when did I say it was based on population?

Believe it or not they have nearly a full day taught to military personel during basic training of ethics.  The class is called Ethics During Combat.  They teach what is considered enemy combatants, when to fight them and when not to fight them.  What is allowed and what is disallowed under the Geneva Conventions.  And the proper treatment of prisoners, whether they are legal or illegal combatants.

Any captured combatant whether uniformed or not, is to be treated with respect under the Articles of War and the national Conventions.  Any order contravening those articles is considered an illegal order and should be reported to "higher authority".  At that time the soldier can use the chain of command until he fully believes that his/her report has reached a level in which someone will act upon the information.

Case study, one of the questions they asked was, when was it appropriate to shoot at an enemy combating parachuting into your general area.  It depends on the situation they said.  We were all confused.  He stated it was an enemy combatant parachuting on top of us.  We'd shoot.  And we would have all been court martialled.  It depends on the "situation"  Enemy paratroopers which are parachuting on your location in order to fight or hold ground against your position may be fired upon while they are in the air, or when they touch down on ground.  An enemy parachuting because his aircraft is in distress may NOT be fired upon.  He can only be fired upon if he fires first.  Reason is, he may be in distress and can be captured alive as long as they do not fight back while parachuting to safety.

It's all a matter of the situation.

Soldiers may not use any tactic considered torched earth policies.  Civilian crops and housing may not be touched.  At no time will they be destroyed or put to the torch.  Any combatant using the housing as a base of operations may be fired upon.  But purposely destroying non-combatant housing, product, or material which helps protect the livlihood of civilians is a strict no no.

Officers get a double dose of this class in ROTC and Officer Training Schools.

We're also taught the chain of command from Private to President, and we're expected to name them at all levels from squad all the way up to the Joint Chiefs.  There are roughly thirty names and ranks we're expected to memorize, and all those names are part of the chain of command.  Any broken link in that chain, we can bypass and go to the next link to report illegal orders.

Hate to say it, but terrorists are considered "enemy combatants" and if captured fall under the rules of the Geneva Conventions and Articles of War.  Does not matter what the government says or tags terrorists as.  The rules are specific.  The rules only suffer if the highest chain is broke, and then it falls to the lower links to protect the integrity of the Conventions by any means they can muster.

It's funny how those claiming the moral high ground are the ones demanding that combatants not in uniform whose bombs kill women and children as often as enemy soldiers be treated as if they were uniformed enemy soldiers. Such demands are effectively demands that we regress back before rules of "civilized" warfare, removing motivations that soldiers fight soldiers [not bomb civilians as often as they do soldiers] in an understood fight.

The Geneva convention didn't simply seek to protect captives from atrocities: It sought to "civilize" warfare to some tiny extent that it reasonably can be without resulting in increased losses to "civilized" forces (accepting more losses of civilized uniformed soldiers in order to protect the lives of barbarians isn't exactly civilized, nor are policies which do so). Demanding that the rights of the Geneva Convention be given to those who observe 0 of those Conventions only removes all motivation to adhere to the Convention. How civilized and moral. You're arguing that we remove all motivation for our enemy to adhere to the Convention. That's quite a position to hold.

You attack that straw man, Justinian I.

We're not talking about executing enemy combatants, we're talking about not expending the lives and resources of uniformed soldiers to adhere to the Convention in dealing with murderous barbarians who observe 0 of said Conventions.

Yeah, I modified my post. It occurred to me that it may be expensive to just eliminate barbarians, but rather I should have said instead that we do not need to obey those rules if our opponent is not. That doesn't mean we rape or pillage ourselves, but that the restraints do not apply to us when they are necessary to protect our own forces.

the law of medicine is about making medicine work better

the law of commerce is about making commerce work better

but the law of war is about making war so unrewarding that we abandon it

V Kemp the US forces in WW2 had a good grip on rewarding licit war and punishing illicit war; but they are today reviled because they made war effective.  We have to punish our own guys and that's that...if we lose that just shows the other kids are mean and we are better and can ice down our black eyes knowing Mommy and Jesus love us.   Or something.

Jesus Saves, Chris.

Jesus isn't gonna save your butt against 9mm.

I offer such training. But if I post about it, I will go to prison!

I was not a 11b I was an 11c. Mortat man, not rifle humper. Rifle humpers use a lot more ammo than we mere mortar men do. Though when I was with combat engineers we had a lot of different ammo than standard.

We train to be able to hit targets. Our form of supressive fire is kill someone, the rest are suppresed X(

fine, then fire phosphorus under the parachuting foe so his air-rescue teams can make pickup

better make it willy pete, that makes smoke longer