Alva Myrdal, in her 1982 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, expressed a powerful opinion or, in her words, a naked truth: “War is murder. And the military preparations now being made for a potential major confrontation are aimed at collective murder.” We’ve been told that this is silly, that the state has defined war and murder to be separate actions. But under my own inspection, the distinction between the two becomes hazy. In the New Oxford American Dictionary, war is defined as “a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country,” while murder is defined as, “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.” Both these states of armed conflicts lead to the killing of one human being by another. The haziness thickens.

But soon, upon further inspection, the haze fades away. Myrdal had overlooked a key term present in the definition of murder: unlawful. War, however violent, brutal or terrorizing, is not unlawful. Soldiers carry with them not only arms but also the authorization to kill. If, on the battlefield, a soldier decides to abstain from killing the enemy, we can assume that there is a high probability he himself will be killed. There exists a kill-or-be-killed mentality — not only on the battlefield, but also in the minds of many rulers, presidents and prime ministers. Soldiers, therefore, are not committing heinous acts of murder because the killing they perform is lawful. They are acting on the orders of others that have been approved by international summits, conventions and treaties.

That being said, one wonders who gives these summits, conventions and treaties the authority to decide the rules of death. Whether it is called murder, war, elimination or child’s play, to take the life of another human being is just that — to take the life of another human being.  While there are artificial distinctions between the terms, such distinctions begin to feel like a crutch that exists just to justify the killing. The equation, process and motive may differ, but the end result of death is uniform in both terms. Furthermore, distinctions between the terms imply that there is a civilized method of killing. This implication appears barbaric and ironic: who is to decide when killing is civilized and when it is not? This act of brutality cannot be carried out in a civilized manner.