How the insurgents want us to fight

Mackubin Thomas Owens:

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In Iraq, our opponents have chosen to deny us the ability to fight the sort of conventional war we would prefer and forced us to fight the one they want—an insurgency. Insurgents blend with the people making it hard to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant. A counterinsurgency always has to negotiate a fine line between too much and too little force. Indeed, it suits the insurgents’ goal when too much force is applied indiscriminately.

For insurgents, there is no more powerful propaganda tool than the claim that their adversaries are employing force in an indiscriminate manner. It is even better for the insurgents’ cause if they can credibly charge the forces of the counterinsurgency with the targeted killing of noncombatants. For many people even today, the entire Americans enterprise in Vietnam is discredited by the belief that the U.S. military committed atrocities and war crimes on a regular basis and as a matter of official policy. But as Jim Webb has noted, stories of atrocious conduct, e.g. My Lai, “represented not the typical experience of the American soldier, but its ugly extreme.”

In the quest for its own My Lai, the anti-Iraq war faction in this country has had to settle for Abu Ghraib, by far the most hyped stories of the war. But now, allegations of multiple murders in the town of Haditha, an insurgent stronghold in al Anbar Province, may provide them with the incident they need. According to published reports, a number of Marines from the storied 3rd Battalion, 1^st Marines, 1st Marine Division are accused killing more than 20 Iraqi civilians in retaliation for the death of one of their comrades by a roadside bomb in November, 2005.

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Atrocities and war crimes are acts of violence in wartime the brutality and cruelty of which exceed military necessity. They include, but are not limited to, looting, torture, rape, massacre, mutilation of the enemy dead, and the killing of captured soldiers or noncombatants.

The West has placed three constraints on its conduct warfare: proportion, discrimination, and the positive law of war. Proportion means that particular actions must be proportionate to legitimate military necessity and not involve needless suffering or destruction. Discrimination means that direct intentional attacks on noncombatants and non-military targets are prohibited. The incident at Haditha appears to be an example of this last category.

If civilians in Haditha were killed in revenge for the IED attack, the action violated the principle of discrimination and the positive law of war, which derives from conventions, customs, the general principles of law, decisions in international law, and the writings of authorities. Standards regulating the conduct of war have followed two general paths: “Geneva law,” protecting victims and innocents; and “Hague law,” regulating land combat.

The law of war attempts, insofar as it is possible, to civilize war. The law of war seeks to strike a balance among the principles of military necessity, humanity and chivalry and to employ the public conscience of civilized nations to restrain war. The positive law of war thus attempts to codify the principle that belligerents do not have an unlimited right to harm their adversaries.

The key to applying the law of war to particular situations is the principle of military necessity. This principle holds that subject to the principles of humanity and chivalry, a belligerent is justified in applying the amount of force necessary to achieve the complete submission of the enemy as soon as possible, with the least expenditure of time, life, and resources.

Military necessity recognizes that a commander’s overriding concern is the accomplishment of his mission and the safety of his troops. One would not attack a populated area, increasing the risks of civilian deaths, unless such attack was essential to the campaign. Humanity is the self-evident recognition of the fact that one’s enemy is also a human being. Prohibitions against killing or torturing prisoners, or the generally recognized obligation to provide medical treatment to wounded prisoners, flow from this principle. Chivalry is the customary recognition of the idea that the strong protect the weak. Soldiers do not declare war on women or children because it is dishonorable to do so. If women or children engage in war, however, the principle of military necessity usually takes precedence over chivalry, but if the facts are as described by Murtha, military necessity was not a consideration in this case.

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There is more in this thoughtful piece. Owens brings dispassionate analysis to a passionate debate.