Do the lives of soldiers count?

Posted By David Bosco Tuesday, March 29, 2011 - 3:19 PM Share

The practical complications of an intervention designed exclusively to protect civilians have been well covered recently. Gaddafi's recent pushback against rebel forces puts the dilemma starkly: is the West willing to let the rebels be checked or defeated so long as civilians aren't massacred?

The operational incoherence of the doctrine isn't the only problem: there's also a moral gap. Put simply, shouldn't the international community also care about the lives of combatants? An extended civil war fought in compliance with the laws of war will take hundreds and perhaps thousands of lives. War is tragic and awful not only when civilians are killed. World War I was an epochal moment in the world's moral approach to war not because civilians were massacred on a large-scale, but because soldiers were.

Reading the Security Council resolutions and listening to Western political leaders, one has the impression that the moral questions here begin and end with the treatment of civilians. Those carrying arms are placed in a separate moral universe. True, some combatants are mercenaries. Maybe the international community shouldn't care particularly about their lives. Some are Gaddafi loyalists; maybe they too are beyond the pale. But there are also the lives of rebel soldiers and the lives of conscripts forced into Gaddafi's army.

The notion of civilian protection has become so dominant as a discourse that it is not only threatening the effectiveness of the ongoing intervention, it is also--and quite perversely--shrinking our moral horizons.

 

HURRICANEWARNING

8:54 PM ET

March 29, 2011

I dont know about this

I dont know about this one...I feel that you will be hard pressed to find sympathy for soldiers in G's army who are willing to go house to house to slaughter civilians. For example, the Serbians had/ have an army...does anyone give a #^!%...? Nope. As long as they remain in uniform, in the service of a tyrant, and most importantly, in opposition to our goals...then their lives are forfeit. We will simply kill as many as we have to, to get the point across. No one seemed to care that we wiped out thousands of Iraqi soldiers in the first gulf war...war is war, and combatants are combatants...if you dont want to die when facing a superior foe, then surrender, or change sides. Just my opinion though.

 

DAVID BOSCO

9:52 PM ET

March 29, 2011

It's an opinion many people

It's an opinion many people share. And I'm sympathetic to it in some respects. A couple points: First, we're not talking just about Gaddafi's soldiers but also about armed rebels.  And the question isn't whether people did care about Saddam's soldiers being wiped out (I agree that few people did)--it's whether they should care. I think it's something we need to think about more than we do, particularly when many of those "in service of a tyrant" have no real choice in the matter.

 

MISHMAEL

3:05 AM ET

March 30, 2011

Actually

That happens to be the same argument put forth by the Taliban: we have our agenda and we'll kill as many of these foreign soldiers as we can to make our point. The argument relies on your audience having sympathy for your cause, so to a neutral party it would not really make sense.

I would suggest placing equal value on all lives in a war zone. People who know anything about modern war know that it is very difficult to distinguish between a "combatant" and a civilian. Perhaps if military leaders were freed from the responsibility of distinguishing between those that are morally ok to kill and those that are not, then they can do a better job of minimizing ALL casualties, period. This is similar to police tactics, where the goal is to minimize death and injury, even to armed offenders.

 

-ANDREW-

4:52 PM ET

March 30, 2011

I agree that this point of

I agree that this point of "should we care about combatants" deserves much more thought and attention. You've identified the doctrinal and moral reasons, but adding complexity to this dilemma: what do we make of the possibility that NATO allies might arm rebels. While they haven't done so yet, they also haven't ruled it out. Arming civilians will turn them into combatants—and NATO allies could unwittingly undermine their own protection of civilians agenda. How do we square this circle?

 

GRANT

9:17 AM ET

March 30, 2011

Soldiers are usually

Soldiers are usually understood to be a different kind of target from a civilian one due to the fact that they wear uniforms, carry arms and swear an oath of service to a government. Indeed many definitions of terrorism specifically state that the terrorist threatens a 'civilian' target, presumably with the implication that if you bomb a military base it is not a terrorist attack.

That said, it's still wise to keep in mind the military casualties. Those men leave behind families just like the rest.

 

MARCHDEFICIT

12:17 PM ET

March 30, 2011

Military casualties

...may not be unimportant, but civilian casualties i think are considered by most to be much worse. I believe the Geneva Conention makes such distinctions too, doesn't it?

BTW - reports of "pro" Gadhafi forces being found chained inside their tanks suggest that not all of them are oath swearing, dictator loving bad guys.

During the second world war (total war) the role of the economy in the war effort made the targeting of civilian populations more acceptable, especially in industrial cities where arms were being manufactured. However, Andrew roberts new book "The Storm of War" makes some interesting points about this strategy and its effectiveness...

 

GRANT

9:20 AM ET

March 31, 2011

If I recall, similar things

If I recall, similar things happened to Iraqi tank crews during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Many often don't really want to fight so much as they feel that they don't have a choice.

 

David Bosco reports on the new world order for The Multilateralist.

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