Replies

Prohibitions against the direct and deliberate killing of civilians, or indiscriminate targeting of non-combatants, are stated clearly in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the UCMJ, numerous U.S. policy statements, the principles of the Nuremberg Tribunals, and international law. To intentionally kill civilians is a war crime. Furthermore, these principles are rooted in Biblical law, e.g. "Thou shalt not kill (commit murder)," which, while not a pacifist principle, entails the requirement that lethal power must be targeted only against people guilty of crime and aggression,and not their families, neighbors, and friends.

Only God is the Lord and Giver of Life: He can authorize when it can be taken, and He can prohibit the taking of it. He says:

Deuteronomy 19:10
Innocent blood must not be shed

Proverbs 6:16-17
These .. things doth the LORD hate: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood

Isaiah 59:2-7
Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood..[you] make haste to shed innocent blood

Jeremiah 7:6
Oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood ...

Jeremiah 22:3
Thus saith the LORD; Execute ye judgment and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood.

Moreover, merely beinging to a false religion (Islam) or going on a Hajj doesn't make a person guilty of a capital crime. Crime is something you do, not merely something you think. Destroying a nuclear installation (which could well be a justified action) is not the same as murdering families on pilgrimage. And a person who is not in combat is not a combatant. Surely you know that.

You are not a Catholic, but for the sake of Catholics who might be reading this exchange, I want to add that the Catechism of the Catholic Church gives strong expression to the American and Judeo-Christian law cited above:

2313 Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.

Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions. Blind obedience does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out. Thus the extermination of a people, nation, or ethnic minority must be condemned as a mortal sin. One is morally bound to resist orders that command genocide.

2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."