The 100-Hour War
In Desert Storm there was little ambiguity and even less resistance, thanks to Saddam Hussein, who proved to be a classic and inept villain. In support of UN Resolutions, Congress gave the President carte blanche to push Hussein out of Kuwait, and US General Norman Schwarzkopf was the modern-day John Wayne who put the villain in his place.
In the 100-hour blitzkrieg and the aerial bombardment that preceded it, the law of war and ROE provided standards of legitimacy for US forces. And while most commentators considered the bombing to be in accordance with the standards of Just War, for some the targeting of infrastructure (for example, the destruction of utilities serving civilian as well as military needs) raised the issue of excessive force.42
Desert Storm was a limited war fought during peacetime. It illustrated the mix of legal and political issues which require moral choice. One such issue involved targeting Scud missiles:
Although going after them at night is justifiable under the doctrine of military necessity... the question did not stop there. 'Once a commander realized civilians were being injured when we went after the launchers, he had to weigh the issues', says Hays Parks, special assistant for law of war matters in The Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Army. 'He's going to ask the JAG [military lawyer], can I do it? And the JAG will say, yes, you can. But any good commander, and especially one as smart as Schwarzkopf, will ask, is this any way to fight a war?' Parks says. 'It underlines the fact that few legal decisions are made in a vacuum. They are often fraught with political and moral considerations.'43
Even with its success, Desert Storm left questions relating to military legitimacy unanswered:
For example, now that we have demonstrated our ability to hit targets with pinpoint accuracy, isn't it possible that any failure to do so (and so minimize collateral damage to civilians and surrounding buildings) will invite charges of indiscriminate bombing and be deemed an infliction of unnecessary suffering and a violation of the law of war?44
The answer is yes, the destructive power and surgical capability of modern weaponry place a premium on the competence of operators using them.
General Schwarzkopf spoke often about the need to avoid collateral damage, but then cited General Sherman as one of his heroes. While Schwarzkopf shared Sherman's well-known hatred for war and feisty determination to end it quickly, he did not appear to embrace Sherman's total war strategy. It was an anomaly noted by at least one military writer:Whether judged in the light of tactics or moral conduct, the actions of the American military in the Gulf War reflected the impact of [General Robert E.] Lee, not Sherman.45
But modern strategists have noted that General Sherman's interpretation of collective responsibility is alive and well. Quincy Wright has theorized that total war 'caused a breakdown of the distinction between the armed forces and the civilians in military operations', so that civilians 'can no longer expect to be exempt from attack.'46 Similarly Elliot Cohen has supported Sherman's rationale for punishing civilians in war and applied it to strategic bombing:
In many cases today, war means bringing power, particularly air power, to bear against civilian society. The electric generators that keep a defense ministry's computers running and its radars sweeping the skies also provide the energy for hospitals and water purification plants. The bridges indispensable to the movement of military forces support the traffic in food, medicine and all other elements of modern life for large civilian populations. Sherman, reflecting the character of armed struggle in his century as well as ours, believed that in modern conditions civil society must inevitably become a target.47
Justifying civilians as strategic targets while prohibiting them as tactical targets is an untenable double standard, as illustrated by the frustration of Philip Caputo in Vietnam. Joseph Sobran has noted the moral, if not legal, hypocrisy of targeting civilians. Southerners once understood the moral implications based on personal experience with Sherman, and Germans and Japanese still remember that two-thirds of those killed in the Second World War were civilians; but the issue is seldom raised.
Sobran suggests that ugly wartime memories are reprogrammed to conform to more acceptable humanitarian images.Every war becomes humane in retrospect. The victors in every war feel compelled to portray themselves not only as powerful but as humanitarian. The Civil War is now primarily remembered as a war to end slavery rather than a war to prevent, and punish, secession though freeing the Confederacy's slaves was a punitive expropriation. Despite the US government's campaign of hatred against the Japanese, World War II is similarly remembered as a war against racism. Even the nuking of Hiroshima is defended as humanitarian: It 'shortened the war' and saved countless lives. See how the modern state has warped our sense of right and wrong? We have become such people as would have appalled our ancestors.48
Martin van Creveld has also noted the hypocrisy of the Allies targeting civilians in the Second World War and then punishing Axis leaders for violating the laws of war. But looking ahead to more ambiguous low-intensity conflict, Creveld has predicted that their strategy '... will focus on obliterating the existing line between those who fight and those who watch, pay, and suffer.'49
Wright, Cohen, Sobran and Creveld confirm the continuing relevance of the legal and moral dilemma central to military legitimacy and civil-military relations in increasingly ambiguous environments: how to balance the need to achieve military objectives with political objectives that require public support. Collateral damage was not an issue in Desert Storm, since public support in the area of operations was not an objective. But Desert Storm is the exception that will likely prove the rule: in most contemporary strategic environments public support will be essential to US political objectives.