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Good Kills?

The law of war says the lives of civilians are worth more than the lives of soldiers. By David Bosco AS THE U.S.S. ABRAHAM LINCOLN STEAMED HOME from the war in Iraq, President Bush lauded the crew for their part in waging a precise and humane war. "With new tactics and precision weapons," the president declared from the carrier's deck, "we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war, yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent."

Without mentioning the "law of war"—the well-worn collection of treaties and protocols designed to restrain fighting forces—Bush drew on one of its central principles: the preeminent value of the lives of civilians. But the president skipped over an uncomfortable moral question embedded within the law: What about soldiers who are forced to fight for an evil regime? What if many of the enemy troops are not among "the guilty"?...

At the same time, it's not clear how the law of war could recognize the moral claim of these coerced conscripts, however compelling. The law must be agnostic about the motivations of the parties to be effective. It can treat targets only as lawful or unlawful, not as guilty or innocent. Viewed through the leveling lens of the law, an Iraqi television facility is equivalent to the offices of The New York Times. A civilian, however implicated in brutality, has to remain off limits—while a conscript fighting for Saddam with a gun to his head is fair game. ...