There are no non-combatants in war anymore. What the 21st century has brought us, building upon the bloody 20th, is the death of the concept of the non-combatant. Terrorism has destroyed many things, but the chief among them is the compete destruction of the idea that there is anyone innocent, anyone who may not, in good conscience, be targeted in war. The ideology of the terrorist is that all except the pure (i.e. those who are of the same ideology) are guilty and deserve to die.
When two bombs carried by women were detonated by remote control on Friday in the crowded Ghazil pet market in Iraq, by some estimates the explosions killed 72 people and wounded 82. Attacks had fallen across Iraq in recent months, attributed to the “surge” in U.S. military presence. The magnitude and brutality of these new attacks cast a pall over the citizenry who had begun to hope that they might see a return to normalcy in their capital. The specter of civil war in Iraq has returned.
These two terrible attacks, apparently carried out by al Qaeda, were directed at a civilian population in the middle of the day. Furthermore, the actual “bombs” were women and the explosions detonated by remote control. Iraqi forces contended that the women were mentally handicapped, though the U.S. military said they found no evidence of that fact.
What is not in question is that in the beginning of the 20th century, non-combatants comprised approximately 2 in 10 deaths in war. By the 1990’s, that number had increased dramatically. In that decade, 9 of 10 people who died in war were civilians. What do we think this statistic is in the first decade of the 21st century?
This huge rise in the proportion of non-combatant to combatant casualties is due to changes in war technology, certainly, but also particularly to changes in war tactics. Just War theory was predicated on the idea that “Just War” did not target non-combatants and indeed the innocent were to be protected.
Now in the 21st century, war has degenerated to the point where killing civilians itself is the tactic.
Much of this is already known, but the use of women as the bombs themselves underlines the fact that in this dramatic rise in non-combatant deaths lies the untold number of women and children whose bodies seem now to comprise whatever battlefield there is in war.
The death of the idea of the innocent civilian, the non-combatant, is a terrible prospect. For if we can say that no one is innocent, then how can we know for sure who is guilty?
The concept of innocence must not be allowed to die in the 21st century or with it dies our humanity.
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