We are veterans who served in just and unjust wars. U.S. military operations in Afghanistan were in self-defense and a necessary response to the 9/11 attacks. The Iraq War was an unnecessary war of choice, by definition unjust, that directly contributed to the deaths of approximately 200,000 Iraqi civilians. The just war principles that govern when and how we fight, serve as the bedrock for international law, peace, and security.

As former military officers and Jews who live by the values of tikkun olam—to repair the world—these principles were our own guardrails while in combat fighting enemies as ruthless as Hamas.

We spoke up when President Donald Trump pardoned U.S. service members convicted of war crimes who violated these principles.

As practitioners of warfare, we understand that commanders are only accountable for the information available to them at the time of the decision to attack a target. All the commander requires is reasonable certainty that her assessment of the intended target and collateral damage estimate are correct. This means that in many cases, operating in good faith, she will be wrong, and civilians will, unfortunately, be harmed.

However, such cases do not violate just war principles, as no war could ever possibly be just.

Students at Columbia and other top universities and prominent human rights groups, who have never spent time conducting targeting operations, have created new and implausible standards in the war that has followed Hamas' illegitimate attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage to Gaza. For instance, these groups criticized Israel's pager attack on Hezbollah as

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