Making Civilians Less Safe on the Battlefield

It’s never a good time to be a civilian on a battlefield.  But as we saw this past week, President Obama is doing an exceptional job of making it even more dangerous to be one.

As reported in The Hill a few days ago, under Obama’s tenure as Commander-in-Chief, the U.S. military has pursued a policy of foregoing airstrikes against ISIS if there is a risk of any civilian casualties, even one.  As a legal matter, these rules of engagement are unnecessarily restrictive – the laws of armed conflict have never been understood to require total avoidance of civilian casualties, as that is simply unrealistic in war.  What they have historically required when it comes to civilian casualties is the application of the concept of proportionality – that the number of civilians that a military commander anticipates will be killed in an attack on a militarily necessary target is not excessive relative to the anticipated military gain from hitting the target.

Holding back on airstrikes this way is not just a matter of unnecessarily denying ourselves opportunities to kill the bad guys.  Rules of engagement that tie our warfighters’ hands to this extreme actually have the effect of further endangering, rather than protecting, civilians on the ground.  ISIS jihadists, fully aware of our self-imposed restrictions triggered by the presence of any civilians, will be further encouraged to use them as human shields, positioning themselves among them to deter US strikes.  What’s more, these rules of engagement allow ISIS to make itself untouchable by American ordnance, giving ISIS ever widening latitude to kill, torture, enslave, and further brutalize civilians, in far greater numbers, without interference.

That’s all with respect to the Iraqi and Syrian civilians caught in the middle of a battlefield in wartime – but American civilians have also been put at greater risk in recent days.

In a major shift in long-standing policy, President Obama has signaled that the U.S. government officials will now be authorized to negotiate directly with terrorist organizations for the release of American hostages.  The administration has attempted to qualify this shift by insisting that the government is still barred from itself paying ransoms to terrorists, but that it will negotiate with (or facilitate negotiations with) hostage-takers and will allow families wishing to pay ransoms themselves to do so.

The caveat is a distinction without a difference.  ISIS and other jihadists will see the U.S. government negotiating with them as a sign of weakness and capitulation, irrespective of whether the money is coming from the U.S. Treasury or privately held bank accounts.  That perception can only lead to the taking of more American hostages – the U.S government negotiating for their release will be both 1) confirmation to ISIS and similarly-minded groups that military force in response to hostage-taking is not forthcoming; and relatedly, 2) a validation of the jihadist narrative that demonstrates the triumph of jihadist brutality over the mighty United States, powerless to rescue its own people and left with no other option but to negotiate (Tom Rogan over at National Review elaborates quite effectively on these points.)

These kinds of life-saving gestures are going to get innocent people killed.