Fallujah And
The Laws Of War
By Richard Hoffman
24 November 2004
World
Socialist Website
Even
as US forces launch new offensives against Iraqi cities, the flow of
reports of serious war crimes committed by the American military in
the assault on Fallujah continues. The United States and world media
have focussed on one incident that occurred in full view of a television
crewthe slaying of a defenceless Iraqi prisoner. It has been portrayed
as an isolated incident.
On the contrary,
all the independent evidence establishes beyond any doubt that the killings
and destruction committed by US forces were so gross and deliberate
that the name Fallujah will be recorded in the history books alongside
such infamous atrocities as the 1937 bombing of Guernica, the crushing
of the 1944 Warsaw uprising and the Vietnam War.
In its very conception,
the onslaught on Fallujah was a calculated and illegal mass reprisal
against the city and its inhabitants. It was undisguised revenge for
the failure of the earlier operation by US forces in April 2004 to destroy
the resistance of the city. It was conducted in flagrant and contemptuous
violation of all the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war, which were
adopted in 1949 in response to the horrors of the Second World War,
and in particular the atrocities inflicted by the Nazi armed forces
in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
In a pep talk before
the operation, Sergeant Major Carlton Kent, the most senior enlisted
marine in Iraq, told his troops: Youre all in the process
of making history. This is another Hue city in the making. I have no
doubt if we do get the word that each and every one of you is going
to do what you have always donekick some butt. (The former
Vietnamese imperial capital of Hue was nearly destroyed by the US military
while attempting to counter the Tet Offensive in 1968.)
New York Post columnist
and former military officer Ralph Peters summed up the mentality guiding
the White House and Pentagon. We must not be afraid to make an
example of Fallujah. We need to demonstrate that the United States military
cannot be deterred or defeated. If that means widespread destruction,
we must accept the price... Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage,
reduced to shards, the price will be worth it.
There is an objective,
historical measure by which the actions of the Bush administration and
the US forces can be judged. All acts of reprisal and collective punishment
are explicitly outlawed by the 1949 Geneva Conventions, under Protocol
1, which was adopted in 1977. Article 51, Protocol 1 states: Collective
penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or terrorism are
prohibited.
The scale and frenzied
character of the slaughter had an almost psychotic character to it.
For over a week the city was subjected to awesome air and ground bombardment
of a kind which militarily would only be justified by the presence of
massive defensive forces and installations. The size of some of the
bombs used (up to 2000 lbs) were greater than any used by Luftwaffe
dive-bombers in the attacks on Poland, France and Russia.
The obliteration
of much of the city was designed to terrify the entire Iraqi population
into submission and to cower all further resistance to US military aggression
throughout the country. Article 51 plainly prohibits acts or threats
of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among
the civilian population....
The opening stages
of the attack included the capture or pinpointed destruction of the
citys medical facilities and the killing of medical staff. During
the week-long operation, virtually all medical facilities were rendered
inoperable. Humanitarian and medical aid was refused access to the city
in order to heighten the trauma and suffering of the wounded.
Article 18 of Convention
IV states: Civilian hospitals organised to give care to the wounded
and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be
the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected
by the Parties to the conflict.
The protection given
to civilian hospitals is regarded as so paramount that Article 19 states
that it is no excuse that sick or wounded members of the armed
forces are nursed in these hospitals, nor is the presence
of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants which have not
yet been handed to the proper service.
The bombardment
of Fallujah was indiscriminate, as was the killing of the population.
There was no distinction made between civilians and resistance fighters.
All males in the city between 15 and 55 were specifically targeted.
As the carnage was wreaked upon the city people attempting to flee the
city were shot. There are reports of whole families being shot and killed
as they tried to swim across the Euphrates River to escape.
Article 51 of Protocol
1 further provides: The civilian population as such, as well as
individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack... Indiscriminate
attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are: (a) those which
are not directed at a specific military objective; (b) those which employ
a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military
objective; or (c) those which employ a method or means of combat the
effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol.
An indiscriminate
attack is also defined as one which may be expected to cause incidental
loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects,
or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the
concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Houses and buildings
in which people were detectedoften with the use of heat-detection
equipmentwere strafed with machine gun fire and subjected to artillery
attack, irrespective of the identify of those inside. Many hundreds
of dead and wounded civilians are buried beneath the city rubble. Dozens
more lay strewn across streets and footpaths throughout the city. The
death toll will never be known but it is probably in the many thousands.
Protocol I, Article
18 states: The Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish
between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian
objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations
only against military objectives.
Significantly, not
a shred of evidence has emerged from the smoking ruins of Fallujah to
back the US propaganda that the resistance was primarily comprised of
foreign terrorists or that such terrorists were holding the city hostage.
On the contrary, it is clear from events that a legitimate armed struggle
of Iraqi citizens against the violent and illegal occupation by the
United States is underway.
Even assuming, however,
that the reasons asserted by the US for its destruction of Fallujah
had any truth in them, that is, that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and others
were using Fallujah as their base, this could never amount to a legitimate
justification for what was perpetrated by US forces. Article 50, Protocol
I says: The presence within the civilian population of persons
that do not come within the definition of civilian does not deprive
the population of its civilian character.
The laws of war
In its onslaught
on the people of Fallujah, the United States has repudiated the modern
laws of war, which have evolved over nearly 400 years. In their most
developed form these laws reflect the attempts of civilised society
to reduce the suffering of war to a minimum and to insist, to the fullest
extent possible, on its humane conduct.
In 1625 the Dutch
jurist Hugo Grotius, in his work On the Law of War and Peace, first
condemned the conception that one nation could attack another arbitrarily
or for profit. This was the origin of the modern international
legal doctrine outlawing wars of aggression.
The US war crimes
in Iraq, beginning with last years invasion, are being carried
out arbitrarily and for profit. Specifically, Washington is seeking
to gain control of the oil and gas resources of the Middle East and
Central Asia in an effort to reverse the decline in the position of
heavily-indebted US capitalism in the world economy.
The Geneva Conventions
emerged directly from the experience of the American Civil War. The
horrible suffering in that conflict, which was the first modern technological
war, resulted in 12 nations signing the First Geneva Convention in 1864.
It dealt primarily with the care of sick and wounded military personnel,
treatment of prisoners and the neutrality and protection of medical
personnel and hospitals. In the first war crimes trial conducted on
American soilin 1865Confederate officer Henry Wirz was convicted
and hanged for the murder of Union prisoners of war.
War crimes committed
overseas can also be prosecuted under US law. Serious infractions of
the Geneva Conventions and Protocols are criminal offences under the
federal War Crimes Act 1996. This law provides for penalties including
life imprisonment and death in cases where a victim of criminal conduct
dies.
As US imperialism
unleashes its terrifying violence in the Middle East, the world should
recall the trials at Nuremberg in 1946. In his judgment, the British
judge, Judge Parker said:
The evidence
relating to war crimes has been overwhelming, in its volume and its
detail. The truth remains that war crimes were committed on a vast scale,
never before seen in the history of war... There can be no doubt that
the majority of them arose from the Nazi conceptions of total
war, with which the aggressive wars were waged. For in this conception
of total war the moral ideas underlying the conventions
which seek to make war more humane are no longer regarded as having
force or validity. Everything is made subordinate to the overmastering
dictates of war. Rules, regulations, assurances, and treaties all alike
are of no moment, and so, freed from the restraining influence of international
law, the aggressive war is conducted by the Nazi leaders in the most
barbaric way. Accordingly war crimes were committed when and wherever
the Fuhrer and his close associates thought them to be advantageous.
They were for the most part the result of cold and criminal calculations.
These words could
be written about the Bush administration. Taking place in the immediate
aftermath of its re-election, the war crime of Fallujah is a grave warning
of the future direction of the American ruling class. The US administration
and its puppet government in Iraq face a political and military quagmire.
The interim regime under Allawi has no social base to speak of, in either
the Shiite south or the Sunni regions. Hence the ferocity of the American
forces. But the destruction of Fallujah has only compounded all the
political and military problems.
As the debacle deepens
and Americas imperial mission in the Middle East suffers further
reversals, the clamour for more troops will get louder in the administration
and in the media. The New York Times has already called for a further
40,000 troops. (See
New York Times calls for more troops in Iraq, 9 November 2004.)
Soon we may hear calls for a new version of total war.