The Redhunter

Combatant versus Noncombatant

It is obvious that members of the armed forces are combatants. Beyond that, however, it gets murky.

The bellicist (opposite of pacifist) position is that "they are all guilty", that is, all citizens of the nation with which we are at war are guilty of aiding the war effort and are thus subject to attack. This was, in fact, the position that we took during World War II. The allies conducted bombing attacks on Japanese and German cities without much regard as to whom we hit. We justified this by reasoning that civilians were supporting the war effort, thus they were targets. Besides, the enemy had no compunction about attacking our civilians.

Now, of course, the vast majority of Westerners have rejected this extreme view. Only a few, such as Ward Churchill, still adopt it. Paradoxically, he and others like him take the position that it is us who are "all guilty" and thus deserve to be attacked. I'll not deal with the absurdity here, as it will be evident to most readers.

A "middle" position is that workers in certain industries are legitimate targets. This position is more of a sliding scale, with some arguing that only workers who manufacture armaments are targets, while others include any industry that might aid the enemy war effort, such as power plants.

But this is still unsatisfactory. Can we not attack the factories and transportation facilities themselves without directly targeting the civilians working there? We'll get to the specifics of this later, but for now, let's clear up this issue of combatants versus noncombatants:

1. "The issue is not that noncombatants in some mysterious way gain an immunity against attack which their fellow-citizen combatants lack, but rather that they retain the immunity against attack that is 'a feature of normal human relationships'"
2. Also, that only those who actively take up arms against us are to be considered combatants (whether legal or illegal combatants does not matter. For a further discussion see below)

The answer is yes, but only if certain conditions are met. We will divide the problem into two parts; the number of civilians that may be killed, and the other with "what actions the attacker takes to discriminate between combatant and noncombatant." The former is part of Proportion in war, and will be considered in the next post. We'll discuss the latter here.

An attacker must not only recognize that there is a distinction between combatant and noncombatant, he must adjust his actions accordingly.

The Principle of the Double Effect

This principle is used to judge a situation in which an action intended to produce a morally right effect, also produces an effect that is immoral if directly employed. In other words, if the second effect is not directly intended, the action is moral. The immoral, or "bad" effect must not flow directly from the moral, or "good", action. Put in even more plain terms, one may take a moral action, even if there is an immoral side effect, as long as that side effect is not directly intended and one attempts to minimize it. One may not take an immoral action, even though good may come of it.

The classic example is that of the munitions factory. We are justified in bombing the factory, even though civilians may be killed in the process. We are obligated to make serious attempts to minimize those civilian casualties, however. For example, we may decide to bomb at night, when the factory is closed, or we may use precision bombs so as to avoid as much as possible damage to surrounding neighborhoods. Reasonable people can disagree as to the extent of our obligations here, but the point is that they exist and must be taken into account.

On the other hand, suppose for purposes of illustration that our enemy has hidden the factory deep underground where our bombs cannot reach it. Would we be justified in bombing the civilian workers homes? After all, this would have the good effect of ending production at the factory. The answer, of course, is no, we would not be justified in bombing their homes. The reason is that directly attacking civilians is immoral.

An attacker must genuinely not want to kill civilians. Killing civilians must be genuinely unwanted. We may permit it to occur, we may even foresee it's occurence, but that is not the same as directly attacking civilians or even carelessness. In practical terms, we may not fire missiles and drop bombs at random and use the excuse "we didn't mean to kill civilians." A conscious effort must be made.

Accepting Some Risk

Some have suggested that one measure of whether an attacker is keeping with the bounds of discrimination is if he is willing to accept some degree of risk to himself.

The key, of course, is "how much risk?" This runs the gamut from "none at all!" to "we must go out of our way to avoid excess damage and casualties."

As an example of the former, I recall during the run-up to the Gulf War, Ross Perot advocated the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq so that no American would run the risk of losing their lives. Although I cannot recall an analogous situation in the Iraq or Afghanistan campaigns, I'm sure the occurred. Likewise, in Bosnia President Clinton ordered our airmen to bomb from a considerable height so as to minimize the risk to them. Although to my knowledge no Americans were killed, the result was a less-than-ideal result from the bombing campaign.

On the other hand, there are constant cries from "human rights" organizations that we are not doing enough to protect civilian lives and minimize damage. The Unites States is acused of carelessness or worse.

The reality is that our forces are usually somewhere in-between these two extremes, but from all of the information that I read we are actually closer to the latter, whereby we assume great risks to avoid unnecessary damage and casualties. I have read story after story about how our forces have been subjected to withering fire from the enemy (often inaccurate, but surely nerve-wracking), yet holding their own fire until certain of their targets.

One resolution to the query "how much risk?" is offered by Martino. When the United States goes to war with a tyrannical government, such as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Ba'athist Iraq, or, as a theoretical, Communist Russia, the citizens of that nation are not the beneficiaries of that tyranny but rather it's victims. It is incumbent on them to oppose that tyranny to some degree. In other words, they, too, should share some of the risk. After all, our victory is their victory, whether in the heat of battle they realize it or not. By this same token, we have an obligation to try and minimize civilian casualties, since they are our natural allies.

As mentioned, the citizens of the countries with which we are at war bear some responsibility for their situation. To some degree, every people is responsible for their own government, whether it is a tyranny or a democracy, to the extent that they tolerate the actions of that government. In other words, they have some responsibility to revolt or resist against that government.

The conclusion is that we need accept no more risk than the people of our enemies government assume themselves in resisting that government. How much risk this translates into is a matter that reasonable people can debate, as long as they keep the central principle in mind.

Applied to Iraq, this would mean that our obligation to avoid civilian deaths and damage was initially proportional to the Iraqi peoples reisitance to the Saddam Hussein government, and later to the amount of cooperation that we receive from them in defeating the terrorists. Since in the former there are many, many examples of resistance, and in the latter they have become very cooperative, we are under a great obligation to discriminate when we use force.

Targets

The type of target we attack is part of discrimination. Possible targets run the range from military units and their bases, to munitions factories, and finally to civilian power plants and bridges. While no serious person would argue against attacking targets in the former two categories, the latter presents unique problems. During the Gulf War we attacked Iraqi power plants, bridges, telephone exchanges, and more. While these affected the ability of their military to carry out it's mission, they also had a negative impact on the civilian population.

During the invasion of Iraq, we abstained from attacking these civilian targets. Was it right to attack them in the former, yet not in the latter, instance?

The justification for attacking them in the Gulf War was that we could hamper the ability of the Iraqi military by destroying them. The rational for not attacking them in the invasion was that A) we could destroy the Iraqi military without destroying the civilian infrastructure (the result of technological advances on our part), and B) because our objective this time was to occupy the country, and did not want to alienate the civilian population.

Selection of Weapons

The last aspect of discrimination is sizing the bomb to the target. We must discriminate between the target and it's surroundings. We must take reasonable care to avoid unnecessary damage to civilian structures, even if they are in close proximity to the target.

With targets on land, we typically do this by examining what it would take to destroy the target, looking at surrounding civilian structures, and even taking into account the time of day when civilians are most likely to be in the area. We then look at the weapons in our arsenal that would destroy the target, and judge how much damage they might also cause to surrounding civilian structures and people. We choose the smallest weapon available that will both destroy the target and minimize damage to civilians. This might even mean firing the missile or dropping the bomb from a particular angle.

In the case of a warship at sea, this principle comes into effect, since there may well be commercial freighters, cruise liners, and other vessels in the vicinity. Modern weapons, such as the American Harpoon anti-ship missile, are "fire and forget" weapons, with a range in the tens of miles. Once launched, their radar seekers will lock onto the largest "blip," whether this is an enemy ship or innocent fishing trawler. We must therefore take care when using these weapons that there are not civilians in the vicinity.

Sizing the weapon to the target, and exercising care in using the weapon, means accepting some risk to our own forces. How much risk we need take is always debatable, but to stay in the bounds of acceptable behavior, we need to accept that we do need to accept some risk.

Illegal Combatants

I discussed the issue of illegal combatants in an earlier post, so will only summarize here. Essentially, Article 4, Section A2 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War provides that:

Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfill the following conditions:

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

My point here is simply to point out that anyone who attacks US forces or civilians are themselves subject to attack, and that discriminating between them and civilians may be quite difficult. Whether they are legal or illegal combatants does not matter in this context. The principle of discrimination only means that we must take care in pursuit of illegal combatants and exercise care in our military actions.

Sanctions

It is said by some that economic sanctions, by their nature, are indiscriminate. That is, they are by definition applied to the entire population, and thus hurt innocents, not just the rulers.

In the 1990's , the United States and our allies attempted to get around this by use of the "oil-for-food" program. The idea behind this was that the Iraqi people would receive the food and medical care they needed, while depriving the regime of money to buy weaponry and material for WMD production.

Oil-for-Food was a laudable idea. That it is evident now that it was rift with corruption, however, makes one pause before recommending it as a model for future sanctions programs.

Most Just War theorists that I have read tend to frown on broad-based sanctions if they hurt the general population. They tend to favor targeted sanctions, such as those that are meant to prevent acquisition of WMD. However one comes down on this issue, it is clear to me that much more hard thinking is required before an acceptable model is found.

Conclusion

This is obviously a complicated subject with much room for disagreement. As I have stated, in many instances reasonable people will be able to disagree and still stay "in bounds." Whatever we decide in any specific instance, policy-planners must be cognizant of the principle of discrimination and avoid decisions made in anger or haste. Certainly soldiers in the heat of battle will make mistakes, but training can reduce this. However, in the end, we should be proud that we hold ourselves to a higher standard than our enemies can ever imagine.