Orders of George Washington to General John Sullivan, at Head-Quarters May 31, 1779
The Expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.I would recommend, that some post in the center of the Indian Country, should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provisions whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed. But you will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of their settlements is effected. Our future security will be in their inability to injure us and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them.
Upon receipt of this order, Colonel Sullivan "[methodically destroyed] at least forty Iroquois villages throughout what is now upstate New York, in retaliation for Indian and Tory attacks against American settlements earlier in the war. The devastation created great hardships for the Iroquois that winter, and effectively led to the reduction of the Iroquois ability to harrass the frontier and the decline of the Iroquois federation." (Wikipedia) Not exactly a "hearts and minds" strategy as conventionally understood, is it? What I note about this quote and the aftermath as Wikipedia presents it is the following:
- It's penned by George Washington. Father-of-our-country George Washington.
- It's a brutal, shockingly honest, and genocidal directive. Washington makes himself very clear: he wants "total devastation" of the entire population of the Iroquois Confederation, warriors, women, children, and all. Washington wants prisoners: he wants as many Iroquois displaced and driven off as possible. Finally, he wants the crops the Iroquois depend upon destroyed "in the ground", an order Washington no doubt intends to create conditions of extreme hardship and starvation among the Iroquois during the winter.
- It seems to have worked. The article indicates that Washington was not entirely satisfied with Colonel Sullivan's job, but if you go to upstate New York, you won't find a lot of Iroquois around.
So what lessons, if any, should one draw from this snippet of military history? It follows many others in a similar vein, from Phil Sheridan's boast that he had so devastated the population of the Shenandoah valley that a crow flying over it would have to carry its own rations, through General Jacob H. Smith's order in the Philippines to "kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States"*, to the bombing campaigns against Britain, Japan, and Nazi Germany during the Second World War. I admit I haven't made an in-depth study of the subject, but it seems to me that attacks primarily directed against a relatively defenseless civilian population have often been the sole object of warfare--and a successful strategy, laying all moral considerations to the side.
It seems to me that armies were originally conceived and maintained for the purpose of protecting one's civilian population against ruthless genocidal adversaries--enemies like the ancient Israelites and Romans who would not hesitate to massacre and enslave your city-state's population at the earliest opportunity. Later, European warfare initiated a version of a social contract whereby kingdoms would concede defeat if their armies were defeated in the field--and in exchange for the cooperation of the defeated state in acquiescing to the victorious polity's demands, the conqueror would mercifully refrain from the wholesale slaughter of the civilian population. But now we fight an enemy who has made no such agreement to concede defeat upon the destruction of their conventional military force; an enemy willing to take advantage of our strictures against the deliberate targeting of civilian populations to hide among noncombatants in the sure knowledge that we will not deliberately target civilians. I wonder how such a strategy would fare against William Tecumseh Sherman, or the ancient Romans.
To be clear, I have absolutely no idea what concrete lessons one should draw from this hypothetical and possibly illusory model, other than that I have to take another look at the Fourth Geneva Convention soon. Do I advocate the massacre of civilian populations? No. Of course I support obeying the laws of armed conflict and fulfilling our international treaty obligations. I do think, however, that it is best to engage in a careful examination of how exactly we intend to fight our emerging adversaries in the future, and the relationship of the laws of war to the strategies our enemies employ. In addition, such an examination should be conducted as soon as possible, and openly, rather than the secretive war of memos that currently seems to govern defense policy in the war on terror. Otherwise I fear we are likely to continue to conduct our foreign wars like a castaway ricocheting blind down a dark and rocky strait, pulled back and forth by the competing currents of expediency and morality.
*General Smith defined a person "capable of bearing arms" as any person over the age of ten years. Admittedly, there was a public outcry over the latter case, and General Smith was later court-martialed, but I suspect that the charge of "conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline" is not the one that would be preferred for similar conduct today.
4 comments:
For now, I'm just going to point out that, taking you at your word, you buried your lede by putting this sentence practically at the end: "I do think, however, that it is best to engage in a careful examination of how exactly we intend to fight our emerging adversaries in the future, and the relationship of the laws of war to the strategies our enemies employ."
I entirely agree with you about the first clause, but have some trouble still with the second. My concerns, however, I think can be easily alleviated by changing the structure of the investigation. This modification has other benefits as well.
There needs to be another question that's examined before reaching yours: Who, or what, is the enemy? Without having a better idea of that, it would seem difficult to determine how best "to fight our emerging adversaries."
Thus, I'd propose a two-part analysis (finals are coming!). First, who/what. Second, how. This folds your second clause a little more naturally (to my mind, at any rate) into the second question.
Later I'll take a stab at answering more at length. For now, takings call. (And I'm really, really, really excited. Except for the whole reading thing.)
Well, I wanted to start with the Washington quote: I'd never seen it before, and I thought it was pretty striking. You're right in that things got muddled from there.
I suppose my lack of emphasis is due to the relative ease that (for good or ill) I tend to separate out "enemies" on war-related topics. I do tend to see these issues in fairly dichotomous terms: "Us" being citizens of the United States, and "Them" being, to varying degrees, everyone else. In this case, I suppose it would include combatants in arms against the United States, mostly in the form of guerilla, insurgent warfare; and those that directly give aid, comfort, and support to those combatants. I suppose this is a fairly simplistic analysis, but it has a basic utility: the line is bright, it is clearly drawn, it is not nuanced, it lends itself fairly easily to propaganda. On a higher plane, I obviously do not see these as unlimited goods--or even at all good, necessarily. Oversimplistic analysis of our opponent led to the internment of many Japanese-Americans during the Second World War, after all, an episode I am particularly sensitive about.
However, it seems to me that war, almost by its nature, involves a brand of self-censorship, deception, and manipulation of hatred that modern Americans, to our credit, are pathologically bad at. The Soviet Union, as one example, didn't appeal to its citizens to "win the hearts and minds of the German people" but to crush the fascist invader. Innocent Germans suffered as a result, but the Soviet Union ignored its corrupt and venal leadership to secure ultimate victory. That's incomplete, but I have to run to the trolley. More later, I hope.
Yeah, but for every genocidial campaign that works, there's another that led to mass resistance from the target population, and defeat for the genocidial party.
In Yugoslavia during the WWII, the Ustashi initiated a program of genocide against the Serbs so brutual, the Nazis protested against it. In the end, the Ustashi actions led to the Partisan uprising, their defeat, and Tito's rule.
Once genocide begins, all chance at a peaceful solution end, and it becomes a fight to the death, one which the US could lose. This is why people stopped torturing and executing prisoners. Because, if death is certain if one gives up, then one never gets up.
First, I'm not sure that I was correct to characterize Washington's statement as genocidal. Washington refers to a polity, the Iroquois confederation "and its adherents." There would have been other Native Americans allied or friendly to the colonial forces--just because Native Americans were later wiped out by their colonizers doesn't necessarily mean that the directive itself is genocidal. I believe there are some differences between military operations that target civilian populations. Would you find equivalent the Croatian attacks on Serbs, or the Armenian genocide, to Allied bombing campaigns against civilian populations during World War II? One has the destruction of a race of people as its primary goal, it seems to me, while the other is more in line with the traditional goals of warfare; that is, forcing one polity to conform to the will of another. Looking at definitions of genocide and the directive again, I'm not sure I was correct in my original assessment.
Second, I'm not sure the ratio of successful wars targeting civilian populations is as favorable as you make it out to be, or that the balance of forces is comparable. Didn't Tito, after all, have considerable aid and support from the Soviet Union? Weren't the Western Allies assisting Yugoslavian partisans? I'm not sure that the sort of overwhelming force the United States can muster is comparable to the balance of forces you describe.
What sort of peaceful solution, exactly, do you see coming out of Iraq? What sort of political settlement do you think could satisfy Ayman Al-Zawahiri, for example? I think the United States is already in a fight to the death--and as for torturing and executing prisoners, have you been watching the news recently?
It's true that the certainty of death can make soldiers reluctant to surrender--but that alone doesn't guarantee any substantive change in the outcome of a conflict. Ask Imperial Japan, for instance, or the Byzantine Empire. Although I agree that peace is easier to obtain with a policy that gives your adversary a choice between total destruction and a palatable peace, I don't think (judging from the public face of our enemies, anyway) that they're ready to negotiate yet. I don't think they will be ready until they realize they have less to gain by continuing fighting than by continuing resistance. I don't think they'll reach that point until they finally fear us; and I'm not sure they'll fear us as long as we continue attempting to kill insurgents with near-surgical precision. Is George Washington's solution the right one? Maybe not. All I know is that what we're doing now isn't working.
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