In my last column, I hope I showed you that, in spite of certain popular opinions you may have been hearing a lot lately, there can be such a thing as just war, and explained the first set of conditions, called jus ad bellum, or justice in going to war, that must be met for a war to be considered a just one. Seeing to it that your nation has justice in going to war is largely a governmental responsibility. But if it is a nation's political leaders who are mostly responsible for making a just decision to go to war with another nation in the first place, it is its soldiers and sailors and airmen who will bear most of the equally heavy responsibility for how that war will be fought once it has been declared. All armed forces service members are always morally and legally responsible for their actions on the battlefield, even if those actions were ordered by their military or civilian superiors. It may seem like asking a lot, but service members are actually required to disobey unlawful orders that would violate the Law of Land and Aerial Warfare. These rules may not be set aside even on behalf of even the most just of causes, because nothing can suck the justice out of a noble end than trying to achieve it by unjust means. The rules concerning how war may be justly fought come under the heading of jus in bello, or justice in fighting a war.

Justice in fighting a war rests on 2 pillars:

The first is proportionality in what may be done by way of attack. There is no requirement that the means used to counter an attack must be matched exactly to those used to launch it. A small force may be met with a larger one. Rocks may be met with rubber bullets and tear gas, even live ammunition. Rocks may be used as weapons, soda bottles may be filled with gasoline and stuffed with ripped up t-shirts, box-cutters may be used to slit the throats of flight attendants trying to stop their plane from being flown into a civilian office building, and, though chlorine or mustard gas and tactical nuclear weapons are clearly out of proportion to the threat that they present, the primitive nature of the weapons used does not prohibit those attacked from countering them with appropriate force.

The second pillar of jus in bello is discrimination in who and what may be attacked. Law of War specifies the kinds of targets that are legal and the kinds of targets that are illegal for direct attack. Only legal targets may be attacked, and then only by lawful means. In war, the right to self defense that all people have is made the responsibility of their military. That is, the main purpose of soldiers (and sailors and airmen) is to protect innocents (in the sense of non-combatants, or people not directly involved in the fighting) against enemy forces. Traditionally "civilian" was synonymous with "non-combatant." But the more civilians participate in guerrilla, terror, and other "asymmetric" forms of warfare, the more they weaken their status, and the status of all civilians, as non-combatants. Civilians who take up weapons have ceased to be non-combatants. Teenage boys throwing rocks at soldiers are not non-combatants, nor are teenage girls with explosives strapped around them.

Now, in war, the peacetime prohibition against harming other human beings may be set aside to the extent that combatants of opposing nations at war with each other may rightfully attack each other, and only each other. Non-combatants are not legal targets for direct attack. And even when civilians regularly take some part in the fighting, "kill them all and let God sort them out," is not a legal order because non-combatants will be killed as well. As an American officer, you may not give such orders, and you should not accept them.

Because non-combatants may not be attacked, there are also prohibitions on what may be attacked -- you may not attack hospitals, schools, water supplies, sewer treatment plants, houses of worship, buildings of great cultural significance etc., where innocent non-combatants would normally be expected to be found or where critical life support systems for them are located. Realistically, there is no way to foresee all the possible bad effects to innocents from any combat mission, and there is no way to ensure that absolutely no non-combatants will accidentally be harmed in the course of that mission. But you may not target civilians directly as a means to mission accomplishment (carpet bombing civilian population centers to force a nation's leaders into surrender, for instance, is illegal).

US forces go so far as to carry out their combat missions under rules of engagement specifically promulgated to minimize the foreseeable bad effects of those missions on enemy innocents, even if it means accepting an increased risk to themselves. During the last Gulf War, USAF bombers dropped a pair of 2,000 lb. bombs on a bunker in Baghdad that, according to the best intelligence available, was a military command center. In order to minimize the collateral damage of this attack to civilians in the surrounding area, the attack was made using laser-guided bombs, which are more accurate than fire and forget ordnance, but place pilots and crew members at significantly greater risk. The resulting deaths of 300 women and children, who were surreptitiously using the bunker as a bomb shelter, was a human tragedy, but not a war crime, as some critics of our military claimed.

Military installations and personnel are legitimate targets. To get around this, Saddam Hussein, whose only use for Law of War is to manipulate American and European public opinion, has hypocritically resorted to "hardening" such targets against legitimate attack by filling them with civilian hostages, POWs, and other innocent non-combatants. This is a war crime according to international Law of War. I don't really get what those Americans who went over to Iraq in order to be human shields thought they were doing, and apparently most have come back to their senses and are returning home before the shooting starts. But had they been killed or wounded in the course of fighting between the US and Iraq, they would have been casualties of war, victims of Saddam's immoral strategy and their own foolishness, perhaps, but not the victims of American war crimes, as they seemed to be setting themselves up to become. I do know that American forces would have made every effort to accomplish their missions without exposing them to harm. And in order to spare them our soldiers and airmen would have been forced to accept even greater risks to themselves than their already dangerous missions entailed.

Under international Law of War, the saving of soldier lives is not just cause for sacrificing civilians. The reasoning here is that military personnel are in the business of risking their lives. It is their purpose to protect innocent non-combatants, who should not be put at risk for the sake of reducing the risk to those charged with their protection. That said, soldiers are human beings, and not disposable pieces of ordnance; their well-being must be considered by the people who send them to war. With guerrilla and terror warfare flaring up all over the world, the distinction between civilian and combatant is becoming so blurred as to verge on useless for the soldier making the shoot/don't shoot decision in the field. This situation puts both military personnel and the civilians they are charged with protecting at increasing unnecessary risk. In guerrilla and terror warfare, the soldier is exposed to increased risk because the more difficult the decision to shoot is made the more he will hesitate, and the honest civilian is unnecessarily endangered because the use of other civilians as ununiformed irregulars puts him and all enemy civilians under suspicion of being disguised combatants.

Civilians are not the only ones included among those who are considered to be "innocents" (really just an archaic term for "non-combatants") under International Law of War. Wounded soldiers and POWs are considered innocents, and come under the same protections that must be given to civilians under the Geneva Conventions. This is because once soldiers are wounded or put down their weapons, they are hors de combat (French for out of the fighting), and remain so unless they pick up a weapon again or try to escape. This is why the battlefield practice of double-tapping (or firing "insurance shots" into downed enemy soldiers) is prohibited. Giving the order to take no prisoners is prohibited. There are lots of arguments that this particular rule is too difficult to keep in the field, but in Kuwait we had conduits in place for funneling POWs to the rear safely and legally, and this worked very well for us both militarily and politically. Once in POW camps, prisoners are entitled to adequate food, clothing, housing, medical care, to receive mail, and to practice their religion. They may not be used as forced labor.

Using captured soldiers or civilians as human shields or to lead the way through mine fields is also prohibited. Attacking hospitals, field stations, and ambulances is prohibited (but so is the Palestinian practice of moving troops and weapons around in vehicles marked by the Red Crescent [the Moslem equivalent of the Red Cross]). Weapons that cannot be employed in ways that discriminate between combatants and non-combatants are prohibited (releasing biological agents, or poisoning water supplies, for instance), as are those that continue to cause unnecessary pain and suffering after a legal target has been put out of commission or taken prisoners. POWs and the injured may not be placed in military installations or other places they will be used to shield troops and weapons systems from legitimate attack. Attacks against the civilian population as a means of reprisal for attacks by their military is prohibited. However much you may feel that your enemy does not deserve such treatment, it is your duty as an officer in the US military to go by the Law of War; the treatment of any of your people who may be taken prisoner will depend on your enemy doing the same.

There are many other points of Law of War that you will be responsible for knowing and familiarizing your troops with. Your commanding officer will have Field Manuals and other publications dealing with Law of War available for individual or group study and discussion. Something that you might want to discuss together is what should you, as a good officer, do when your duty to follow orders conflicts with the principles of justice in war? While obedience to orders is necessary for good order and discipline as well as mission accomplishment, the scope of orders that may be obeyed (and issued) is limited by national and international law. There is what philosophers call a "blanket of innocence" thrown over the warrior in wartime that allows him to do certain things in the course of fulfilling his obligation to protect the innocent that would usually be crimes in time of peace (killing or wounding, for example). But the area covered by that blanket is not unlimited, and its boundaries are marked by the laws of war. Unless the warrior's conduct falls within those boundaries, it is a crime just as it would be in peacetime circumstances; this is the real meaning of "war crime." A commanders' say so does not excuse his troops' participation in war crimes. And while leaders will be held responsible for any crimes the people under their command may commit (because leaders are always responsible for everything that happens on their watch), those people, down to the lowliest private or airman, also have their own personal moral responsibilities as warriors and as human beings. As was established during the Nuremburg Trials of Nazi military leaders, "I was only following orders," is not an acceptable or accepted excuse for committing atrocities. This may sound pretty harsh. It is. There have been armies in which soldiers were severely punished or even killed for refusing to follow illegal orders. During WWII, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, burned Hitler's illegal Commando Order that all Allied soldiers found behind German lines in North Africa be killed instead of taken prisoner. Rommel later paid with his life for this and other acts of disobedience against one of the most immoral regimes of all time (he fought justly in his nation's unjust war). Nevertheless, all soldiers are expected to disobey illegal orders unless the danger to their lives was both direct and immediate.

Soldiers are also expected to report any violations of the law of war up the chain of command. Their commanders, in turn, have the responsibility to see that the right thing gets done about them. In addition, if protection of the innocent is the fundamental responsibility of soldiers, then it is not enough for a commander simply to react to violations of the laws of war; he must act proactively to prevent violations by letting his people know what kind of behavior is illegal under Law of War and will therefore not be tolerated by him, their service, or their country. Then he must stand behind his words. Commanders who do not take action to prevent war crimes from occurring, or to apprehend and punish those who commit war crimes, must bear a large part of the responsibility for them.

Sorry to say, miscarriages of justice have occurred in US forces. Capt. Ernest Medina, under whose command Lt. William Calley's infantry platoon committed the infamous My Lai massacre, was acquitted of all charges in the matter, and Calley himself received only five years under house arrest for his failure of leadership in the incident. But I would warn you that such leniency cannot be counted on, particularly when severe punishment of war crimes carries with it political or grand strategic importance for the nation. This is becoming more and more the case in this day of television war. What struck me when I read transcripts of interviews with Calley is that, even after his trial and sentencing, he seemed to have almost no understanding of why what he and his men had done had landed him in a courtroom in the first place. Either instruction in Law of War was not a big part of his OCS training or he just never got it. Not only are you going to be exposed to Law of War repeatedly during your cadet training and Air Force careers, but you will need to understand it well enough to teach it to your troops and make certain that they fight within its limitations. Any tactical victory you might win doing otherwise will end up being a strategic defeat.