One is dealing with a conception of international law that has many precedents in earlier history but few that have endured. It is significant that the body of law in place for internal or civil wars continues to lag behind that for international conflicts. Some progress is now being made owing to the work of the International Criminal Courts (ICC) relating to the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Starting with the American Civil War (1861-65) , the magnitude of the devastation in warfare has augmented exponentially in time with each major conflict. Accordingly there has been a growing movement, not only among humanitarians but among governments, to set limits on what is permissible in warfare, whenever possible to fix the blame on violators of these limits, to indemnify the victims, to bear witness in the interest of national reconciliation, or punish individual offenders, so-called "war criminals" .
No-one imagines that International Humanitarian Law (IHL) will bring about a perfect world; yet the world we currently inhabit is so unthinkably horrible, that even a modest attempt to make it more livable is worth the effort. Since the distinction between legitimate and criminal acts of war can only be a convenient fiction, almost anything done in war can be justified or condemned by a nation , depending on its role as victor or vanquished. The US Army Field Manual on the Laws of Land Warfare , compiled in 1956, defines a war crime as any violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice , which itself is based on the 4 Geneva Conventions of 1949 . This is the only category of crime considered in the field manual. However it does present the canonical division of Crimes against International Humanitarian Law into 3 categories:
The Additional Protocols of 1977 relate to international conflicts only . In them the above list is extended to include:
(x) Certain medical experiments
(xi) Making civilians and non-defended localities the object or inevitable victims of attack
(xii) The perfidious use of Red Cross or Red Crescent emblems
(xiii) Transfer by an occupying power of parts of its population to occupied territory
(xiv) Unjustified delays in repatriation of POWs
(xv) Apartheid
(xvi) Attacks on historic monuments
(xvii) Depriving protected persons of their rights to a fair trial.
As promulgated by the neo-conservative Bush administration, the doctrine of the "pre-emptive strike" dismissed , in a single stroke, the entire category of crimes against peace that was created by the United States itself in 1945 !
Even so blatant an affront to a civilian population as destruction of water works or pollution of the water supply, a violation of Article 54 of Protocol I, has been justified on the grounds that both combatants and non-combatants drink the same water!
"... water supplies do not enjoy absolute protection under international law. If water supplies are being used exclusively by civilians, legally they are supposed to be immune. But if they are being used by both combatants and noncombatants, the picture changes. " (Gutman and Rieff, pg. 378)
However grossly immoral it may appear to us , it is scarcely surprising that armies engaged in warfare will, through policy, expedience or design perpetrate grave breaches. All the same, what our government has done and continues to do in the current war against Iraq , must be deemed incontestably criminal in that the strategies actually employed in the conduct of the war have been based upon those advocated in a treatise published in 1966 by the National Defense University which is a veritable encyclopedia of crimes against International Humanitarian Law : "Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance " with principle authors James P. Wade, L.A. and Harlan K. Ullman, with assistance from Keith Bradley, "Bud Edney" and Charles A. Homer .
All of the publications of the National Defense University (NDU) and the Institute for Strategic Studies (INSS) - internal think-tanks of the Pentagon - are available for free on-line at:National Defense University
One can learn a lot from these publications. In terms of their general strategic philosophy , one has only oneself to blame for being misinformed as to what the war hawks are up to.
The goal of Shock and Awe, Rapid Dominance , is defined in the first paragraph of Chapter 2 :
" The basis for Rapid Dominance rests in the ability to affect the will, perception and understanding of the adversary through imposing sufficient Shock and Awe to achieve the necessary political, strategic, and operational goals of the conflict or crisis that led to the use of force...
War, of course, in the broadest sense has been characterized by Clausewitz to include substantial elements of 'fog, friction and fear.' In the Clausewitzian view, 'shock and awe' were necessary effects arising from application of military power and were aimed at destroying the will of an adversary to resist. Sun Tzu ... around 500 B.C. ... observed that 'war is deception', implying that Shock and Awe were greatly leveraged through clever, if not brilliant, employment of force. "
Since the authors assume that the idea of Rapid Dominance is virtually self-evident , it appears frequently in Chapter 1 without being defined :
" Because Rapid Dominance is aimed at influencing the will, perception and understanding of an adversary rather than simply destroying military capability, this focus must cause us to consider the broadest spectrum of behavior, ours and theirs, and across all aspects of war including intelligence, training, education, doctrine, industrial capacity, and how we organize and manage defense. "
One gathers that Rapid Dominance seeks to destroy the will and morale of the adversary, and is indifferent to the physical means employed towards this end. Indeed, in the second paragraph of Chapter 2, page 2, we are led to understand that its victims are to be driven mad:
"One recalls from old photographs and movie or television screens, the comatose and glazed expressions of survivors of the great bombardments of World War I and the attendant horrors and death of trench warfare. These images and expressions of shock transcend race, culture, and history. Indeed, TV coverage of Desert Storm vividly portrayed Iraqi soldiers registering these effects of battlefield Shock and Awe."
Ullman and Wade get right to the point: invoking the shell-shock paradigm of World War I they shamelessly advocated , in an unprovoked war, the exploitation of all the knowledge acquired by military psychiatrists over the last century, attacking the will and morale of the 5 million residents of Baghdad through the imposition of Shock and Awe. One infers this intention through the double-talk of this paragraph on page 4 of Chapter 1:
" To accomplish the rendering an adversary incapable of action means neutralizing the ability to command; to provide logistics; to organize society; and to function; as well as to control, regulate and deny the adversary of information, intelligence, and understanding of what is and what is not happening. This means we must control all necessary intelligence and information on our forces - the ultimate form of stealth -and on an adversary's forces as well and then exploit total situational awareness for rapid action "
. Starting with the Iliad, almost all treatments of warfare by historians, journalists and authors, ignore or denigrate the psychological after-effects of battlefield experience. It is traditional to attribute mental collapse under the stress of combat to weakness or cowardice. Such phenomena dilute the story line, whereas it is in the interest of story-tellers to portray war as exciting, a kind of football game with real stakes, rather than as something crippling and demoralizing to everyone forced to participate in it at first hand .
There have always been important dissenting voices. The military psychiatrist Richard Gabriel maintains that persons who adapt well to or even enjoy warfare ( about 2% of combatants, or 99% of all "heroes" depicted in the fiction about war) were lunatics to begin with:
" There is enough evidence from studies done after World War II to suggest that the only people who do not succumb to the stress of war are those who are already mentally aberrant in a clinically defined sense. About 2 percent of soldiers exposed to combat over long periods of time do not break under the stress. An examination of these 'heroes' reveals that their most commonly held trait was that they were 'aggressive psychopathic personalities' who were that way before they entered the battle zone. The lesson seems to be that only the sane break down. Those already mentally ill appear able to adjust to the horror of combat. " (Gabriel, pg. 79)
It is only in the last century that medical personnel have made a systematic study of conditions known variously as shell-shock, war neurosis, effort syndrome, battle fatigue, acute combat stress, and the modern acronym of "post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)" What they have discovered contradicts almost everything written about the subject in the past. This collection of quotes is from the pages of Gabriel's book "No More Heroes: Madness and Psychiatry in War"
Page 4: " Given enough time in conflict, every soldier will eventually collapse. "
Page 5 : " As war becomes more destructive and the battlefield more lethal with each new generation of weapons, the number of men lost to the fighting effort as a result of mental collapse grows. "
Page 6: "It is entirely possible that at some time in the future - if, indeed we have not already reached it - we shall reach the point where war is truly obsolete, a point where warfare becomes impossible for the human being to endure and perform... " Gabriel uses the term "counter shock")
Page 7: "... in every one of America's wars in this century the role of psychiatric collapse among soldiers have exceeded the number killed in action. " Page 8: ".. perhaps most horrifying of all, the main directions of military psychiatry are pointing to a chemical solution to the problem. The development of drugs that will prevent the onset of battle-shock symptoms and, in the process, completely change man's psychic constitution - the spectre of a chemically changed soldier whose mind has been made over in the image of a true sociopathic personality cannot be realistically ignored... "
Page 87 : " The simple fact is that men are crushed by the strain of modern war ....most men will collapse given enough exposure to battle stress. There is no such thing as getting used to combat. "
Everything that pertains to combatant trauma is intensified in the case of helpless civilian populations under direct attack. It has long been recognized that the most effective way to demoralize large civilian populations is through massive aerial bombardment. This was a primary motivation in the invention of aerial bombardment of open cities by the Nazis in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. From "War on the Mind", Peter Watson, pgs. 217-219:
" It should be remembered that there are significant differences with regard to weapons for soldiers and civilians. Both can get bombed, gassed, shot or captured. But the soldier usually has an opportunity to fight back more than the civilian - he has his own weapon, is trained in the appropriate skills, and is part of the unit that will support him... And not least, a large proportion of the civilian population will be children, many too young to understand fully what is happening ...
"One of the most ambitious programmes in the Second World War was the US Strategic Bombing Survey group in Washington which followed closely behind the advance of the Allied armies. The group attempted to assess all aspects of the effects of strategic bombing from physical damage to psychological effects - this being done by a Morale Division whose objective was 'To determine the direct and indirect effects of bombing upon the attitudes, behavior, and health of the civilian population....
" The Morale Division's conclusions on Germany were not clear-cut but on Japan they were able to state that air attacks were 'the most important single factor' in causing the Japanese people to have doubts of victory and also the single most important thing to make them feel certain of defeat. They were also the greatest worry during the war. "
Taken all-in-all, one cannot avoid the conclusion that the aim of Rapid Dominance as it was applied in the air war against Baghdad, a city of 5 million inhabitants, was to torture its residents into states of war psychosis. Although there was no intention of genocide, one can argue that the implementation of the strategies propounded in "Shock and Awe" was effectively a form of psychological genocide. The endorsement of the ideas in Shock and Awe by the military was a crime against peace , their implementation a crime against humanity.
Among the objections to Strategy 5, nick-named "Sun Tzu, or Decapitation" is that this " model can easily fall outside the cultural values and heritage of the US for it to be useful without major refinement. " Enough said.
Following the presentation of the 9 strategies, I include a short-list of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other statues of IHL implied by them:
Carpet Bombing , to begin with, is a violation of the civilian protection clauses of the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949. The Additional Protocol I of 1977, ( which is not signed by the US, yet which it has promised to uphold as an example of "customary international law" ) , asserts that such bombings are illegal because they constitute "indiscriminate attack". During the Nuremberg Tribunal, Hermann Goering was charged with "... the devastation of towns not justified by military necessity, in violation of the laws of war ... "
One of the essential provisions in International Humanitarian Law is that the amount of force employed must not exceed what is required to reach a given objective, and must be proportional to the importance of that objective. This principle of proportionality is discussed in Gutman and Rieff(pg. 294):
" The principle of proportionality is embedded in almost every national legal system and underlies the international world order ... In armed conflict, the principle is used to judge first, the law in jus ad bellem of the strategic goals in the use of force for self-defense, and second, the jus in bello of any armed attack that causes civilian casualties...."
As formulated in Addition Protocol I of 1977, attacks are prohibited if they cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects that is in excess in relation to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage of the attack."
These paragraphs,( transcribed verbatim ) , are astounding to the point of being unbelievable. Reading them leaves one with no doubts that its authors advocate the deliberate perpetration of war crimes as the way for a powerful adversary to defeat a weaker one. Destructive force is to be directed against civilian populations rather than military objectives . The insidious neo-logism of "counter value" can only be interpreted as "criminal intent". Its usage in context indicates that the "enemy" should be led to believe that it is up against an enemy so evil ("counter values" , that is to say "counter all civilized values " ) , that resistance is futile. The "enemy" in this case, is not the army, nor the government of a state under attack, it is "the public will"
The line between 'military' and 'civilian' targets is virtually impossible to draw in massive bombardment, Not only does the principle of proportionality come into play, but there is also the issue of collateral damage:
( pg. 88, Gutman and Rieff) : "Collateral or incidental damage occurs when attacks targeted at military objectives cause civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects. It often occurs if military objectives such as military equipment or soldiers are situated in cities or villages or close to civilians .... whatever the claims of governments or armed forces, attacks directed targeted at the civilian population are in violation of the basic principle of distinction [ of combatants and non-combatants] and cannot be referred to as having caused collateral damage. "
'Blitzkrieg' was first employed by the Germans and Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War in the massive bombardment of Guernica that took place on April 26, 1937 . The military objective was clear: Guernica was at the nodal intersection of all roads along which the demoralized Republican troops were streaming in the direction of the principal city of Bilbao. At the Nuremberg Tribunals it was claimed that the purpose in dropping 100,000 pounds of explosives in a few hours on a defenseless village was to blow up a single bridge. In fact the bridge itself was unscathed by the bombardment: the obvious objectives were the townspeople, the fleeing soldiers , and the large population of war refugees. Wolfram Von Richthoven, commanding officer for the Condor Legion that carried out the bombardment wrote, in a letter to his wife:
" Fear, which cannot be simulated in peaceful training of troops, is very important, because it affects morale. Morale is more important in winning battles than weapons. Continuously repeated, concentrated air attacks have the most effect on the morale of the enemy. "
This lucid, concise statement might be taken as a definition of "Shock and Awe".
Arbitrary assassinations, the taking of hostages and reprisals are all contrary to the letter and spirit of modern international law. Among the war crimes listed by the statutes of the Nuremberg Tribunal one finds:
" ....violations of the laws or customs of war: murder, ill-treatment, mass deportations, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, killing of hostages ... "
Article 3 of the ICC rulings on war crimes during the Yugoslavian wars reinforce this proscription, including: violence to life and person; outrages upon personal dignity; hostage taking; and summary executions .
The category of war crime covered by such strategies is called "Perfidy and Treachery". The classic contemporary example cited is the conspiracy of deceptions and lies that were fed to the inhabitants of the "safe havens" of Srebrenica, because of which thousands of fleeing Bosnia Muslims handed themselves over to their Serb captors for certain execution:
(Gutman and Rieff ,pg. 270 ) " The men knew that they were earmarked for death and they had fled ... Bosnian Serb soldiers wearing stolen UN uniforms and driving stolen UN vehicles announced over megaphones that they were UN peacekeepers and that they were prepared to oversee the Bosnian Muslims' surrender and guarantee they would not be harmed ... Those whom the Serbs got their hands on were killed by firing squad ...
" The prohibition in modern times against what is alternatively called "perfidy" and "treachery" goes back to the American Civil War.... the definitive statement banning the kinds of deceptions the Bosnian Serbs engaged in ... can be found in Articles 37, 38, and 39 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions . "
These are clear violations of the principle of proportionality, the prohibitions against wanton destruction, indiscriminate attack, extermination of civilian populations. Being overtly imperialistic, they also constitute crimes against peace .
There are two words which appear to convey the sense of what the authors mean by "Decay and Default" : "destabilization" and "terrorism" . The co-ordinated suicide bombings in Israel are clearly intended to destabilize Israeli society and bring about a breakdown in normal functioning.
(pg. 348, Gutman and Rieff) " The term terrorism has no universally agreed upon definition, but rather recurring themes including: violence with a political or social purpose, an attempt to intimidate, and directing the acts of civilians and other non-combatants ... Terrorism needs a third party, who might be intimidated by what happened to the victim"
What the authors mean by this isn't entirely clear, but it appears to be related to the notion that, by launching destruction from a great distance (Cruise missiles, etc.) one takes on an aura of "invulnerability" which may be a contributing factor in the psychological imposition of Shock and Awe. The usual proscriptions against wanton destruction, carpet bombing, targeting of civilians , and the like, would apply in this case.
[1] "Overwhelming Force" Over 29,000 bombs were dropped on Iraq in a period of less than 3 weeks. The total number of aircraft employed was around 1800, and used virtually every type of combat aircraft in the American arsenal. As for munitions: " Munitions employment for OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) reached across the entire spectrum of the US weapons inventory". ( Official US Air Force statistics)
On March 21st, the "Coalition" airforces sent out over 1700 sorties, dropping 504 TLAM and CALCM Cruise missles, largely on Baghdad.
[2] "Hiroshima and Nagasaki". That the policies advocated by Shock and Awe were central to the American strategy for fighting the war is apparent from statements made by top officials at least 4 years before the war. In 1999, Rumsfeld told CNN:
" There is always a risk in gradualism; it pacifies the hesitant and the tentative. What it doesn't do is shock, and awe, and alters the calculations of the people you're dealing with. "
Shortly before the war a Pentagon official was quoted as saying : "... this simultaneous effect - rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima .. There will not be a safe place in Baghdad. The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before. "
From the archive of website "In War We Trust", we read (May 10,2003, slightly edited ):
" The US' 5,000 - 10,000 pound 'bunker buster bombs', tipped with depleted uranium , began ripping apart Baghdad's Baath Party headquarters , yards away from bazaars, neighborhoods, power supplies, museums, schools, water processing plants and hospitals. Shock and Awe began to fall back on its word to avoid civilians when it directly flattened civilian institutions by blowing their schools, markets, and mosques into tiny shards ... When the US obliterated the al-Qadiriya Shine, the Tomb of Iman al-A'dham , and the Mosque of Sheik Abdul Qadir al-Ghailani, Rumsfeld's goals of 'altering the calculations of the people you're dealing with also began to emerge. "
[3] "Massive Bombardment" . In December, 2003 Human Rights Watch produced a report, readily available on its website, on the collateral damage to civilians in Baghdad caused by the air war. Quote:
" Significant civilian casualties occurred in the air war in Iraq despite the use of a high percentage of precision weapons ... The US used an unsound targeting methodology that relied on intercepts of satellite phones ... " The use of air-delivered cluster bombs against targets in or near populated areas also contributed to the civilian death toll ... ground delivered cluster munitions were a major cause of civilian casualties "
[4] "Blitzkrieg". Into this category of war crimes one may place the numerous atrocities committed by American and British forces in their drive from Kuwait to Baghdad. Consult
[5] "Sun Tzu". Indeed, the criminal bombardments of Baghdad were characterized by the United States itself as "decapitation" strikes. Their supposed aim was to murder key officials of the Iraqi regimes, starting with Sadaam Hussein. In point of fact, not a single official was killed, but each "decapitation" strike resulted in dozens of civilian deaths. From the Human Rights Watch report:
" The aerial strikes on Iraqi leadership constituted one of the most disturbing aspects of the war in Iraq for several reasons. First, many of the civilian casualties from the air war occurred during U.S. attacks on senior Iraqi leadership officials. Second, the intelligence and targeting methodologies used to identify potential leadership targets were inherently flawed and led to preventable civilian deaths. Finally, every single attack on leadership failed."
[6] "Deception, misinformation, etc..." For months prior to the attack on Iraq, the United States deceived the entire world through the
re-iteration, from every top official in the government, that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction. With the sending in of UN inspectors, the United States was able to confirm that Iraq was completely helpless. This is at the level of Mladic's assurances to the population of Srebrenica that they would not be harmed if they offered no resistance. In addition, a decade of sanctions had brought the population of Iraq to its knees.
[7] "Roman Legions" . It has been abundantly clear from day 1 to anyone of even moderate political awareness, that the aims of the Bush and Blair administrations are replays of 19th century colonialism.
The ruthless imperialism of the neo-conservatives in the government is openly preached in the now infamous Project for the New American Century.
[8] "Decay and Default " Into this category one can place the genocidal sanctions placed on Iraq since the end of the previous Gulf War in 1991.
[9] " Royal Mounted Police" . One need only contrast the few hundred "Coalition" deaths, with the many thousands of Iraqis who have lost their lives to recognize that the US government and military sees itself as the biggest bully on the block and has no intention of altering its perspective.
(2.)A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn;
Harper Collins (ppb) 2003 edition
(3.) No More Heroes ; Madness and Psychiatry in War - Richard A. Gabriel; Hill and Wang 1987
(4.) Crimes of War : What the Public Should Know - Roy Gutman and David Rieff ; W. W. Norton 1999
(5.) War Crimes- Aryeh Neier; Random House, (Times Books) 1998
(6.) Accountability for Human Rights; Atrocities in International Law - Steven R. Ratner and Jason S. Abrams -Oxford UP 1997
(7.) Crimes of War - Falk, Kalko and Lifton Random House, 1971
(8.) War on the Mind - Peter Watson Basic Books 1978
(9): Guernica: The Crucible of World War II : Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts Stein & Day 1975
Bibliography
(1.) Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance : James P. Wade, L.A. and Harlan K. Ullman, with assistance from Keith Bradley, "Bud Edney" and Charles A. Homer ; National Defense University 1966
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