The ethics of war

[struggle4progress]

Jeremy Iggers, Staff Writer
February 6, 2005

IS THE U.S. MILITARY guilty of war crimes in Iraq?

Some people believe it is unpatriotic even to ask this question, which may be why the issue has been largely ignored by American news media. But the question of U.S. war crimes is not being ignored elsewhere around the world, where images of dead Iraqi women and children, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the devastation of the city of Fallujah and the shooting of unarmed captives in a Fallujah mosque have done much to destroy America's image abroad.

It isn't only a question about the moral culpability of American troops, their commanders or their political leaders. While they bear moral responsibility for their actions, we as citizens in a democracy share responsibility for actions undertaken in our name. That responsibility is not diminished by the fact that Iraqi insurgents are committing horrific crimes against their own people. In years to come, the world community will likely ask of us: Did we know? Did we care? Did we speak out?

The issue of war crimes has taken on a new urgency in the wake of a recent study by public health researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and a Baghdad medical college, which estimates that 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the war. Those numbers, which are far higher than previous estimates, are extrapolated from a statistical sampling and may be inaccurate, but they are the best estimate available. The study attributes many of the deaths to aerial attacks by coalition forces, and found that most of the fatalities were women and children. <snip>

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5223716.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I read this in the print version this morning. It's great.

The writer is a long-time staff reporter for the Strib. I'm sure the freepers will flame him severely -- they'll say he's just one of them librul media types who's making stuff up because they can't stand the thought that the U.S. of A. might not always be the good guys. Or else they'll revert back to their argument that "they" deserve to be tortured and abused because of 9/11 (the fact that Iraq didn't do 9/11 is irrelevant), and anyhow they are a bunch of terr'ists who behead people, so why shouldn't we torture them? I am quite certain there will be LTTEs to this effect in tomorrow's op-ed page.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

2. It may not be unpatrioitic to ask the question

But since the implementation of the Patriot Act it may very well be unlawful to ask.