Fallujah and the laws of war

On the contrary, all the independent evidence establishes beyond any doubt that the killings and destruction committed by US forces were so gross and deliberate that the name Fallujah will be recorded in the history books alongside such infamous atrocities as the 1937 bombing of Guernica, the crushing of the 1944 Warsaw uprising and the Vietnam War.

In its very conception, the onslaught on Fallujah was a calculated and illegal mass reprisal against the city and its inhabitants. It was undisguised revenge for the failure of the earlier operation by US forces in April 2004 to destroy the resistance of the city. It was conducted in flagrant and contemptuous violation of all the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war, which were adopted in 1949 in response to the horrors of the Second World War, and in particular the atrocities inflicted by the Nazi armed forces in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In a pep talk before the operation, Sergeant Major Carlton Kent, the most senior enlisted marine in Iraq, told his troops: “You’re all in the process of making history. This is another Hue city in the making. I have no doubt if we do get the word that each and every one of you is going to do what you have always done—kick some butt.” (The former Vietnamese imperial capital of Hue was nearly destroyed by the US military while attempting to counter the Tet Offensive in 1968.)

New York Post columnist and former military officer Ralph Peters summed up the mentality guiding the White House and Pentagon. “We must not be afraid to make an example of Fallujah. We need to demonstrate that the United States military cannot be deterred or defeated. If that means widespread destruction, we must accept the price... Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it.”

There is an objective, historical measure by which the actions of the Bush administration and the US forces can be judged. All acts of reprisal and collective punishment are explicitly outlawed by the 1949 Geneva Conventions, under Protocol 1, which was adopted in 1977. Article 51, Protocol 1 states: “Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or terrorism are prohibited.”

The scale and frenzied character of the slaughter had an almost psychotic character to it. For over a week the city was subjected to awesome air and ground bombardment of a kind which militarily would only be justified by the presence of massive defensive forces and installations. The size of some of the bombs used (up to 2000 lbs) were greater than any used by Luftwaffe dive-bombers in the attacks on Poland, France and Russia.

The obliteration of much of the city was designed to terrify the entire Iraqi population into submission and to cower all further resistance to US military aggression throughout the country. Article 51 plainly prohibits “acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population....”

Read More
http://wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/fall-n24.shtml