A Civilian Is A Combatant Is A Civilian Is A Combatant
A Civilian Is A Combatant Is A Civilian Is A
Combatant
By David Swanson
http://davidswanson.org/node/4773
What
happens when a bunch of lawyers intent on distinguishing
combatants from civilians discover, by interviewing hundreds
of civilians, that it cannot be done?
Does it become
legal to kill everyone or no one?
The Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC)
has published a report called The People's Perspectives:
Civilian Involvement in Armed Conflict. Researchers,
including from Harvard Law School, interviewed 62 people in
Bosnia, 61 in Libya, 54 in Gaza, and 77 Somali refugees in
Kenya. The lead author of the report is Harvard Law School
Fellow Nicolette Boehland.
One might ask why Iraq and
Afghanistan were left out, or any number of other countries,
but the report says the researchers went where they were
able. And the result is a valuable contribution that I'm
willing to bet would not have found fundamentally different
results by looking elsewhere.
"The laws of war prohibit
the intentional targeting of civilians," the report
begins.
But then, so do the laws that forbid war,
including the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the U.N. Charter, and
nation-specific laws like the U.S. Constitution and the War
Powers Resolution -- the laws that professors of "the laws
of war" resolutely ignore, as does this report.
The
researchers found that many people who have lived where wars
are fought have taken part in those wars in one way or
another, and that they have no clear understanding (not that
anyone else does) of when they have been civilians and when
combatants. Said one interviewee, highlighted as typical:
"What I think is that there is no line at all. . . .
Civilians can turn into fighters at any time. Anybody can
change from a fighter to a civilian, all in one day, in one
moment."
The interviewees made clear that many are forced
into participation in war, others have very little choice,
and others join in for reasons not too different from those
expressed by the Pentagon: primarily self-defense, but also
patriotism, prestige, survival, civic duty, social standing,
outrage at the targeting of peaceful protesters, and
financial gain. Bizarrely, not a single interviewee said
they joined in a war in order to prevent Americans from
going shopping after church or otherwise continuing with
their lifestyle or freedoms.
The report stresses the
legal implication of the finding that some civilians are
forced into roles as combatants and aides to combatants,
because "civilians who directly participate in hostilities
forfeit their legal immunity from direct attack even if
their participation is involuntary," -- except of course
that we all have immunity from war because -- although most
lawyers steadfastly ignore this fact -- war is a
crime.
"To regulate behavior effectively, law must be
clear and predictable," CIVIC tells us. But all the
so-called laws of war are incapable of being made clear or
predictable. What's "proportionate" or "justified" under
this so-called body of law? The answers are all necessarily
in the eye of the beholder. In fact, shortly later the
report makes this admission: "Civilian participation in
armed conflict has been and will likely continue to be a
controversial issue." This is because the report has
identified an eternal problem, not a solution, and not a
problem capable of a solution.
Distinguishing civilians
from combatants can never cease to be a controversial issue,
but lawyers pretend it is a problem worth "working on," just
as philosophy professors "work on" the problems of
epistemology as if they might one day be solved. As a result
of highlighting a permanent problem rather than solving one,
a bit later, the report states explicitly that it "does not
call for the revision of the law . . . Neither does it
intend to push the debate in any particular direction."
Well, I hate to be rude, but what then is the point? At
best, perhaps the point is to sneak awareness of an internal
contradiction under the noses of believers in "the laws of
war," perhaps unbeknownst even to the report's authors.
A
"civilian" quoted in the report said, "I saw myself like a
man who took a rifle in his hands to defend innocent people.
I thought at leasty I have guts to do that." He also saw his
chances of survival as much greater if he joined in. But how
do such "civilian" combatants differ in action or motivation
from the "non-civilian" combatants?
Another explained
that, "you're never enlisted as a rebel. You can go in and
fight, get out and go home, take a shower, eat some
breakfast, play PlayStation, and then go back to the front.
You can switch from one to the other in a moment, really."
Just like a drone pilot. But not like most U.S. combatants
who travel far from home to kill near other people's homes.
Understanding those other people's situations erases the
outmoded distinction between civilian and combatant, which
brings legal theory into touch with reality. But the choice
is then to allow the killing of all or allow the killing of
none. No wonder the report has no recommendations! It's a
report written within the field of war studies, a field
within which one does not question war itself.
So-called
civilians told the researchers that they had fought,
provided logistical support, driven cars, provided medical
services, provided food, and provided media coverage
including social media coverage. (Once you've recognized
media coverage as a contribution to a war, how do you
restrain the expansion of that category? And how do Fox and
CNN and MSNBC avoid prosecution?) The sea in which the fish
called combatants swim (to put civilians and combatants into
Mao's terms) can also be killed by the logic of war,
something many occupying troops realize and act on. The
choice that must not be named would be to allow the sea
and the fish to live.
The people interviewed had
no coherent, consistent definition of "civilian" or
"combatant" -- just like the people interviewing them. After
all, the interviewers were representatives from the "legal
community" that justifies drone murders of people all over
the earth. The idea of people switching back and forth
between roles as civilians and combatants runs against the
grain of U.S. thinking in which evildoers are, like child
molesters or Lord Voldemort or members of another race,
permanently and irredeemably evil whether or not engaged in
evil activities. Nuance and war are awkward partners. The
drone blows up a family when Daddy gets home rather than
aiming only to blow Daddy up in the act of doing something
undesirable. But if one drop of combatant blood makes you a
combatant forever, then it's open season on the general
population of the areas under attack -- something that
hardly needs to be explained to Gazans or others who've
lived through its reality.
"An employee of the Court of
Bosnia and Herzegovina believed the categories did not apply
easily to the complexity inherent in the Bosnian conflict,"
CIVIC writes. "If you look at the Geneva Conventions,
everything looks beautiful, but if you start to apply it,
everything falls apart." Interviewees said the distinctions
that end up mattering are those of ethnicity and religion,
not civilian and combatant.
Of course that sounds to
lawyers of "the laws of war" like a bad case of primitive
war in need of civilizing. But it's war that is barbaric,
not its degree of legal refinement. Imagine the idea that
providing food or medicine or other aid to a combatant makes
you a combatant worthy of being murdered. Should you not
provide food or other services to other human beings?
Providing such services is something conscientious objectors
used to do during wars instead of going to prison. Once
you've demonized treating a group of people as people,
you're not dealing with law anymore at all, just with war --
pure and simple.
The time has come for war lawyers to
join Rosa Brooks in throwing out peacetime and along with it
any participants in peace, or with opponents of barbarism in
throwing out wartime and with it any participation in war or
war preparation.
--
David Swanson
is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host.
He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign
coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include
War Is A
Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He
is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize
Nominee.
Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
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