Before cruise missiles began raining down on Baghdad and the 3rd Infantry Division closed in on the Iraqi capital, the U.S. refrained from officially calling its action a "war" on Iraq. Now, even with the all-out "shock & awe" portion of the U.S. attack well under way, officials continue to refer to "Operation Iraqi Freedom," rather than "war on Iraq." But if bombs and tanks don't signal war, what is war?
"This is part of the global war on terrorism, but the Congress has not officially made a declaration of war," said Megan Fox, a spokesperson for the Department of Defense.
The U.S. Constitution's Article One gives Congress alone the power to go to war: "The Congress shall have power to declare war ... to raise and support armies ... to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions," it reads, in part. But since World War II the decision to send troops and material to combat zones from Vietnam to Afghanistan has rested in the hands of the president.
"Unfortunately, we're not very good at subscribing to the Constitution in terms of the declaration of war," said Dan Glickman, director of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government and an 18-year veteran of Congress. "Congress is given the power to declare war, but over the years they've deferred that power to the executive branch."
According to the American Red Cross, war is defined as armed conflicts that take place between nations or internal armed conflicts such as civil wars between warring factions within a nation.
Though there aren't any obvious tactical advantages to not officially declaring war, President Bush's decision to forego a congressional war declaration does have other benefits.
"The advantage is that you don't have to go to Congress and ask, which might trigger a debate the executive branch might not want to hear," said Edwin Moise, a military historian at Clemson University, who teaches a class about the first Gulf War. "Also, there's an international politics aspect, which is, if you don't declare war, it's easier to tell the Marines that they can't raise the American flag over Umm Qasr because we're not conquering Iraq."
Regardless of who makes the declaration, and despite the seeming chaos and destruction of war, there is a long list of rules as to what defines acceptable behavior during wartime. Those rules are part of international humanitarian law, which has as its principal document the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
In that treaty, signed by almost every nation in the world, there are specific rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war. They include bans on violence, humiliation and torture, they prohibit the murder or wounding of a combatant who is surrendering, and they provide guidelines for everything from the ways in which prisoners can be questioned to how they are to be clothed and fed. There are even provisions for worship and physical exercise.
In addition to the rules about prisoners of war, there are also more general rules about noncombatants. These ban attacks on civilians and civilian objects (homes, hospitals, schools, places of worship or historic monuments), the use of human shields and attacks on objects vital to civilian survival, such as foodstuffs, farming areas, dams, water plants or nuclear power plants. Also banned are chemical and biological weapons and land mines.
The Department of Defense's Fox said the Bush administration considers the attack on Iraq part of the continuation of its operations in Afghanistan, which began after the attacks of September 11. "The president, the secretary of defense and the [U.N.] Security Council have determined that Iraq is a terrorist threat to us. This is a war, [the Defense Department is] not saying it isn't. It certainly isn't a peacekeeping mission," Fox said. "But the terms that relate to a conventional war are outdated at this point."
"It doesn't really matter if they call it a war or not," said Glickman. "It has the same result: men and women in uniform are at risk. If you call it a conflict or a police action or a liberation it has less of a psychological effect. We had thousands of troops in the Balkans during the Clinton administration, but we didn't call it a war."
Despite the semantics, Glickman said the American public has considered the action in Iraq a war from the outset, regardless of the administration's "freedom" tagline.
Moise said not officially declaring war in this case doesn't confer any advantage militarily or in regard to international human law, but it might have changed the domestic mood. "If the U.S. had declared war, this would make the anti-war protests look somewhat worse," Moise said. "As it is, people who protest the war are protesting against George Bush's war, as Bush has not gone through the mechanism available to him to make it officially a U.S. war. If there had been an official declaration of war, the anti-war protesters might be made to look more unpatriotic."
