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Sunday, March 30, 2003

By Lillian Thomas, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Ambushing your enemy is OK. Pretending to surrender and then jumping him is not. Wearing camouflage to melt into the landscape is fine. Wearing civilian clothes is not.

U.S. leaders have denounced Iraqi actions, such as using "irregulars" in civilian clothing, that break international rules of war. In turn, critics have said that the United States has violated international codes by denying access to legal assistance and other rights to its prisoners of war at Guantanamo.

But if the point of war is to kill and win, what's the rationale of rules? Why shouldn't the United States and Iraq use any means in the fight?

Debate over whether there should be any rules in war and, if so, what they should be, is ancient.

"The Greeks and the Romans had very few rules," said retired U.S. Army Col. John Bonin, a scholar in residence at the Army Heritage Center Foundation in Carlisle, Cumberland County. "They were very ruthless. The common practice was that if you had power you used it and you used it ruthlessly. . . . The rule is, no rules."

Both ancient powers used terror, he said. "If a town revolted, you went in and killed everybody, and used it as an object lesson. The Roman theory was, you won't have to do it very often, and they didn't. Caesar didn't have to use it in every town in Gaul to conquer Gaul."

Taking conquered people as slaves also was common practice.

Both tactics became problematic, Bonin said, as religious and philosophical writers began to question the morality of such slaughter and of slavery. St. Augustine was one of the strongest voices for restraint in warfare and the protection of noncombatants.

"Once all of the countries in Europe are Christian, now you get a moral dilemma," Bonin said. "Hmm, if I kill a fellow Christian do I go to hell? The Crusades provided an out, if you follow. The pope would declare open season on infidels, and it was OK, you could kill them with abandon."

Nevertheless, the morality of limitless warfare was debated. Popes began their transformation from political figures who endorsed and in many cases engaged in warfare to voices against war in general, and its excesses against civilians in particular.

At the same time, the changing political landscape gradually made slaughter and no-holds-barred conflict a less effective tool of power, Bonin said.

What developed into rules of war in the West started as customs among gentlemen fighting one another during the Age of Chivalry.

"There were certain behaviors that gentlemen -- which comes from gendarmes, or men of arms -- did," Bonin said. "The hand salute comes from putting a hand to the visor to demonstrate to your opponent that you aren't wielding your weapon and are going to show your face. The salute was a mark of respect not just between members of one side, but between opponents, who often saluted one another before beginning battle."

Part of the tradition that grew up was that "gentlemen of honor don't fight civilians -- it's unfair, you're armed."

The customs that had built up fell apart during the Thirty Years War (1618-48), Bonin said. "There were mass armies, depredations against civilians, all manner of mercenaries with their own armies and lots of power."

When the leaders of the parties in the conflict finally made peace in the Treaty of Westfalia in 1648, they set the stage for changing the nature of warfare, Bonin said.

"A lot of historians mark [the peace] as the beginning of the rise of the nation state. The princes, kings and nobles got together and decided to change things. It was not altruistic. It was, 'Hey, guys, we destroyed a lot of things and what good is it to seize territory if you've destroyed it?' They all decided it was not in their best interest to destroy the infrastructure. They decided it's in all of our best interest to just put soldiers at risk and preserve the rest."

The idea of strictly national armies took root, along with rules that were agreed upon within and among armies. "They decided, 'We're going to avoid civilians, we're going to fight in fields, we're going to get together ahead of time and decide where we're going to fight.'"

Two roads to the rules

The modern rules of war, then, have been shaped by two impulses -- moral questioning and practical considerations.

Maj. Mike O. Lacey, an authority on international law, described the tension between the two in an article in a journal published at the U.S. Army War College.

"The law of war has developed and will continue to develop driven by two radically different perspectives, that of the utilitarian or warrior and that of the humanitarian," he wrote. "These two schools of thought have long battled for preeminence among policymakers, the political elite, and the society that they both serve."

Henry Dunant, who founded the International Red Cross and started the Geneva Conventions, was a humanitarian seeking to blunt the harshest consequences of warfare.

In Italy in 1859, 40,000 men were killed and wounded in a single day in the battle of Solferino. Dunant argued that any soldier removed from the fighting because of illness or injury deserved humane treatment, regardless of which side he fought for. He called on the international community to draft an agreement on the treatment of battlefield casualties. His efforts led to the 1864 adoption of the first Geneva Convention for the protection of wounded and sick combatants.

More conventions were adopted over the next century, as well as other international rules that were responses to an essentially humanitarian, moral impulse.

The model for much of the modern rules of engagement comes from the navy, which had much more pragmatic reasons for formulating them, Bonin said. "Navies, for years, had to have detailed instructions because once they went to sea there was no communication. They had to think about all the things that could happen ahead of time and create a detailed set of instructions."

When the rest of the services decided in the post-Vietnam era that standard rules would be useful, they used the navy's as guidelines.

Rules of war depend on the acceptance of all warring parties, of course.

In the Revolutionary War, the British followed a set of traditions that were not adhered to by their opponents. They wore their lobster-hued uniforms and marched in formation, easy pickings for colonial combatants hidden behind trees.

They used the style of conflict agreed upon at Westfalia. It turned out to be poorly suited to handling insurrections and guerrilla warfare.

The British were outraged by the colonialists' failure to stand up and fight in columns. They responded by suspending their own rules, hanging or shooting on sight enemies they believed were not fighting according to code.

In World War II, the United States came up against the Japanese military code, which had evolved into a complex set of rules, just as the West's had.

"The Japanese had a very honorable style of warfare that developed from the Samurai," Bonin said.

Surrender was the supreme dishonor. Soldiers were expected to fight to the death and commit suicide, if necessary, to avoid the humiliation of surrender.

During World War II, the clash of arms was also a clash of cultures. "They despised our soldiers who surrendered," partially explaining the extremely harsh treatment accorded American POWs, Bonin said.

The short answer to which set of rules prevails, of course, is "those of the winner."

"That's what you call cultural imperialism. We impose our standards" on defeated opponents, Bonin said.

The burden of fairness

In the midst of conflict, playing by the rules can be to an army's disadvantage, particularly in fighting an opponent who has nothing to lose.

The troops loyal to Saddam Hussein have little motive not to use tactics such as fake surrenders or attacking out of uniform. After all, the threat of being tried for war crimes down the road probably pales to the threat of imminent death.

People with their backs to the wall may not care about the distinctions made by international bodies between "permissible deception" (which can include camouflage, decoys, mock operations, ambush, false signals and "perfidy" (improper use of the white flag, feigned surrender, or pretending to be a civilian).

Attempting to minimize destruction to the civilians of the opponent also can be to an army's disadvantage, Bonin said.

"That is a theory, just get it done and get it done quick. One can argue that the quicker we do this more lives saved. But we have to try to make a morally correct decision as well."

Practical considerations also figure into strategy.

"We need to think through how to accomplish the mission, and in this case, the mission includes restoring order in the country, which means you can't ignore the civilians."

Neither is it pragmatic for an army to ignore world opinion.

"In the short term following rules can cause problems," Bonin said. "In a particular firefight, these rules may put you at a disadvantage. But I would argue these rules are beneficial."

Lacey contends that the United States has followed an essentially utilitarian line in terms of law of war, tending to be suspicious of the humanitarians. He sees both sides as essential.

"The history of humanity is one of war and frequent acts of unlimited brutality. The history of humanity also reveals a persistent and growing effort to limit the nature of warfare. This conflict is a manifestation of humanity's will to survive."