Though often flouted, even by the proudest of armies, the international rules of war are perhaps more vital to US forces today than when drafted many decades ago, according to military analysts and battle-tested officers.
The abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers -- depicted to the world in graphic photographs -- has only underscored the importance of training US service members to observe those rules regardless of circumstances, said Colonel Patrick Finnegan, who heads the law department at the US Military Academy.
"We try to get the cadets to think about what the rules mean and why we follow them, even when the other side might not," said Finnegan, a veteran of the first Gulf War.
"Your first responsibility is self-defense, but at the same time we're trying to do the right thing," he said. "The more you overreact to a situation, the worse it plays to the Iraqi people and the rest of the world."
No single document codifies the rules of war. They are a series of international agreements, including the Geneva Conventions, that stipulate how commanders and soldiers should act during conflicts. Matters addressed include treatment of POWs and endangerment of civilians.
Some politicians and commentators have suggested that the prisoner abuse was no more than hazing, and that outrage should be directed instead at terrorist attacks or the Iraqis who dismem-bered American contractors.
"What amounts to hazing is not even in the same ballpark as mass murder," Representative Steve King wrote recently in the <
The US military takes the rules seriously enough to require annual instruction in them for every unit, Finnegan said. Exercises might simulate a sudden barrage of rocks thrown by civilian youths, or the appearance of a woman who seems to be pregnant, yet may be concealing a weapon.
Still, some experts suggest the training has not been adequate for some of the National Guard and Reserve units deployed in Iraq -- such as the military police company implicated in the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.
"The vast majority of our Army is doing good job, but we're incredibly stretched, and that can result in mistakes," said retired Colonel Robert Maginnis, a military analyst who was chief of the Army Infantry School's leadership and ethics training branch.
The abuse scandal "has been a major embarrassment for all of us," Maginnis said. "To take someone unarmed and then humiliate and abuse them, it's a mockery -- some of our reservists haven't really caught on to that ethos."
Michael Peters, who served as in Army officer in Vietnam, Panama and the Gulf before becoming executive vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said there are practical reasons for treating enemy prisoners properly.
"You'd hope to be treated the same way if you were captured," he said.
Human Rights Watch, the US-based group that monitors a wide range of abuses worldwide, gave mixed grades to American forces for rules-of-war compliance during the first phases of the Iraq war.
The air campaign was commended for inflicting relatively light civilian casualties; ground troops earned praise and criticism.
"We saw some fine examples of heroism by soldiers and Marines, holding fire and putting themselves in danger when the Iraqis were using human shields," said Marc Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch military analyst. "But there also was use of ground-launched cluster munitions that killed a lot of civilians unnecessarily."
Garlasco said the ongoing anti-occupation insurgency has prolonged the challenge of minimizing civilian casualties.
"The US military makes a good faith effort," he said. "But the problem is you're asking soldiers and Marines to do a job that's not part of their mandate. It's not easy to flip from being a killer to a peacekeeper."
David Phillips, a conflict-prevention specialist with the Council on Foreign Relations, said Iraq provided a vivid example of how military missions have evolved.
"The Powell doctrine always was the use of overwhelming force, annihilating the adversary," Phillips said. "But now we have to think about nation-building and transforming adversarial forces into peacekeeping partners."
The US military's historical record regarding the rules of war is generally considered good, albeit marred by horrific atrocities such as the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Phillips noted that German troops at the close of World War II sought to surrender to US soldiers in expectation of better treatment than they would get from the Russians.
"It's imperative -- particularly right now, after Sept. 11 -- that we don't just win the battle itself," Phillips said.
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