[ellen364]

I suspect the idea that “people aren't even honest about what constitutes murder and what doesn't” creates a high barrier to the discussion you’d like to have.

From your post, I think you’re starting from the pov that governments have the right to decide what is murder vs an acceptable killing. Some of the people I’ve met who are most interested in these ideas are staunch pacifists with a strong religious motivation (e.g. Quaker or Methodist) and reject the idea that governments can declare any killing to be acceptable. I don’t believe they’re dishonest, for all that it’s a very different starting point.

[pc86]

Society, not governments, has more-or-less agreed for at least a few thousand years that there is a difference between these two acts. You're free to feel differently but as another commenter pointed out, there's not much of a discussion to be had on the ethics of killing in war if you think any two instances of one human killing another human are identical from a moral or ethical standpoint. Throughout all of human history, most people has believed there is a difference.