Text 1084, 120 rader
Skriven 2006-06-13 15:35:58 av Alan Hess
Ärende: guerilla war
====================
This gentleman says that the occasions of American soldiers (or any soldiers,
though I am concerned with our troops) going too far (i.e. killing innocent
civilians, using torture) is more likely in a guerilla war.  I agree that our
military has minimized such things in Iraq (and elsewhere that we've fought
over the years), and I agree that it's a good thing that most Americans deem
such behavior inappropriate (I've always maintained that those exceptions
bother me because we're supposed to be better than those we're fighting, for
whom such tactics are often the rule rather than the exception, i.e.
Palestinian terrorists who target civilians rather than the Israeli military. 
We are better, because we the people are bothered by such things, and we don't
celebrate them when they do happen.  For example, IF the allegations at Haditha
are shown to be true, Americans won't be celebrating the killing of Iraqi
civilians, as Palestinians do when intentionally targetted Israeli civilians
are killed.)

His position makes sense to me.  I'm especially interested in what the veterans
among us think, as you guys have been there.

**********


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.warfare13jun13,0,5271916.
story?coll=bal-pe-opinion

From the Baltimore Sun
With guerrilla warfare come atrocities, torture


By Christopher J. Fettweis

June 13, 2006

Recent allegations about alleged atrocities committed by U.S. troops in Iraq
come as no surprise to seasoned observers of guerrilla warfare.

This ugly, messy conflict, where the line is deliberately blurred between
soldiers and civilians, inevitably produces confusion, stress and extreme
frustration on the battlefield. The nature of guerrilla war accelerates and
amplifies the process of dehumanization of the enemy, and as an inevitable
result, otherwise quite humane soldiers on both sides come to view atrocity as
acceptable and even useful.

History has no example of a guerrilla war that did not feature crimes against
humanity, committed in the heat of battle, by soldier and guerrilla alike. Call
it the first iron law of guerrilla war: In such conflicts, there are always
atrocities on both sides.

In every guerrilla war, from the Roman era through Napoleon's peninsula
campaign to Iraq, regular and irregular armies have resorted to atrocity.
British forces routinely massacred Boer civilians in South Africa more than a
century ago, and Boer guerrillas responded in kind. In Vietnam, while U.S.
forces slaughtered civilians at My Lai and other hamlets, Viet Cong guerrillas
murdered many innocent villagers and city dwellers. Dutch and Indonesian
civilians were massacred by the thousands during the guerrilla war for
independence in the late 1940s.

To its credit, the U.S. military, which is without question the best and the
most humane in human history, has minimized these crimes in Iraq. But in the
end, as long as people are people, there will be no escaping the iron law.
Atrocity will always accompany guerrilla war.

Further, since the first task of the conventional army battling guerrillas is
to identify enemy combatants and separate them from the innocent, intelligence
can often be decisive. Time and time again, regular militaries have eventually
proved willing to extract vital information by whatever means necessary.

Thus the Second Iron Law of Guerrilla Warfare may be related to the first in a
broad moral sense, but it springs from a different source. It is the desire for
actionable intelligence, not frustration fueled by the nature of irregular
combat, which drives the second law: In guerrilla warfare, torture is
inevitable. At some point during every single guerrilla war in history, the
conventional/stronger side has tortured its prisoners in the attempt to extract
the information that is so vital to its cause.

Guerrillas unlucky enough to be captured alive by the regular forces of the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan, or the British in Northern Ireland, or the Nazis
in Czechoslovakia were in for a most unpleasant experience. In most cases, they
were unlikely to survive.

The Central American governments on both sides during the Cold War routinely
tortured guerrilla captives throughout the wars of the 1980s. Palestinian
prisoners today are subject to violent shaking for up to 16 straight days and
nights without being charged.

Success in guerrilla wars - like that achieved by the United States in the
Philippines, the French in Algeria and the British in Malaysia and Kenya -
often has been achieved through the use of widespread, systematic torture,
effectively employed. Regular troops, of course, can also expect little mercy
should they fall into the hands of irregular forces.

Thus we should not have been surprised by either the revelations about secret
CIA torture prisons or the haunting images from Abu Ghraib. In guerrilla war,
torture is the rule, not the exception.

It is once again to the credit of the United States that such behavior is
deemed unacceptable by the government and public alike. But there can be little
doubt that what is euphemistically called coercive interrogation is widespread
in Iraq.

None of this is meant to imply that atrocity or torture should be acceptable or
forgivable. If anything, the two iron laws ought to give pause to any nation
considering action that risks involvement in guerrilla warfare. There is little
evidence to indicate that the United States was prepared to fight a widespread
guerrilla uprising in Iraq. But, to misquote Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld, a nation goes to war against the enemy it has, not the enemy it
wishes it had.

As the recent past in Iraq demonstrates, not even 21st-century liberal
democracies are immune to the two iron laws of guerrilla warfare. Until the war
comes to a merciful end, we must expect a certain degree of ugliness in the
news from the front.

Christopher J. Fettweis is an assistant professor of national security affairs
at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I. The views expressed are his own.
His e-mail is christopher.fettweis@nwc.navy.mil.

Copyright + 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery

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