Posted on 28-7-2002

Costs of Targeting Civilians
By CALEB CARR, NY Times 27 July 2002

The Israeli government's decision to launch an assassination raid on the
Gaza City residence of Sheikh Salah Shehada, leader of the military arm of
the Palestinian group Hamas, brought immediate and widespread condemnation
not only from Muslims but from Western leaders (including the Bush
administration) and even elements of the Israeli government. The reason was
not Mr. Shehada's death — he was a senior participant in suicide attacks
against Israel — but the fact that the Israeli military and Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon understood that the attack in a densely populated
neighborhood, at night, would result in many civilian deaths. The raid was
nonetheless ordered — and the world received its clearest demonstration yet
that the Israeli government is prepared to knowingly inflict substantial
civilian casualties in its response to Palestinian suicide attacks.

But the Israeli strike in Gaza has proved terribly self-defeating. The
Sharon government is more diplomatically isolated than ever, and Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, two Palestinian groups widely reported to have been
considering a trial cessation of attacks against civilians, now say they
will step up their assaults. Should more suicide attacks take place,
however, they will in turn further undermine the Palestinian cause.

Over the last decade, the emergence of murder without warning as the
primary method of Palestinian paramilitary action has weakened the
Palestinian movement, so much so that even the conservative Saudi
government has felt the need to offer some sort of new framework for peace
in the region. But the continuing suicide bombings against Israeli
civilians and Israel's military response, which has killed hundreds of
Palestinian civilians since March, have pushed both sides into stalemate.

The desire to kill enemy civilians when one's own civilians are killed is
as old as human conflict. But military history shows that killing
civilians, while it can bring short-term advantage, in the long run does
not break an opponent's will to resist; it usually steels it. The terrible
killing potential of modern mechanized warfare has driven this point home.
In World War II, German bombardment of British civilian areas only
intensified Britain's resistance. When the German operation was over and
the British had the chance to retaliate, London (aided by the United
States) seized the opportunity. But the subsequent Allied bombing campaign
against German cities only intensified the enemy's will to resist,
increasing the rate of German industrial production and widening the age
range of boys and older men willing to fight. The job of beating the
Germans was prolonged, not shortened, by targeting German civilians.

The American use of atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki was only the immediate cause of Japan's surrender: a submarine
campaign had already mortally weakened the empire. Even so, had we not
defused the anger of the defeated Japanese with a generous reconstruction
program after the war, the widespread and deliberate killing of civilians
would have ensured continuing enmity between America and Japan.

The history of warfare offers thousands of examples of the strategic harm
caused by the killing of civilians, from the punitive campaigns of ancient
Rome to America's pummeling of North Vietnamese towns and villages. In
World War I, the German empire was not seen as evil by neutral nations like
the United States until it started murdering civilians in Belgium and
sinking commercial ocean liners like the Lusitania. This same
self-defeating effect will continue to dominate the Middle East until
either the Palestinians or the Israelis categorically declare that they
will stop killing noncombatants during belligerent operations, regardless
of whether the other side makes a similar pledge. This goes beyond any
question of morality (though it is certainly that); it is a simple matter
of military reality.

Killing civilians rarely if ever offers success in war or enhanced
security, and in an age when global public opinion is of dramatically
increased importance, it only undermines a nation's force in both the field
and the international arena.

Caleb Carr, a military historian and novelist, is the author of "The
Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians.''