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Bombing civilians is ineffective

A.C. Grayling

It was not allied area bombing that won the Second World War, any more than did `shock and awe' in Iraq in 2003.

NO ONE knows how many civilians have died violently in Iraq since the United States-led invasion in 2003. The most careful assessment, by the website Iraq Body Count, estimates at least 36,000. The true figure could be three times higher. The uncertainty is explained by General Tommy Franks' now-notorious remark, "We don't do body counts."

Three interesting facts nevertheless help shape a sense of the possibilities. One is that the U.S. forces insist that they use precision techniques to minimise "collateral damage." The second is that the coalition recently and controversially admitted using phosphorus weapons in its attack on Fallujah. The third is that one of the U.S. marine air wings operating in Iraq announced in a press release in November 2005 that since the invasion began it had dropped more than half a million tonnes of explosives on Iraq.

The felt inconsistency between the first fact and the other two reminds one that ever since the deliberate mass bombing of civilians in the Second World War, and as a direct response to it, the international community has outlawed the practice. It first tried to do so in the fourth Geneva convention of 1949, but the U.K. and the U.S. would not agree, since to do so would have been an admission of guilt for their systematic "area bombing" of German and Japanese civilians.But in 1977 a protocol was added to that convention at last outlawing civilian bombing, and the U.K. signed it. The U.S. still has not done so. Because enough nations are signatories the protocol is now part of customary international law.

The Second World War bombing story is clouded by misunderstandings, largely because the victor nations, rightly condemning the far greater crimes committed by the Nazis, have yet to inquire properly into aspects of their own behaviour.

It has been hypothesised that if allied bombing had been relentlessly focussed on fuel and transport in Nazi-controlled Europe, the war would have been shorter by two years. Night after night, for years, the RAF rained upon Germany's cities a mixture of high-explosive and incendiary bombs, the latter outnumbering the former by four to one. The high explosives blew out windows, doors, and roofs, allowing fires to spread. The incendiaries variously contained petroleum jelly, phosphorus, and oil-soaked rags. When phosphorus splashed on to a human being, burning ferociously, it could not be dislodged. Victims leapt into canals, but the flames would spontaneously re-ignite when they clambered out. Among the bombs were time-delay devices, set to explode at intervals in the hours and days after a raid to disrupt ambulance, firefighting and rescue services.

Compared to the weight and ferocity of RAF and U.S. bombing, the Nazi "blitz" and its V-rocket attacks of 1944 were small beer. Yet it was not allied civilian bombing that won the Second World War, any more than did "shock and awe" in Iraq in 2003. What both show is that bombing civilians is not only immoral, but ineffective. It takes nuclear weapons, delivering absolutely massive civilian extermination, to have the desired effect of reducing a people to submission. Employing such a tactic today would be self-defeating, for all it offers is victory over a radioactive wasteland.

The main lesson of Second World War area bombing for the international community has been to define it as a war crime. Its main lesson for today's militaries, by contrast, appears to be: "Don't do body counts." —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

(A.C. Grayling's latest book is Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime?)

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