In the recent avalanche of editorials, op-eds, commentaries, articles, and books on Iraq, there’s surprisingly little attention paid to our rules of engagement (ROE), much less to the impact of those rules on the effectiveness of our military actions.

In the past few days, however, two well-known pundits have at least raised the issue.

On November 15, Ralph Peters claimed that the debate over whether to try to save the day by deploying more troops or withdrawing some misses the point:

What really matters is what our forces are ordered – and permitted – to do. With political correctness permeating our government and even the upper echelons of the military, we never tried the one technique that has a solid track record of defeating insurgents if applied consistently: the rigorous imposition of public order. That means killing the bad guys. Not winning their hearts and minds, placating them or bringing them into the government. Killing them. If you’re not willing to lay down a rule that any Iraqi or foreign terrorist masquerading as a security official or military member will be shot, you can’t win. And that’s just one example of the type of sternness this sort of fight requires.

Two days later, Victor Davis Hanson reacted to the calls from Senator McCain and scattered others to increase the size of the American force in Iraq with these observations:

We know that that another 50,000 or so Americans would raise our profile in Iraq, spur more domestic hysteria, increase the cost of the war, increase the likelihood of Iraqi dependency, and enlarge the rear echelon compounds throughout Iraq that support our frontline fighters. But we are not sure that they would bring about greater security — that is, unless they were allowed different rules of engagement than are currently allowed in Iraq.

Will the thousands of more troops get permission from the Iraqi government to disarm the militias and smash insurgent enclaves? Can they target a Sadr and his thugs with impunity? Will they be able to kill Syrian and Iranian infiltrators across the border? Will they be able to target those in “civilian” dress who help plant the IEDs? And is all that not happening now because there are too few boots on the ground?

While Peters and Hanson perform a useful service by making an issue of our rules of engagement, neither has a word to say about what the rules are. For that, we must turn to an article by Colin Kahl in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. In “How We Fight,” Kahl describes our rules of engagement in considerable detail.

From the outset of the war,

the U.S. military has put in place several mechanisms to ensure compliance with the principles of distinction and proportionality. In the lead-up to the invasion, the Pentagon developed the “joint target list,” an inventory of all potential targets for coalition forces, which was vetted by judge advocates and other legal advisers. Certain operations directed against Saddam Hussein’s regime were deemed off-limits because they targeted civilians or risked producing disproportionate damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure. Starting in late 2002, the Pentagon also enlisted UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations to help draw up a “no-strike” list including thousands of schools, mosques, sensitive cultural sites, hospitals, water-treatment facilities, power plants, and other elements of civilian infrastructure. The list placed significant constraints on air and land operations. During the initial ground invasion, for example, the artillery batteries used by U.S. forces were programmed with a list of sites that could not be fired on without a manual override.

The no-strike list isn’t the only measure taken to limit collateral damage:

The U.S. military has also tried to limit risks to civilians by reviewing its military targets with the collateral damage estimation methodology (CDEM), which uses computer software and human analysis to estimate possible civilian casualties for every target studied. The CDEM requires commanders and their legal advisers to ask themselves five questions to determine whether a given target is a legitimate one. Can they positively identify the person or the site according to the current ROE? Is there a protected civilian facility or significant environmental concern within the range of the weapon to be used? Can damage to that concern be avoided by attacking the target with a different weapon or a different method? If not, how many people are likely to be injured or killed in the attack? Must a higher commander be called for permission? When the targets considered represent a risk of “high collateral damage,” the CDEM requires political approval by the secretary of defense and, during major combat, the president.

The rules of engagement have also sought to achieve a balance each troop’s legitimate right to self-defense with the importance of complying with the laws of war:

They attempt to maintain this balance by providing troops with a clear sense of what constitutes a legitimate military target. During major combat in Iraq, the criterion was status-based. Individuals or groups, namely Iraqi military and paramilitary forces, that were “declared hostile forces” under the ROE, could be attacked on sight until they were wounded or they surrendered. As the war transitioned into a counterinsurgency mission and U.S. forces confronted adversaries who were largely indistinguishable from the civilian population, the criterion became conduct-based: U.S. troops must now positively identify a “hostile act” (such as the firing of an automatic weapon in their direction) or a “hostile intent” (such as the brandishing of a rocket-propelled grenade or the planting of an improvised explosive device) before they may fire their weapons.

If the naked eye isn’t sufficient to positively identify a hostile force, act, or intent before attacking,

U.S. forces rely on advanced optics. Forward observers are used to identify and “paint” targets, or provide coordinates for laser- or GPS-guided bomb attacks. Air force, navy, and marine fighter aircraft have also been retrofitted with new reconnaissance pods that allow real-time overhead surveillance and streaming video, thereby helping ground forces distinguish insurgents from civilians during raids and combat missions.

Another precaution pertains to the choice of weapons:

U.S. forces have been reluctant to use artillery against insurgents, even when they have been under mortar and rocket fire. Artillery systems (such as howitzers, mortars, and ground-launched rockets) have a large radius of destruction and so have a high potential for collateral damage, especially in densely populated areas. Instead, U.S. forces have either relied on close air support and ground forces that can keep their “eyes on the target” or refrained from attacking altogether. This summer, for example, as I was conducting interviews in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Green Zone was hit by two rockets and two mortars. Although the attack’s point of origin—a residential neighborhood near Sadr City—was determined quickly, the U.S. military chose not to fire back with artillery.

Our rules of engagement have also emphasized the importance of using proportionate force when engaging legitimate military targets in order to minimize collateral damage:

The current rules explicitly require U.S. troops to respond to a hostile act or intent with “graduated” force. Under many circumstances, U.S. forces may engage in deadly violence only after warning their targets and trying nonlethal measures against them to no avail. The U.S. military also frequently engages in “weaponeering”—selecting the most specifically tailored type and quantity of weapon necessary to produce a desired effect. When air strikes are required, it increasingly relies on precision-guided munitions, such as laser-, GPS-, and optically guided weapons. During the major combat phase of the war in Iraq, 68 percent of the munitions used were precision-guided, compared with 7-8 percent during the 1991 Gulf War, 30 percent in Kosovo, and 60 percent in Afghanistan. The U.S. military has also developed munitions with smaller payloads to ensure that it uses the smallest force necessary, and it relies heavily on penetrating munitions with delayed fuses to confine the damage caused by blasts and fragmentation to the area of impact. Additional mitigation techniques, including adjusting the timing, angles, and azimuths of attacks, have also been regularly employed to reduce risks to civilians.

Finally, Kahl notes that the number of U.S. air strikes has declined sharply since the end of major combat operations, indicating the U.S. military’s heightened concern for proportionality:

Official figures suggest that U.S. planes launched 18,695 strikes during the first 30 days of the war, compared with just 285 strikes in 2004 and 306 in 2005. Other estimates put the 2005 total at 654. Even with the higher number, however, there were almost as many air strikes per day during the major combat phase (an average of 623) as there were during all of 2005.

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Without maintaining that our forces have never deviated from these rules of engagement, it’s clear that our intent has been to fight a “civilized” war. From a humanitarian standpoint, this objective is commendable. However, fighting with one hand tied behind our back (to borrow a phrase from the Vietnam era) has undoubtedly resulted in greater American casualties and made it more difficult to prevail against an enemy that obeys no rules. The limitations, by enhancing the ability of the insurgents and terrorists to carry on the fight, have probably resulted in more, not fewer, civilian casualties. If our rules of engagement were formulated, in part, to present a better face to the “international community,” they have failed. Nobody has commended us for our good behavior.

The rules of engagement we’ve followed in Iraq raise an issue than couldn’t be more fundamental. If our twenty-first century conflicts are going to pit us (or, I might add, Israel) against extremist groups whose tactics know no bounds and we allow our conduct to be constrained by the dictates of international law, as defined by such multilateral institutions as the UN, we are condemning ourselves to fighting protracted conflicts that erode American willpower, as has happened with Iraq. If we give precedence to conforming to international norms over winning, it won’t escape the notice of militants, who will use every opportunity to weaken us.