This is a bit of a follow-up on Analog Kid’s post about police using deception to catch criminals. I want to make a larger point by expanding the discussion to the use of deception in war.
Some years ago I took a seminar in law school taught by a former Democrat counsel for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The professor was, obviously, well-connected in Washington and told us lots of political war stories. One day he came in with a funny look on his face and told us he’d been at a party at the Averell Harriman house that weekend, and overheard two high-ranking Pentagon types discussing something he didn’t think he was supposed to hear.
Basically, he’d overheard that Saddam’s TV broadcast to the troops in the 1991 Gulf War ordering them to withdraw from Kuwait along what became known as the “Highway of Death” wasn’t Saddam — it was us.
(My professor’s comment, of course, was that he wondered when this technology would be put to use domestically in our own elections. I wonder if it hasn’t already, given that I don’t think the fellow in this video looks all that much like Osama bin Laden.)
Is the rumor about the Highway of Death true? I hadn’t bothered to investigate until recently, but this discussion indicates that Saddam’s order was delivered by radio, not TV. That’s a point against the rumor’s veracity. On the other hand, I remember reading (can’t find the link) that Saddam apparently had some of his orders videotaped, and presumably certain officials in his power structure were supposed to see the videotape before believing any given order was really from Saddam. That’s a point for the rumor, and if true, also indicates a pretty high level of sophistication on the part of our PsyOps folks, as a mere fake radio broadcast would quickly have been discredited by Saddam’s power structure.
The point I want to make is, if the above rumor my professor told us is true, then it means that we intentionally set up the notorious “Highway of Death“ in which a traffic jam of withdrawing Iraqi troops were systematically killed in repeated air assaults. Iraqi civilians were also killed. How many Iraqi dead? Let’s just say A LOT. Presumably those Iraqis would not have been in that trap had we not faked the order from Saddam.
Were we legally wrong to have done this? Was it not illegal under international law to deceive these people into a horrible death? Weren’t we required to have taken steps to encircle them or otherwise indicate to them the trap they were in so we could take them all prisoner? Doesn’t this violate the laws of war?
The answer is NO to all the above. (The seminar was on international law, and we discussed the international law of war in great detail.) The Highway of Death was horrible, but so was the Falaise Pocket in WWII. Nothing illegal about that, then or now.
In particular, with reference to the comments on the previous post, note that the law of war allows us to encourage or trick the enemy into doing something he otherwise would not do. The US laws of entrapment specifically forbid this with respect to criminal acts, even though it obviously would be a very effective law enforcement tool.
No offense to barristers, but they make poor soldiers.
In war, the object is to vanquish the enemy, and any means to do that are appropriate.
In war, the end DOES justify the means.
There are no Marquis De Queensbury rules in war. That is not to say that quarter may not be given, nor civilian populations spared, but at any point where those humane gestures create a risk of defeat, they must be put aside.
Barristers are good at negotiating. That is their purpose vis-a-vis war: negotiate to prevent one, or negotiate to end it once it’s started. But run it?
No, no, a thousand times NO!
To paraphrase Clemenceau: War is too important to be left to the LAWYERS!