I don't think that the innocents' knowledge of their status as targets is the distinguishing factor. I think the distinguishing factors, with respect to war, are that:axordil wrote:There may be no moral difference between a mass murderer and the dropper of bombs on cities, but I believe there is an ethical difference. The innocents being bombed know they are at war. They know they are, to one extent or another, targets. It may not be right--I would never argue it is--but it is understood by all parties involved.
The victims of a self-proclaimed warrior such as Breivik do not have that understanding. No one other than Breivik gave their consent for them to be targets.
1. Some societal consensus has been reached (more likely to occur in a democracy) that the society's peaceful existence is threatened such that force is necessary to defend it. While we can have a reasonable debate on whether that determination justifies the use of force, it at least means (again, within a democracy ... or in a war where at least one party is a democracy) that many minds will have deemed lethal force necessary, rather than one person acting unilaterally. This will usually constitute some level of safeguard, even if imperfectly.
2. Given that society's peaceful existence has been threatened in war, there is a utilitarian argument for the killing of innocents to avert a still-greater number of deaths. This does not exist in the Breivik case: he may have believed that his preferred iteration of Norwegian society was under threat (and which person who has political views doesn't believe this to SOME extent about their country?), but he was not acting to avert the threat of more pronounced, deadly harm to his fellow citizens.