Respecting the Rules of War

Respecting the Rules of War

Wars have occurred throughout recorded human history. Even in antiquity, there was a recognition that even war should be subject to certain basic rules, such as restricting hostilities to combatants instead of wantonly attacking uninvolved civilians. In modern times, the types of concepts recognized by most civilized societies include avoiding unnecessary harm to civilian non-combatants, refraining from hostile action until a formal declaration of war, humane treatment of prisoners of war, prohibition of impersonating enemy combatants such as by disguising themselves by wearing their uniforms, requirement that combatants wear identifying uniforms of their own, prohibition against falsely flying flags of other nations, and prohibition of attacking clearly marked ambulances and hospitals. The movie Apocalypse Now provides numerous examples of violations of these modern rules of warfare during a conflict in which many different types of violations of the rules of warfare are now known to have been committed by both sides.

Examples of Violations of the Rules of War in Apocalypse Now and Vietnam

The most obvious examples from the movie would be the murder of the women in the sampan by Captain Willard after "Mr. Clean" accidentally killed everyone else on the boat and wounded her as a reaction to what he believed was a hostile movement, and Willard's later order to "Chef" to call in an air strike on an entire village if he does not return from his expedition to find his target. Willard's mission to assassinate Colonel Kurtz is also a war crime but it is not committed against the enemy.

In principle, Mr. Clean's shooting of the non-combatants in the sampan was not a violation of the rules of warfare because (we assume) his action was an instantaneous reaction was genuinely out of fear and his belief that the woman who moved was reaching for a weapon or for the trigger to a bomb. As long as he did not have the intention of murdering a civilian in cold blood, his mistake was not a violation of the rules of warfare. The same distinction holds true where a civilian village is bombed strictly in error rather than deliberately. However, Willard's decision to kill the wounded woman was inexcusable because he specifically intended to kill her without any reason to believe that she was an enemy combatant. Similarly, his later order to Chef to call in an air strike against an entire village was a violation of the rules of war because it was not justified as an attack on a military facility or on known enemy combatants.

During the Vietnam conflict, many American soldiers developed hatred of the enemy and of the civilian population because of the extent to which Vietnamese civilians who were sympathetic to the North Vietnamese aided and abetted the enemy. On one hand, it easy, (especially with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and from the safety of a desk in the United States), to condemn any American soldier who failed to respect the rules of warfare in Vietnam. However, a strong argument can be made that it was the violation of those rules by the North Vietnamese that caused this dynamic. While it does not in any way excuse illegal hostile actions against non-combatants, it does illustrate that one of the purposes of having rules for war is, precisely, to avoid some of the consequences that are readily foreseeable when either side violates them.

In many cases, North Vietnamese civilians were directly involved in supporting the war effort. Frequently, combatants disguised themselves by day as civilians and then attacked U.S. forces at night. In other cases, civilians helped lure U.S. soldiers into ambushes and booby traps. While even that does not excuse retaliating against (other) civilians or attacking the entire village in retaliation, it does illustrate that violating the rules of war by one side is likely to provoke hostile responses in kind. That is simply human nature and it is one of the many reasons that both sides in any conflict should always respect the rules of warfare.

Historical Examples of Violations of the Rules of War in Larger Perspective

World War two also featured numerous examples of fundamental violations of the most basic rules of warfare. The Nazis, in particular, had absolutely no respect for civilian populations and frequently murdered entire villages, such as in retaliation for partisan attacks against their forces. Of course, their systematic murder of millions of civilians in occupied territories were the most horrific and extensive crimes against humanity ever committed in human warfare. The Nazis also sometimes executed captured prisoners and also donned captured uniforms to infiltrate Allied front lines. The Japanese were also notorious for brutalizing and murdering captured prisoners of war and for brutalizing and murdering civilian populations, such as in China and the in the Philippines. The infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 was also a fundamental violation of the rules of war because it preceded any formal declaration of war.