? (The glib answer would be of course Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but I am afraid this is just the beginning.)

The whole concept of warfare is very much against the modern Western sense of justice. Even if you are fighting the most evil dictator ever and manage not to kill a single civilian in the process, you are in all likelihood killing lots of perfectly innocent people who were drafted into the evil dictator's army through no fault of their own.

The way all the Western countries justify this is an appeal to necessity, which basically amounts to "we kill the enemy because we are fucked if we don't", which might or might not be true, but that is beside the point. Now, what do we get if we start applying the same argument to a war where the enemy lives among us, wears no uniform and is distinguished only by belonging to a particular religious/ethnic/political group? I really, really suggest we do not go there.