The "Rules" of War
By Maya Schenwar
t r u t h o u t | Report

Wednesday 26 March 2008

"All personnel must ensure that, prior to any engagement, non-combatants and civilian structures are distinguished from proper military targets." - Consolidated Rules of Engagement for Iraq (2005)
When it comes to modern-day war, the very term "rules of engagement" (ROE) can be a contradiction in terms. In theory, these military guidelines require soldiers to steer clear of civilians and civilian property, use only the minimum amount of force necessary to subdue a target and request approval from the Pentagon for missions that will yield high "collateral damage." Specific rules change based on unit, circumstances, risks and threats.

Yet when a soldier's life is at stake, he or she is less likely to follow instructions printed on a card than to follow the instincts of survival and self-protection. When it comes to the war in Iraq, says former Wisconsin National Guard transportation specialist Daniel Fanning, the concept of strict adherence to the ROE is practically obsolete.

"We covered the rules of engagement in basic training, but not to the extent we should have," Fanning told Truthout after speaking on a panel at the Winter Soldier 2008 conference, held March 13-16 in Silver Spring, Maryland. "Once we were over there, they literally became a joke."

At Winter Soldier, the "joke" was starkly exposed. Though some soldiers received cards delineating the current rules of engagement, others were simply updated verbally whenever the risk and threat level - and therefore the ROE - changed. Either way, soldiers said, the ROE were never the governing force over operations in Iraq.

Former infantryman Clifton Hicks spoke of a patrol of 82nd Airborne troops mistaking the celebratory gunshots fired at a wedding party for hostile fire, wounding two wedding guests and killing one - a young girl.

"I looked through the doorway, and it was the first time I'd seen a little girl dead.... These things happen," Hicks said, noting the usual on-the-ground response to ROE violations. "Little girls get killed by soldiers in Iraq every day, not because we want to, but just because it happens. We didn't even have a translator. We couldn't even say we were sorry."

Hicks's unit notified the Tactical Operations Center of the situation. The soldiers were told, "Charlie Mike": military jargon for "continue mission." They got back in their Humvees and rode away.

The ROE state that soldiers must determine with "reasonable certainty that the individual or object of attack is a legitimate military target" prior to attack, according to the Consolidated Rules of Engagement for Iraq (2005), which were leaked to Wikileaks.org in February.

Yet at Winter Soldier, veteran after veteran told of civilians mistaken for combatants. Testifiers spoke of untargeted shootings of buildings full of innocent families, running over civilians in the road without filing reports, raids on misidentified houses. In Iraq, many said, it's often unclear who's an enemy and who's a friend.

Garett Reppenhagen, who served as a sniper in Iraq in 2004, depicted that blurred line in particularly painful detail.

Acting on reports that gunfire was emerging from a vehicle (although he himself couldn't be sure), Reppenhagen and others fired repeated shots through its windshield, killing its passengers. They were later informed that the men in the vehicle were not insurgents. They were the deputy governor's bodyguards: their allies.

"These are the kind of confusions that go on every day in Iraq," Reppenhagen said. "It's almost startling how little control you have, and how much fear perpetuates you to not really concern yourself with things like rules of engagement or Geneva Conventions. Your primary concern is getting yourself and your buddies home alive."

Beyond a lack of clear identification of "the enemy" - there's no Civil War-style Blue v. Gray code on the streets of Baghdad - combatant status is often fluid, according to Fanning.

"Sometimes the people who are friends one day are your enemies the next," he said. "It's dependent on what's going on in the news, on how other Americans have treated them, on what conditions are like that day."

When rules of engagement start being broken, the baby often goes flying out with the bathwater, according to Reppenhagen. Soldiers begin to flout the guidelines simply because they are not enforced, and, in a war environment where little makes sense, lawlessness does not seem unnatural.

Reppenhagen described his sergeant issuing orders to shoot farmers tending their fields after dark, simply because they were out past curfew. The orders were followed; the farmers were shot dead.

"What I had learned about rules of engagement was rapidly changing," he testified. "I was never updated on what changed or who I was able to shoot at. We just basically changed them ourselves. We learned, 'Oh, we didn't get in trouble for that? Well, let's try this.' By the time I left Iraq, it was pretty much fair game to shoot at anyone we thought was a threat."

The process of development for the rules of engagement is supposed to work in the opposite direction, according to former medic Jason Hurd: Theoretically, they start out looser and narrow as soldiers gain more knowledge about the specifics of a particular war. By the time Hurd got to Iraq in 2004, the rules of engagement were technically more strict.

"You had to have positive identification before you could engage a threat," Hurd told Truthout. "If you perceived a threat, you had to use other means to try to get away from that threat before you engaged it. So you had these things called levels of aggression: if you had a perceived threat, your first action should be to try to get it away using hand and arm signals. Next is to raise your weapon. If that doesn't stop the threat, you click the switch off of safe and fire a warning shot," and so on, until lethal force is used - or so the rules would have it. In a high-tension situation, though, it's often impossible to follow the progression to a tee, Hurd said.

According to the 2005 Consolidated ROE, the first level of aggression is to shout a "verbal warning to halt." Despite their ostensible assumption that soldiers are able to communicate enough to alert targets that they are about to attack, the ROE do not take into account the language barrier between most American troops and most Iraqis.

When it comes to armed private contractors operating in Iraq, the rules are even murkier, according to Jeremy Scahill, author of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army."

As in the military, the State Department's rules recommend following multiple, graduated steps before using lethal force: first shouting, then showing the weapon, then demonstrating an intent to shoot.

"If you must fire your weapon, fire only aimed shots with due regard for the safety of innocent bystanders and immediately report incident and request assistance," the regulations read.

Yet, according to Scahill, once the rules become inconvenient, they're easily discarded.

"The primary objective of private security contractors working on US government contracts is to keep their 'principal' alive - the person, place or thing they're guarding," Scahill told Truthout. "It's all about 'protecting the noun.' There are rules under the State Department contracts. But in reality, it's shoot first and don't ask questions."

Private contractors are not subject to prosecution under Iraqi law, and interpretations differ on how much US military law applies to them, so the consequences of rule-breaking are, in effect, negligible.

On the military end, too, the negligibility of those rules becomes a way of life. Soldiers are guided, according to Hurd, by instinct, questionable reports and, above all, the utter terror of life in the midst of a pointless war.

"We react out of fear, fear for our lives," Hurd testified, "and we cause complete and utter destruction."



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For More Information:
Please visit http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier.

Human rights organizations have documented government approved executions, acts of torture, and rape for decades since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 until his fall in 2003.

In 2002, a resolution sponsored by the European Union was adopted by the Commission for Human Rights, which stated that there had been no improvement in the human rights crisis in Iraq. The statement condemned President Saddam Hussein's government for its "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law". The resolution demanded that Iraq immediately put an end to its "summary and arbitrary executions... the use of rape as a political tool and all enforced and involuntary disappearances".[citation needed]
Two years earlier, two human rights groups, the International Federation of Human Rights League and the Coalition for Justice in Iraq released a joint report, accusing the Saddam Hussein regime of committing "massive and systematic" human rights violations, particularly against women. The report spoke of public beheadings of women who were accused of being prostitutes, which took place in front of family members, including children. The heads of the victims were publicly displayed near signs reading, "For the honor of Iraq." The report documented 130 women who had been killed in this way, but stated that the actual number was probably much higher. The report also describes human rights violations directed against children. The report states that children, as young as 5 years old, are recruited into the Ashbal Saddam, or "Saddam's Cubs," and indoctrinated to adulate Saddam Hussein and denounce their own family members. The children are also subjected to military training, which includes cruelty to animals. The report also describes how parents of children are executed if they object to this treatment, and in some cases, the children themselves are imprisoned.[citation needed][original research?]
Full political participation at the national level was restricted only to members of the Arab Ba'ath Party, which constituted only 8% of the population. Therefore, it was impossible for Iraqi citizens to change their government.
Iraqi citizens were not allowed to assemble legally unless it was to express support for the government. The Iraqi government controlled the establishment of political parties, regulated their internal affairs and monitored their activities.
Wikipedia


War is hell as they say but life in Iraq under Saddam was like the 8th layer of hell.

None of this makes any of the OP any better, sorry, for the soldiers or people in Iraq

Our soldiers don't fear anything. They are doing a damn good job trying to straighten out a F*CKED up country all caused by Saddam's reign of terror.

Wow! You mean civilians actually die during a war? Go figure.

well rules of engagement are more covered in country, and are set in accordance to the threat levels of any one particular area, meaning the rules of engagement are not the same in Baghdad as they are in Mosul or Baquba.

there are theatre wide rules of engagement. but those can jump from one level to the next depending once again on the threat level of the SOLDIER engaged at the time.

these are the five S's that we use, 1. signs, 2. shout, 3. show(them your weapon), 4. shove(if they get to close to you and wont stop) 5. shoot!

any time someone is in range to shout at then they are also in range to blow you away with a suicide vest (always a real threat- i hope you agree)

what are the "rules" of war. really there is only one.

don't die for your country, make the other guy die for his. breaking that down for the learning impaired...COME HOME ALIVE.

DO PEOPLE DIE IN WAR? YES. IS IT AVOIDABLE- ONLY IF WE WERENT FIGTING A WAR. SEE WHAT SOME OF YOU AND THE MEDIA FAIL TO PORTRAY ACCURATELY IS THAT WE TAKE GUN FIRE FROM ALL OVER THE PLACE...INSURGENTS LIKE TO USE HOUSES THAT ARE OCCUPIED BY CIVILIANS. We dont know if there are civilians in there we only know we are being shot from there, so we shoot back- defending ourselves and sometimes the innocent are trapped between the bad guys and US.

is it crap, yes it is--- so would you please mind terribly going over there and telling the insurgents not to shot from houses that have civilians in them, please, that would be great thanks-

doc

don't they use some civilians against the troops? if so....how could the soldiers tell unless the civilian is shooting at them of course?

Does not justify it, no matter what you say about it. It is wrong that innocents die.

I don't like innocents dying but throughout history...it happens. Whether it's my a mistake or intentional

Justifying it as just a part of war is animalistic not humane at all. We are not even showing a human face if we cannot see the unjustice of innocents dying.

when you can get every country and everyone in the world to not fight...then I will vote you for queen of the world. But reality is...war exists.

I'm glad to know that we have the soldiers we do

I do not blame the soldiers unless they love their job. I blame the government for their crimes against their own people by making them war and the crimes of killing in other parts of the world for selfish reasons.

well...if someone can make every country stop fighting or harming their own people...americans or the rest of the world...then my hat is off to them

WWII-41,793,300; Vietnam-2,000,000 (-/+); Korea-Millions (Unable to be definatly determined); Gulf War (Iraq)-100,000 (Unable to be definatly determined); Current war (Iraq)-82,476 – 89,996

With that in mind civilians will die in war, it is inevitable. But the US has done an incredible job on keeping that number low given the years we've been in this conflict. Not that I agree with the war but moreso to point some things out.

unavoidable in many cases though.... Especially when the enemy uses them as shields, or better yet the voluntarily put the selves between you and the guy that just shot at you with an RPG.

no, thinking that war is anything but animalistic is not humane.

Thank you... Well said my friend

again..I will listen to those that have been there before the media tornado

I take a neutral stance from time to time, more or less though I like facts.

Please obey this rule strictly Doc. Thanks!




Doc - certain folks posting here live in Camelot. Where there is no need for a war, everyone plays nicely and politely with each other. The Camelotians believe that the current fighting there closely resembles a chess board, all neatly arranged, with very strict rules, and the chance to talk calmly with your opponent. As such, these Camelotians do not have the perspective that some others here do, but unfortunately do not even realize they are talking sh*t about that which they do not even remotely understand.
Am quite sure though - that the overall nativity would change upon hearing those first 'tink,tink tink' sounds of rounds impacting near you (or 'thwok, thwok, thwok' if you are near non-metal walls) If not, perhaps the first time they witness a suicide vest being 'deployed' would lend perspective.




Sorry, the Camelotians are be unable to comply with your request. The ivory tower is far to tall for a climb down, it seems.