Baghdad as target?
Hehir, J. Bryan
WORLD WATCH J. Bryan Hehir BAGHDAD AS TARGET? AN ORDER TO BE REFUSED Washington, D.C., Baghdad, and the Middle East are poised precariously between war and diplomacy. While the outcome is far...
...Dugan's question of last month-"What is it that psychologically would make an impact on the population and the regime in Iraq...
...The Ford article, "The Morality of Obliteration Bombing," could be usefully invoked in the Persian Gulf debate for two reasons...
...Precisely because Saddam Hussein runs a ruthless police state, the civilians of Iraq must not be held responsible for his "reckless actions...
...The Middle East is a compact area loaded with sophisticated weaponry, unstable regimes, and historic conflicts that include Arab-Israeli, intra-Arab state, and Palestinian-Arab dimensions...
...Third, because of this uncertainty, it must be stressed that war undertaken to vindicate state boundaries in the Middle East could end by erasing most of the borders which today define the region...
...It was clear even before he spoke that, if war comes, the United States sees its comparative advantage in air power...
...A war could ignite, enkindle, or intensify any and all of these...
...The Challenge of Peace said: "No Christian can rightfully carry out orders or policies deliberately aimed at killing noncombatants...
...This war would be Bismarckian, a war of "blood and iron...
...The argument against the Dugan position should be made at the level of policy and personal conscience...
...Dugan said war against Iraq would be primarily an air war and that, "the cutting edge would be in downtown Baghdad...
...The chaplains have the teaching authority with them...
...Dugan was immediately fired as chief of staff of the Air Force, but it was not evident that his dismissal included a repudiation of his views...
...Neither war nor punitive deterrence guarantees success, but Brzezinski has plotted the better course for the United States and the Middle East...
...Others (Henry Kissinger and Charles Krauthammer) stress the danger to regional and international order if Saddam Hussein is not definitively disciplined and defeated...
...Their one redeeming, if unintended, result is that they have forced onto the public agenda an explicit consideration of politics, ethics, and strategy in the Persian Gulf...
...The casualties are already being estimated as tens of thousands American and Arab casualties...
...The response to Dugan should be the same...
...But the crucial question is to do so with proportionate means...
...If fighting begins, there are few who would confidently predict where it will end...
...And the promised dependence on air power -even with moral limits enforced-guarantees high civilian collateral damage...
...Since an attack on Saudi Arabia by Iraq would certainly have led to war, a defensive, deterrent deployment of troops was justified...
...The potential war zone runs from Baghdad to Cairo and from the Gulf to the Jordan River, or to the Mediterranean, engulfing both Jordan and Israel...
...Then and now, a strong public consensus on the purposes of policy (defeat Hitler, restrain Iraq) has the effect of dispensing with a careful scrutiny of the means proposed to prosecute a policy...
...press about the logic of war and not sufficient attention to issues of the legitimacy of such a course and the limits it must observe...
...Second, the scope of the war threatens to extend far beyond Kuwait and Iraq...
...Dugan's comments were a direct repudiation of the central principle of limitation on warfare: the protection of the civilian population...
...Then and now, "psychological" reasons were invoked to support a strategy of unlimited air power...
...Punitive deterrence is proportionate to the threat in the Middle East...
...I believe the answer is no...
...While the outcome is far from being predetermined, there is much talk and commentary in the U.S...
...The war being discussed is not an enterprise like Grenada or Panama...
...The point about protecting a principle of order which honors sovereign boundaries is beyond dispute...
...The prior moral question is the legitimacy of using force in the Gulf...
...First, the kind of war needed to drive Iraq from Kuwait: there is no way to avoid a ground war against a large and experienced Iraqi army...
...Zbigniew Brzezinski has argued for continuation of the UN-U.S...
...decision-devoid of further major provocation by Iraq-to use force to liberate Kuwait would be a disproportionate strategy, politically and morally...
...Ford argued the ends of the policy in the 1940s were justified, but the means were not...
...Specifically, it needs to be said often-by people in and out of the government-that "bombing Baghdad" is morally unacceptable policy...
...The sentence is remarkably useful in understanding the status and the fate of the civilian population of Baghdad (and the Western hostages undoubtedly held at the most sensitive targets in the city...
...The need for public restraint on the use of force was vividly illustrated in a widely publicized interview given by Gen...
...the scale of violence which would be unleashed and the stakes involved require that, unlike the two previous invasions, the moral debate on legitimacy and limits must be pressed before decisions are taken...
...Dugan's comments were both shocking and irresponsible...
...strategy of "punitive deterrence" of Iraq...
...I am equally convinced that a U.S...
...Those who tout a "surgical air war" either don't understand the challenge or are simply being deceptive...
...The emphasis of Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney in dismissing Dugan was on the general's indiscretion in speaking publicly...
...But the lines of an argument against going to war in the Gulf can be sketched...
...The pastoral letter simply echoed the classical argument against bombing civilian centers made by John Ford, S.J., in the midst of World War II (Theological Studies, 1941...
...One can never make a definitive argument about successful deterrence, but there is good evidence for crediting the deployment as a successful defense of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states...
...Three different arguments point to a war with enormous human and political costs involved...
...It involves long-term multilateral political and economic pressure short of war, and continued deployment of forces to guarantee protection of Iraq's neighbors...
...was also asked about the German populace in the 1940s...
...On September 16, Gen...
...For this reason, the Dugan view of how air power should be used must be decisively refuted...
...Proportionality is a difficult criterion to invoke because a definitive cost/benefit balance can never be made...
...bishops reads: "Retaliatory action, whether nuclear or conventional, which would indiscriminately take many wholly innocent lives, lives of people who are in no way responsible for reckless actions of their government, must also be condemned...
...If that were the outcome, would historical perspective find the initiation of such a war proportional...
...war is not...
...It also needs to be made clear in the public debate, and by chaplains in their uniquely important role, that orders "to bomb Baghdad" should be refused...
...But the debate about means will arise only if war begins...
...The strongest moral statement in the peace pastoral of the U.S...
...Michael J. Dugan to the Washington Post...
...The questions of whether force should be used, and how it should be limited if used, are matters for both the public and policymakers...
...I remain convinced that the deployment of U.S., European, and Arab forces, sustained by a series of UN resolutions, is justified politically and morally...
...A Gulf war could reshape the Middle East in a fashion similar to World War I in Europe...
Vol. 117 • October 1990 • No. 18
