A military spokesperson called the indiscriminate attack a justified use of force, and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said that American troops are allowed to use overwhelming force on anyone considered hostile, even if it does not represent an imminent threat and is close proximity to civilians. (Berenson, Alex, Oct. 29 issue of The New York Times).
The problem with rules of engagement that allow for the indiscriminate use of violence in order to protect American lives is that they allow for the subsequent indiscriminate deaths of civilians. They blur the line between who is and who isn't okay to kill. We live in a sheltered state that hasn't seen true domestic conflict since the Civil War when more Americans died than in any other war in our country's history. War is not fought in the United States because we are bordered by the Atlantic and the Pacific, cushioning us from conflict. We, unlike a country such as France, do not lose millions of people to great axis occupations. But we engage in war all the same.
During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese towns not supporting the United States were labeled enemies. The famous My Lai massacre happened ostensibly in a town that was pro-Vietcong, and though there were no Vietcong there that day, the logic was that all who remained were supporting them. As Michael Walzer said in "Just and Unjust Wars," it is never justifiable to kill civilians because they don't support you. They are still noncombatants. Even if it may have meant more U.S. deaths in the long run, letting troops indiscriminately kill anyone deemed a threat blurred an already too foggy line.
Is Iraq, then, a Vietnam for our generation? Hannah Arendt, in her book "On Violence," distinguished between power and violence, conjecturing power was given by the people and violence was used to destroy power or gain submission. Violence could never lead to power, she maintained, because it was the opposite of power; violence manifested itself only when the governed rejected their leaders. Is this what's happening in Iraq, where guerrillas are attacking Americans and Americans in turn are playing their part as mindless aggressors and attacking civilians? This is what happened in Vietnam, and this is not the way to garner Iraqi support.
We were told that Iraqis supported "Operation Iraqi Freedom." But if they do not, as appears possible in light of recent news, then we have gone again into a country that doesn't want us, imposed our rules on them and waited to be attacked. It may only be a minority of Iraqis that opposes us, but it may only take that small minority to undermine the United States. Extending Arendt's point-without legitimate authority-the United States cannot garner support through state-sponsored terror.
The bombing of Kosovo demonstrated that American rules of engagement seek to protect Americans at all costs. Planes flew so high that they could hardly tell what they were bombing. This is archaic. It is time to accept that we will lose some troops if we go to war, and that this must be taken into account in the decision-making process. Civilian deaths are never justifiable, even if sometimes necessary, and we cannot weigh the death of one U.S. soldier above that of an innocent bystander. We need to work harder at restraining our troops when they're angry, at protecting Iraqi civilians not only from resistance fighters but also from their opponents and ultimately at demonstrating to Iraq that we are there to help Iraqis, not hurt them.
Which brings me back to the article in The New York Times. Berenson quoted an Iraqi civilian, Hassan Hussein, who said, "First they said they want to protect the Iraqi people, but then they destroy us. The only one who is hurting us is the Americans themselves." Guerrilla warfare can make soldiers feel helpless because it blurs the line between combatant and noncombatant. Well, it doesn't have to, at least not this severely. The war in Iraq isn't only partly contingent on the support of the Iraqi people-it is a war over that support. We need to change these "rules" until we lose some American troops at the expense of protecting more Iraqis. We cannot play to win, we need to play to be moral. And right now, if I were a citizen of Iraq, I'd have trouble believing the Americans were there for me, and not for themselves.