Re-define Laws of War

From THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 13, 2008, by Haviv Rettig:

The clear distinction between civilian and combatant breaks down in a war against terrorists, and international law must acknowledge and deal with this, according to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

"The anachronistic theory that you can clearly tell the difference between civilian and combatant must be updated to deal with the new reality in which terrorists use civilian populations for fighting purposes," Dershowitz told The Jerusalem Post ....

...Dershowitz will discuss redefining the concept of civilian to "what I call the 'continuum of civilianality.' You can rank people on a scale of one to 10, one being an infant baby, 10 being a grown man with a shoulder rocket about to fire. In between, there are those people who allow their homes to be used for rocket launches or storage, imams who encourage suicide bombing, people who make the [explosive] belts." ...

...."International law is a barrier to democracies fighting fairly against tyrants," he told the Post. "There are exceptions, but in general, international law is part of the problem and needs revision." ...

.... "You can't deter a person who wants to die or a nation prepared to sacrifice itself, as some in Iran have suggested they're prepared to do."

The issue is not one of preempting an immediate and obvious threat, a situation which international law and the UN Charter already permit. Rather, it is about "prevention."
"An attack on Iran would be a preventive war, not a preemptive one," Dershowitz believes. "If Britain and France had fought a preventive war against Nazi Germany," it could have prevented the Holocaust.

Preventive war is already recognized in a limited way by international law. "The UN is not opposed to this idea. It just argues that preventive wars need the approval of the Security Council," he said....