Did a U.S. general in the Gulf War violate rules of engagement
                                            and, in effect, murder Iraqis after the cease-fire?
                                                 That's the claim of journalist Seymour Hersh in the May 22
                                            New Yorker magazine. The former general and current federal
                                            drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, has counter-punched, arguing that he
                                            is the victim of a journalistic vendetta.
                                                 Which one is right? It doesn't really matter.
                                                 The incidents Hersh writes about are, in the context of the
                                            massacre we call the Gulf War, relatively trivial, and therein lies the
                                            problem with the controversy. By focusing on the actions of a
                                            commander in a limited arena, we risk forgetting what U.S. military
                                            forces did in Iraq in 1991--across the board, on a daily basis, in full
                                            view of all the world, with impunity. What we did has a name in the
                                            rest of the world, though it can't be spoken in polite circles here:
                                            War crimes.
                                                 We have yet to come to terms with the enormity of the crimes
                                            our government and military carried out in 1991. If Hersh's
                                            allegations are true, McCaffrey's conduct was reprehensible and
                                            criminal, but those actions pale in comparison to the brutality the
                                            U.S. military unleashed on the people of Iraq throughout the war.
                                                 What brutality? What crimes? Start with the most basic facts
                                            about the U.S. attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Iraq.
                                                 The Geneva Conventions are clear on these matters: "Civilians
                                            shall not be the object of attack." The charge to military forces in
                                            the U.N. Security Council resolution was to expel the Iraqi forces
                                            that had invaded Kuwait. To do that, we dropped 88,000 tons of
                                            bombs over Iraq, one of the most concentrated attacks on an entire
                                            society in modern warfare. Those bombs killed civilians--both
                                            directly and over time through the destruction of the country's
                                            power grid, food, water treatment and sewage systems. Some of
                                            that bombing of civilians was targeted, some indiscriminate; both
                                            are war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.
                                                 Recall the "Highway of Death," the deadly stretch of road in
                                            Kuwait that was littered with burned-out vehicles and charred
                                            bodies. U.S. military forces, in violation of international law, fired
                                            on retreating and largely defenseless Iraqi soldiers just before the
                                            cease-fire. U.S. pilots described it in news accounts as a "turkey
                                            shoot" and "like shooting fish in a barrel." The carnage was not only
                                            unnecessary but grotesque.
                                                 Remember the brutality of U.S. weapons. We used napalm to
                                            incinerate entrenched Iraqi soldiers. We dropped fuel-air
                                            explosives, ghastly weapons often called "near-nukes" because of
                                            their destructive capacity through fire, asphyxiation and concussion.
                                            We dropped cluster bombs that use razor-sharp fragments to shred
                                            people. To penetrate tanks, we used depleted-uranium shells, the
                                            long-term health effects of which are unknown. Widely accepted
                                            notions of proportionality and protection of civilians go out the
                                            window with such weapons.
                                                 Though the shooting war has stopped, the most onerous
                                            economic embargo ever imposed on a nation continues today.
                                            Supposedly designed to rein in the regime of Saddam Hussein, the
                                            harsh economic sanctions have only killed innocents--as many as 1
                                            million in the past decade, according to U.N. studies.
                                                 In short: It is misleading to call the Gulf War a war; it was a
                                            massacre. In the words of British journalist Geoff Simons, who has
                                            studied the war in detail, it was a massive slaughter of a largely
                                            helpless enemy, with much of the killing occurring after the time
                                            when constructive diplomacy would have brought an end to the
                                            conflict and a secure "liberation of Kuwait."
                                                 That is an assessment many people--likely the vast
                                            majority--around the world would agree with, but one rarely voiced
                                            in this country.
                                                 My goal is not to defend McCaffrey. But no matter how guilty
                                            he might be, I fear that demonizing him will divert us from assessing
                                            the responsibility of those politicians and top officers who planned
                                            and executed the slaughter. And it will keep us from asking why
                                            we--citizens with so much political freedom--have done so little to
                                            hold those politicians and officers accountable for the crimes
                                            committed in our name.
                                                                    - - -

                                            Robert Jensen Is an Associate Professor of Journalism at the
                                            University of Texas at Austin. E-mail: Rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu