CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

(Civil-Military Cooperation) facility, was largely seen as irrelevant and yet was costing
a significant number of enemy – and arguably many neutral – casualties, and not a few
to the battalion. When the adrenalin rush is over those soldiers will have time to reflect
on the casualties they inflicted, with the dispassion of time and distance. It is reasonable
to suppose that some, unconvinced of operational necessity, possibly concerned in any
case at the justification for the conflict, and increasingly aware that the public at home,
such as they were even exposed to the events in Al Amarah, were increasingly
ambiguous in their support, will suffer a crisis of morale and conscience. Soldiers want
– arguably need – to believe that what they are doing, risking their own lives and taking
the lives of others, is right and for a cause supported by their nation.
Whatever their concerns or reluctance, professional soldiers have few choices but to get
on with the job. There were, over the Iraq war, a few isolated instances in both the UK
and US services of ‘conscientious objection’ – but very few. However, both nations are
increasingly reliant on volunteer reserve forces whose mobilisation is more complex. A
lack of justification for conflict, or concerns over its conduct can have a rather greater
impact here when individuals choose to resign from reserve service as a result. It is not
just the individual reserve servicemen themselves who must be considered, but their
employers too, whose support is vital, in the UK’s case at least, to the successful use of
the Territorial Army (TA). For Operation TELIC – the 2003 invasion of Iraq and
subsequent operations in that theatre – the TA was mobilised on a scale not seen since
the Suez conflict. 267 The ongoing need for TA soldiers to support operations in Iraq
(and simultaneously in Afghanistan and the Balkans) has had a profound and damaging
effect on the strength of the TA that is the result of many factors and is well beyond the
scope of this dissertation, but it is reasonable to include concerns over the moral (and
legal) justification for the conflict among those that have caused both individual
reluctance to serve and employers’ reluctance to support. (Nevertheless, there is
indication that many employers are far more willing to accept the mobilisation of their
employees for a ‘war’ situation than for enduring peacekeeping operations). 268
One UK TA soldier made a very public statement of his opposition to the war, on moral
grounds, by having his letter of resignation published in The Guardian. George
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