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Desert ShieldsIs it wrong for Saddam to put civilians in the crosshairs?

By Michael KinsleyPosted Thursday, Feb. 27, 2003, at 3:17 PM ET

Illustration by Robert Neubecker Saddam Hussein, it seems, is not just a dictator and mass murderer. He is a bounder as well. While we amass hundreds of thousands of troops and billions of dollars of military equipment near his borders, with the frank intention of removing him from power and probably from life, he is welcoming a few dozen scraggly Western war protesters to act as "human shields" by planting themselves next to potential bombing targets such as power plants. It's just not cricket, complains Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Using civilians as human shields "is not a military strategy." It is "a violation of the laws of armed conflict."

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Rumsfeld's indignation is fey. Since the premise and justification for our imminent invasion of Iraq is that Saddam is evil and ruthless, which is certainly true, it would be remarkable if he played the game of war according to Hoyle. Why should he? It's not going to improve his reputation and will do nothing for his life expectancy either. Indeed one of the big surprises of the build-up to Gulf War I was Saddam's sudden decision to release the Western civilians he had initially forced to live near military targets. That certainly made America's job easier. And as a practical matter, it may have cost more civilian lives than it saved, by giving us more freedom to bomb.

Like "terrorism" and like "weapons of mass destruction," the anathema on the use of human shields is an attempt to define certain methods of war as inherently illegitimate, whether the cause for which they are used is legitimate or not. It's a noble effort, but difficult to sustain and may require more intellectual consistency than the current American administration, at least, is capable of. There have been well-documented reports during the past year, for example, that the Israeli army has used Palestinian civilians as human shields. The U.S. reaction has been muted and generalized mumblings of disapproval and calls for all parties to resolve their differences by negotiation in good faith. No high horse to be seen.

Then, too, it is a bit problematic to be invoking international law and insisting on your right to ignore it at the same time, in the same cause, and with the same righteous indignation. International law says, "Thou shalt not use human shields." It also says, "Thou shalt not use military force without the approval of the Security Council—even if thou art the United States of America and some idiot long ago gave veto power to the French." The test of a country's commitment to international law—and the measure of its credibility when it accuses other countries of flouting international law—is whether that country obeys laws even when it has good reasons to prefer not to.

Just like specific instances such as the rule against using human shields, the general regime of international law depends on a willingness to sacrifice short-term goals that may even be admirable for the long-term goal of establishing some civilized norms of global behavior. It sounds naive, and maybe it is. But you're either in the game or you're not. You can't pick and choose which rules to take seriously.

Supporters of the coming war find it maddening that so many people say, "I'm for it if we have U.N. approval, but not if we act unilaterally." This is an awfully convenient resting point for bet-hedging politicians. It also seems to be the most popular position in opinion polls. (And it was the conclusion of a thunderously ambivalent full-page editorial in last Sunday's New York Times.) For heaven's sake, this is war we're talking about. And even if we do get international approval, this is overwhelmingly an American show: our initiative, our insistence, our leadership, mostly our money and our blood. Surely, these irritated hawks say, making the right decision is more important than how that decision is made. Putting procedure aside, are you for this war or against it?

But "only if it's multilateral" is not the copout it may seem. Not just because of concern about an anti-American backlash. And not just because obeying international law has an independent value in its own right. In the specific circumstances of this particular war, multilateral procedures can alleviate our substantive doubts.

Like generals, anti-war protesters are always fighting the last war. Or in this case, depending on how you count, the war-before-last. The methods, the style, the arguments, the very language of objecting to war are still stuck in Vietnam. That's why the protests of the past couple of weeks have seemed so lame and retro. The Vietnam debate was primarily a moral one. Although the cost of victory became an important factor as the years went on, it was not the main factor turning people against that war. Americans ultimately decided it was a victory we shouldn't even want. In the case of Iraq, by contrast, few people think the goal of overturning Saddam Hussein is immoral. If we knew for sure it would be as easy and cheap as the administration hopes, few folks would object.

It is often thought that moral questions are inherently fuzzy and uncertain while factual questions are concrete and sharp-edged. But there is always at least the possibility that your strongly held moral view is the right one even when most other folks disagree. Factual predictions about the future, by contrast, will ultimately turn out right or wrong, but meanwhile they are fogged by a more fundamental unknowability. The case for democracy among nations, like the case for democracy within nations, depends in part on this particular human failing. Even if Saddam Hussein were well-meaning, he still wouldn't be all-knowing. The United States actually is well-meaning, but we're not all-knowing either.

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Michael Kinsley is a columnist for the Washington Post and the founding editor of Slate.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker.

COMMENTS

Notes From The Fray Editor:

Also note that there much more to Publius's post than is quoted here, including a detailed discussion of the Gallup Poll questions and results.

Remarks From The Fray:

Can you equate international law norms regarding collective security policy (UN authorization for use of force) and warfighting norms (on using human shields), as Kinsley apparently has? I think not. The key distinction is that at the macro level, international law is power-based, recognizing who's in charge and who's not, while at the micro level, international law is rule-based.

Within the United Nations normative framework, the winners of World War II (and their successors) have special rights and powers, foremost among them the United States. There is a great amount of flexibility at the macro level of international law because of the fundamental anarchy of the post-Westphalian system of sovereign states. While sovereignty has been eroded somewhat, superpowers still get to play the way Michael Jordan played basketball. Just as his Airness often got away with three steps before a soaring dunk, the U.S. can use force with a coalition of the willing (see e.g. Gulf War I) instead of gaining formal approval from the UN at every stage of war.

At the micro level, there are a number of well-defined rules, set out in the Geneva Convention and other war crimes/war-fighting agreements. These rules are similar to criminal statutes and are more strongly enforced than other parts of international law. Prosecution for war crimes is normal, and over the course of the most modern tribunals (ICTY, ICTR, etc.), it has become less and less tied to victors' justice. We are now at the point of having an international criminal court (though the U.S. has not subjected itself to its jurisdiction).

So the U.S. isn't being hypocritical in invoking international law to criticize Saddam for using human shields while not acting through the United Nations. At the highest levels of power, international law is flexible enough to let the U.S. disagree with, cajole, and work outside the UN. However, as it regards using human shields, international law is pretty strict.

-- TitusAndricus

(To reply, click here.)

As a practical matter, it makes sense for Rumsfeld to talk about human shields because:

It reminds the world that Saddam is a bad guy; and
It reminds the world that if we blow up the human shields, it's Saddam's fault, not ours.

I actually don't think that voluntary human shields raise any war crimes by any side. If these men and women put themselves in harm's way in an effort to influence the outcome of a war, then as far as I'm concerned, they're not civilians, they're something a lot closer to combatants. We shouldn't deliberately target (or prosecute) them because they don't represent any military threat to them, but I don't see why we (or Saddam) should worry too much about a bunch of people who intentionally put themselves in harm's way.

(Also, if we haven't infiltrated the shields with spies, we're missing a great chance).

Kinsley also talks about the "only if the UN approves" camp. I think that can be a defensible position, but people who believe it should ask:

Are you saying "only if the UN approves" specifically because you know it won't approve this war? If so, then you presumably have another reason
Are you saying never fight a non-UN approved war against a country that hasn't invaded you? If so, where do you stand on Kosovo, or on the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia or the Ugandan invasion of Rwanda? Should the killing have continued in those cases?
In this case, do you think the other veto powers are right or wrong to oppose the war? Why?

-- J_Mann

(To reply, click here.)

"In the case of Iraq, by contrast, few people think the goal of overturning Saddam Hussein is immoral. If we knew for sure it would be as easy and cheap as the administration hopes, few folks would object."

… A bigger problem for me, and I suspect for most other folks, is that the aftermath in Iraq will also be easy and cheap, as nothing can be easier or cheaper than turning your back and walking away the minute the fighting stops, as the elder Bush did after the Gulf War and the younger has done in Afghanistan.

Who was that American conservative on the radio the other day who made the excellent point that the UN is appalling at conflict resolution (look at South Africa, Bosnia, Rwanda, Palestine/Israel) but expert professionals when it comes to cleaning up afterwards? It's an excellent point that speaks directly to my ambivalence to tackling Iraq by ourselves.

To put it bluntly I'd like to see the U.N. on board because, unlike the Bush family and their coven of loyal retainers, the U.N. has a record of following up so that another fucking mess doesn't boil up again in a couple of years.

-- DavidInnes-3

(To reply, click here.)

It's always a mistake to read more into a poll's results than what it tells you superficially because polls really are superficial. To assume that the people who indicate support for military action only with UN backing are casting some sort of vote to support the UN, the Charter, the Security Council or just "multilateralism" is to go beyond what they're saying to the pollster, which is, "In answer to your question, I would favor war if the SC voted." Why that is the case is not illuminated in the poll numbers. It may be because the UN is a very fine outfit for some people; it may be that others have heard we'll pay for the whole thing if we don't get the UN vote; it may be any number of things. It's not likely to conveniently reflect the NYTimes editorial judgment.

Here's another possibility: it reflects the relative ambivalence of some respondents in answering the question.

-- Publius

(To reply, click here.)

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