distinguish themselves from civilians. Throughout operations, United States and South Vietnamese forces resulted to other tactics such as bombing to prevent the Vietcong’s guerrilla tactics from succeeding. However, the bombing mission was unable to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants which resulted in huge numbers of civilians being killed and displaced by these bombing campaigns. 85 It can be argued that because the US forces were unable to make the distinction between combatant and non-combatant it led to an assumption that everyone was involved with the Vietcong, which may have led to the My Lai massacre, where over 500 Vietnamese civilians were killed on the assumption that they either were Vietcong, or were aiding them. 86 This example shows that despite the existence of the principle of distinction certain types of warfare, such as guerrilla warfare, makes it hard for combatants to distinguish themselves from non-combatants, meaning that despite the existence of the principle of distinction, civilians were still targeted and killed. There are also examples of states using tactics in wars which do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, such as the Military Reaction Force (also known as the Military Reconnaissance Force) created by the British Army during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The MRF was tasked with intelligence gathering and drive-by assassination on potential IRA targets, which they carried out in civilian clothing and civilian cars. 87 However, because of the nature of the operation, non-combatants found themselves the 85 Mitchell K. Hall, The Vietnam War (New York: Longman, 2000). 86 BBC, Murder in the Name of War – My Lai (1998), <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/64344.stm> [Accessed 12 February 2019]. 87 Rolston, Bill, ‘An Effective Mask for Terror: Democracy, Death Squads and Northern Ireland’, Crime, Law & Social Change , 44.2 (2005) , 181-203.
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