proportionality

... to insist on proportionality in warfare does not imply that the Air Force can only use radar if the enemy has it as well. Rather, it means that ... oh let me try to think of an exaggerated example just to make the point ... Okay I've got it! Proportionality in warfare means that if a foreign government bombs a military target and kills a few thousand of your soldiers, then you're not allowed to turn around, invent atomic weapons and use them to melt tens of thousands of children who are subjects of that same government, particularly when you've already blockaded their mainland and their troops are no longer a threat. There ... If that ridiculous example doesn't get the idea across, I don't know what else will.

- Bob Murphy, "Muddled Michael Medved"

See also Tom Woods, "Another Conservative Contribution to Civilization":

Ah, what intellectuals today's conservatives are, always brimming with erudition. In a recent column, Michael Medved speaks of the idea of proportionate response as a criterion of the just war as a "currently trendy notion" and a "misguided contemporary" tool of moral evaluation. How embarrassed we all must feel to have thought it came from Hugo Grotius (1583-1645).

And on questioning the justice and goodness of WWII:

Those are pretty good questions, actually, even if the entire range of respectable opinion forbids us to pose them. Some issues, you understand, can never be discussed or considered lest society revert instantly to barbarism.