Law and honor: normative pluralism in the regulation of military conduct

In early 1991, two days after the Security Council-imposed deadline for Iraq to withdraw its forces from Kuwait had passed, a U.S.-led coalition began a massive air campaign against Saddam Hussein’s forces. The campaign had unprecedented intensity and its effects were devastating: Newsweek recounted that six weeks of precision bombing “reduced the Iraqi Army to a brainless, stumbling hulk.” The coalition followed up with a land campaign, which in less than seventy-two hours forced Iraqi troops to begin to withdraw from Kuwait City. During this retreat, coalition forces continued to inflict such heavy casualties on the Iraqi army that two northbound roads out of Kuwait attracted the collective nickname “Highway of Death.” According to William Polk, a notable American foreign policy expert, “nothing on that scale of massacre had occurred in the Middle East wars since Hulagu Khan took Baghdad [in 1258].” In a meeting at the White House on 27 February, having briefed President George H. W. Bush on the results of the military action, General Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued against pressing the attack further. The president took the advice and declared a cease-fire