The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997, to which the United States is a party, states, “Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.”
Riot control agents include the ubiquitous tear gas, also known as CS gas, the same blinding, mucus spewing, skin burning agent that U.S. troops in basic training have been made to breathe in gas chambers for decades.
The rub is this: tear gas is considered almost indispensable as a tool for fighting in urban conflict. Case in point: one of the fiercest battles of the Vietnam War – 1968’s Operation Hue City -- was a classic urban conflict nightmare that in just 30 days saw 142 Marine Corps KIAs; and at the squad, platoon and company levels, casualty rates as high as 75 percent or more in some units.
In his after-action report, 1st Lt. Scott Nelson, the commanding officer of Charley Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines during the siege of Hue, concluded that one of the absolute keys to avoiding carnage on both sides was the “deployment of available chemical weapons (tear gas) for offensive operations during the early stages of the operation.”
Nelson couched his proviso about the invaluable use of tear gas in a general framework recommending overall “less restrictive rules of engagement, including situational flexibility down to the platoon level.”
“As friendly casualties mounted, and as initial estimates of the size of the enemy force in the Hue City area was significantly increased, fire (artillery, naval gunfire) restrictions were ultimately lifted. In our respectful opinion, our ability to successfully complete the mission was initially severely impacted by the rules of engagement,” Nelson reported.
For his part, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has already flatly stated that the U.S. will use CS gas. During pre-war Capitol Hill testimony with the challenge of Baghdad clearly looming, Rumsfeld refused to rule out the use of CS, testifying that the use of riot agents would be “perfectly appropriate” in some exigent circumstances:
“[F]or example, in a cave in Afghanistan, and you know that there are women and children in there with them, and they are firing out at you, and you have the task of getting at them. And you would prefer to get at them without also getting at women and children, or non-combatants.”
What’s appropriate for a cave in Afghanistan would under the Rumsfeld doctrine be also “perfectly appropriate” where Iraqi soldiers or irregulars are mixed in with civilians during urban fighting.
But the problem with all this is twofold: the stark language of the Treaty makes no allowance for the use of riot agents to ostensibly save lives during armed conflict. Second, once the U.S. theoretically “breaks” the Treaty, Saddam may see a politically correct opening to unleash his own chemical agents – and for sure they won’t be the non-lethal variety.
In the meantime, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Meyers, has been wrestling to hammer out rules of engagement that would allow U.S. forces to “live within the straitjacket that has been imposed on us,” and “still in certain instances be able to use non-lethal riot agents.”
But the legal scholars consistently opine that there is no way around the restrictive language of the Treaty and the U.S. will be committing a war crime if it resorts to using CS.
Peter Herby, an arms and mines control specialist with the International Committee of the Red Cross, said, “We can say quite categorically that the use of chemical agents, whether riot control agents or lethal agents, in warfare would be entirely prohibited,” according to a report in the British newspaper The Independent.
For sure, the use of CS gas would save lives, but the quandary of its use in Baghdad is but one aspect of urban warfare that is problematic from every angle. Nelson perhaps summed it up best in his reflections on the battle for Hue City:
“We faced ‘hard corps’ North Vietnamese Army troops who fought from prepared positions, moved to secondary positions, fought again, and finally, very reluctantly, died. In the capture of each room, each floor, each rooftop, each building, each street, it was ultimately the Marine rifleman who won the battle.”
And the relevance of the Hue City campaign comes into even tighter focus when one considered that the NVA used civilians as screens for their infantry troops – just as Saddam has done and will do to an even greater measure as he holds on to the last gasp in the capital.
Nelson and his comrades provided this telling summary of the value of using CS in urban conflict:
“During 1/5’s battle inside the Citadel fortress, which kicked off on 13 February 1968, the battalion progressed a total of four blocks along our avenue of attack, and had secured a total of sixteen city blocks within our assigned area of operations after nearly two weeks of heavy street fighting and after suffering nearly 50 percent casualties at the hands of a well-prepared, determined force of NVA soldiers, a force that was finally estimated to be nearly 11,000 strong in the Hue City area of operations.”
“On 25 February 1968, Marines from Charlie Company shot off three E-8 gas launchers, each carrying about 40 CS gas grenades, toward the enemy’s last known position. The next morning, 1/5 took control of the remaining twelve city blocks in about three hours, without a single casualty.”
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