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<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman" color=#000000><A
href="http://slate.msn.com/?id=2063212">http://slate.msn.com/?id=2063212</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman"></FONT><BR></DIV><IMG height=1
src="http://c.msn.com/c.gif?NA=1132&NC=1262&DI=4098&PI=7315&PS=27974"
width=0><FONT size=3><STRONG>war stories</STRONG></FONT><BR
clear=all><STRONG><FONT size=4><FONT face=Arial><SPAN class=clsLarger>Victory
Lapse</SPAN><BR></FONT></FONT></STRONG><FONT size=2><FONT face=Tahoma><SPAN
class=clsSmall><FONT color=gray>The Pentagon and the media's chronic
mistake.</FONT></SPAN><BR></FONT></FONT>By Scott Shuger<BR><FONT size=2><FONT
face=Tahoma><SPAN class=clsSmaller><FONT color=#cc0000>Posted <FONT
color=#cc0000>Friday, March 15, 2002, at 8:01 AM PT</FONT></FONT></SPAN><BR
clear=all><!--After Date--><BR clear=all></FONT></FONT>
<P>Why does the Pentagon consistently fail to put its best foot forward when it
addresses human rights issues related to the war? And why does the press so
frequently fail to supply the context the Building leaves out? </P>
<P>Take the Pentagon disclosure earlier this week that during Operation Anaconda
in eastern Afghanistan, some women and children were killed by a U.S. airstrike.
The military spokesman who released this information not unreasonably explained
that the civilian victims were in a vehicle that the United States still
believes was also carrying al-Qaida fighters. And Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld has observed that the women and children in Anaconda's remote battle
zone were there "of their own free will, knowing who they're with …" But it's
just maddening that neither the Pentagon nor the <EM>New York Times</EM> in its
story on the revelations bothered to mention that <EM>international law
addresses just this sort of situation and supports the United States.</EM></P>
<P>And this isn't one of those angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin deals. The Fourth
Geneva Convention, which specifies protections guaranteed to civilians during
wartime (and which was signed by both the United States and Afghanistan),
includes the following straightforward sentence (it's Article 28): "The presence
of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune
from military operations." That is, the Geneva Convention clearly says you
cannot inoculate what would otherwise be a legitimate military target by
grafting noncombatants onto it. </P>
<P>This is not to say that attackers can simply ignore the presence of
noncombatants. International law experts hold that a military use of force must
be proportional to the military advantage it would gain. Civilians located at
legitimate targets either by choice, compulsion, or accident are still protected
from disproportional attacks. You can't call in an airstrike on a school
building full of children just to kill a single sniper on the roof. </P>
<P>Without this legal context, the Pentagon couldn't and didn't claim that in
conducting the airstrike it had taken pains to limit itself only to proportional
attacks, and the <EM>Times </EM>couldn't and didn't evaluate any such assertion.
The big loser is anybody else trying to assess the morality of the U.S.
anti-terror campaign. You know, the rest of us. </P>
<P>There have been umpteen Pentagon press conferences where Rumsfeld fields a
question about the legality of a U.S. anti-terror military move by saying
something like, "Well, I'm no lawyer, but it seems obvious to me that …" and
then goes on to pretty much miss the relevant legal point. (Rumsfeld's role as
lead "I'm not an" attorney is why the DOD's legal justification for its
treatment of the Guantanamo detainees is still an utter hash.) You'd think that
as a result, by now the Pentagon would be in the habit of occasionally producing
a staff international lawyer to unfarkle such matters. You'd think. </P>
<P>And why can't the <EM>New York Times</EM> remember to call up a war law
expert or two before running stories about U.S. operations producing (or
apparently producing) civilian casualties? Or is the press so conditioned by the
military information machine that it's doomed to mimic the Pentagon's every
lapse?</P><BR></DIV>
<DIV>________________________________________<BR>Lutfi M. Hussein<BR>Department
of English<BR>Arizona State University<BR>Tempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA<BR>Email
address: <A
href="mailto:lutfi.hussein@asu.edu">lutfi.hussein@asu.edu</A><BR>Homepage: <A
href="http://www.public.asu.edu/~lutfiawa/">http://www.public.asu.edu/~lutfiawa/</A></DIV></BODY></HTML>