Does it really matter if you die from a bomb, artillery shell, machine gun, or machete?

[Hugabear]

One of the arguments I've seen repeated several times here on DU is that "Libya is bombing its people, these other places (Sierra Leone, North Korea, etc) are not".

Should it really matter? Death is death. The delivery methods may vary, but the result is just the same. We've seen how effective machetes can be in sub-Saharan Africa at killing large numbers of people. Do their deaths matter any less because they weren't bombed from the air?