The rules of war

[Husar]

But being serious, rules have always applied in warfare as they can make it much less costly for all sides involved. If competing nations or ideologies can respect each other then rules can make war much less brutal. This isn't a new phenomenon, look at the attempts to ban crossbows in the middle ages, for example.

Yes, but if you respect eachother that much, why do you go to war in the first place instead of having a respectful discussion and arriving at a conclusion that has much more respect for human life than even a "respectful war" in which usually still a lot of people, human beings(yes, I see soldiers as such), die all the time?

What you said just means (and i knew it but forgot when writing the OP) that this kind of weird attempts have been going on for quite some time, like not killing the officers or in other words, not killing the ones who send others to die because, well why?