Back in the 70s, there was a not very good movie called Buster and Billie. It was a melodramatic bit of high school fluff about a romance between the most popular boy in school and a teen slut. Jan Michael Vincent plays Buster (the boy). As he drives to high school each morning, he makes a point of passing the school bus at high speed on the dusty road, spraying the bus with gravel and forcing it to slow down because of the cloud of dust. One day, the bus driver has had enough. He arrives at the school parking lot. Buster is still sitting in his car. The bus driver, furious, walks up to the window and says something like “Out, boy. You and me are gonna have it out right here, right now.” Buster calmly replies “OK, but I have one question. Is this a fair fight? or a dirty fight?” The bus driver says “There’s only one kind of fight.” Buster smiles and suddenly kicks the car door open knocking the bus driver down. He jumps on top of the bus driver and proceeds to beat the crap out of him.
As I try to make sense of what the United States wants to do in Syria, I am reminded of that scene. Particularly the line “There’s only one kind of fight.” Purportedly, Syrian President Bashar al Assad deployed chemical weapons and killed hundreds of his own citizens as a tactic in that country’s two year old civil war. Naturally, we all believe that this is horrible. And it is.
As a response, the United States proposes to unleash some Tomahawk missiles or some similar ordnance on some chosen targets within Syria to send the message that chemical weapons, outlawed by most countries since the first World War, are unacceptable ways of waging war. At the same time, sending cruise missiles to blow up buildings and, more than likely, blow a few human beings to pieces is an acceptable way to send a message. To a party in a war that does not involve the United States.
I have no doubt that the effects of chemical weapons are agonizing and horrible. But I can’t imagine that being suddenly burned and dismembered by a bomb is preferable. Why are chemical weapons banned but high explosive missiles, depleted uranium shells, and a myriad of other ingenious ways to kill people are not?
The ‘international community’ puts a great deal of effort into nuclear nonproliferation. The goal of these efforts is to thwart the acquisition of nuclear weapons by countries (or terrorist organizations) that don’t yet have them. Many countries have vowed not to use nuclear weapons in a “first strike” but reserve the right to strike back in kind if subjected to a nuclear assault. We acknowledge the horrible power of these weapons but they are not outlawed. But chemical weapons are banned.
It seems to me that we want to project the idea that war has rules. A more or less certain list of behaviors that are acceptable or unacceptable. This provides the illusion that wars can be prosecuted in a civilized, tidy manner. It’s rather like using drugs to sedate and stop the hearts of condemned prisoners; firing squads and hangings are far too cruel and brutal. I suppose that a corpse with a few IV punctures is preferable to a bloody, broken one, but the person is still dead. It is still killing no matter how civilized the method.
I suppose if you’re going to kill someone, seeking to minimize or eliminate pain is worthy. But, it is still killing.
In a technical sense, war does have rules. They permit aggressors and defenders to wage war with a sense of honor. But, history shows that the rules are broken routinely by all parties. A recent book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam posits that incidents like My Lai were more SOP than crimes committed by rogue soldiers. I don’t know if that is an accurate characterization but certainly we can agree that broaches of the rules of warfare, by commanders or individuals, are not uncommon. This is particularly true in conflicts like Vietnam in which combatants and civilians were virtually indistinguishable. Is it against the ‘rules’ to refuse to wear an outfit that clearly indicates one’s combatant status? I suppose that failure to do so earns some measure of culpability for the inevitable “collateral damage” — which, of course, is another term of art that helps to obscure the sheer horror of war.
Ultimately, it is probably a good thing that some types of weapons are unacceptable. At the same time, it is rather perverse to devise ways to run wars at some acceptable level of horror.
There is another thing to bear in mind. When a country engaged in a war is up against the wall of defeat, or even facing a severe setback, that country’s forces will use whatever tactics and weapons that are available in an attempt to change the situation. Surrender is an action for the defeated, not for the army with an arsenal of banned weapons.
After all, there’s only one kind of fight.