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The author explains that jus in hello issues raised during Operation Desert Storm should concern Americans-even if the war itself was justified. By applying the principle of proportionality, Obenhaus shows that the coalition's attack on retreating Iraqi forces was justified to disrupt Iraq's military leadership and prevent forces from participat ing in the war at some other time and place
THE WANING HOURS of the,-Persian Gulf War, UN coalition aircraft attacked an Iraqi military column withdrawing from Kuwait City on a highway to Basra, Iraq. The planes bombed the front and rear of the column, blocking the withdrawal and creating a huge traffic jam, then strafed the vehicles trapped within.1 When it was over, hundreds of wrecked vehicles and dozens of Iraqi corpses littered the highway-devastation a Washington Post reporter dubbed "The Highway of Doom."2
The military justified the bombing as consistent with military doctrine and international law, but critics condemned the attack as immoral.3 Some simply labeled it a "slaughter" or a "massacre."4
Others use "just war" terminology to discuss the action's morality.5 Thus, one claimed that the operation "was not a fight by jus it bello standards . . . for those incinerated had no capacity to fight back."6 Another went so far as to confer on the retreating soldiers the moral status of noncombatants because the attack was simply a "turkey shoot."7
However, in terms of standard ethical analysis, these criticisms were inadequate. All lacked any deliberate, thorough explanation of applicable ethical criteria. They gave scant attention to morally relevant facts about the coalition forces' actions. They thereby failed to address credibly a critical moral issue that may recur in the limited conflicts of the post-Cold War era: whether a military force with overwhelming superiority can justify its pursuit and destruction of an inferior enemy force which seems to have given up the fight.
This is a critical issue for two reasons. First, the use of decisive force is a central component of US military doctrine, and Army field manuals counsel that the destruction of retreating enemy forces is the primary goal of pursuit. Second, and perhaps more important, at the end of the Persian Gulf War, the media focused much attention on the scenes of destruction along the Highway of...