> There is never a justification for intentionally bombing a grade school. Period.

let me focus on this word "intentionally", intent.

When I take the ladder I hid somewhere else under the bridge, and climb in my secret homeless bum nest, I am taking that ladder with intent. So I know intent exists. When I intend thin gs I do them intentionally, and sometimes I don't intend things like accidentally knocking over someone else's glass of drink, then I know I didn't do it intentionally.

Whenever theres a conflict before the courts, and whenever the relevant laws refer to presence or absence of intent, there will be an interest for both the plaintiff and the defendant to make claims on intent: the plaintiff might claim the defendant did such and such with intent, while the defendant has an incentive to claim such and such happened without intent. People take risks, plaintiff took risks, defendant took risks. Often both are co-responsible for a sequence of events, the law (at least on paper) is not monocausal. It is important to be able to attribute faults with causal links to damages, but an even more important role of law is to align incentives such that all parties avoid ending up in these situations. The law serves more than remediation, it serves a prevention role!

I believe it is important to prevent tragic events like girls schools being bombed.

I simply believe it is more effective to prevent harm by focusing on provable facts at hand.

How can a judge verify if something happens with or without intent?

Suppose your loved one was on the Iran Air flight that was downed, do you really care if it was with or without intent? Your loved one is now gone. Wouldn't it be wiser to leave the world in a better place, and have intent-oriented language eliminated so that the international community can promise to act strongly and swiftly when a nation state violates certain intent-agnostic conditions. Keep the (war) crime criteria objective without reference to intent, and don't do reckless stuff which can result in downing civilian air craft (whether its Iran Air or the Dutch plane above Ukraine).

Don't do reckless stuff like have a military complex, then change one of the buildings into civilian use and not marking this change on places like OpenStreetMap.

At the very least a global international list of all childrens schools, universities, etc. And unconditional permission for the international community to use ground penetrating radar, acousting sounding etc to investigate claims of colocated military compounds. International community coffers that can only be used to investigate claimed colocations (human shields). A disincentivation mechanism to prevent malicious parties constantly calling wolf to drain this coffer to prevent investigation of themselves.

Why do people believe that we somehow already have the optimum of all possible laws? Do you sincerely believe no better system of laws can be designed that prevents most of these tragedies?

To be precise:

1. I used to work in a car factory

2. Somehow a conversation with colleagues turned to my diet

3. I told them I like to eat frozen pizza

4. They started calling me Doctor Oetker half the time, and "StreetFighter" the other half of the time.

5. Thats how I got a nickname.

Whats your story, apart from shooting down ideas on how to restore objectivity in international law, because any subjectivity will result in entities believing they can get away by playing the infinite "was too! was not! was too! was not!"-game on the topic of intent...

EDIT: also I just looked up more about the history of Dr. Oetker; and you seem to conflate a couple of things

you state:

> The well known food brand was run by a card carrying wafen-SS member name Oetker who used his influence with the party to get sweetheart deals to supply the Wehrmacht. It’s an odd choice.

But Oetker didn't run this company during the war, his stepfather did. On wikipedia I read he was an SS party member though, and organized support groups for SS members and other Nazi apologetism, which is disgusting indeed...