Moral Pygmies at Let Freedom Ring

"During WW II the Germans employed a very effective tactic against the insurgents. For every German soldier killed, 50 civilians were chosen at random and publically executed. There’s nothing wrong with this if it saves lives.
Comment by Hogwild • 18May2006 @ 9:13 am"

Tbogg posts on a wingnut blogger at a site ironically called “Let Freedom Ring” http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2006/05/now-can-we-compare-it-to-viet-nam-its.html

The wingnut reckons John Murtha is a traitor because he spoke out against the Haditha atrocity. What I’ve posted above is one of the comments to the Let Freedom Ring post. Commentary went from claiming Murtha was lying to impugn the Marine Corps and then took the tack of commenter Hogwild once it became clear that the facts were on Murtha’s side.

It is a strange moral logic that approves of mass murder if it “saves lives”. There’s doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the killings at Haditha saved any lives. Rather, it is this kind of wrongdoing that fuels resistance and makes all American service members targets. If it becomes conceivable that the US military would employ the methods of Hogwild, then they have completely lost the conflict and there would be no legitimate reason to prolong the occupation. There are moral costs that the military and the American people should not be willing to pay and deliberate reprisal killings of civilians should be considered beyond the pale.

When I was a judge advocate, one of my chores was to brief soldiers on the Law of Land Warfare. I usually explained this to them by distinguishing between killing someone and murdering someone. Not all killing is murder, but even in the area of combat operations you are not entitled to kill just anybody. Noncombatants, for example. I was always appalled at soldiers’ inevitable assertions that, based on what they had heard about Vietnam, they were just going to kill anything that moved, Law of Land Warfare be damned. And they would not turn in any of their buddies for killing civilians or prisoners. I came to the conclusion over the years that many soldiers do not have any moral scruples whatsoever about murdering people as long as they can get away with it. The military must not tolerate or excuse atrocities. If the military gives any sign that atrocities are acceptable, there will be many more of them.