I am still disgusted about the “core values training” in response to the Haditha massacre. What is really wanted are some high profile courts martial and harsh punishments. When you have soldiers who deliberately murder prisoners by suffocating them getting light prison sentences or no prison time at all, that sends the message that murdering prisoners is not so bad after all. When you don’t even prosecute the soldier caught on tape murdering a wounded man, that sends the message that murdering folks who are no longer combatants is alright with Uncle Sam. When you condone deliberately killing noncombatants in air strikes because it might be inconvenient to have to work around them, you’re telling the soldiers that the noncombatants aren’t even people, that killing them is not murder.
The military should try its murderers and imprison them all forever. I would say shoot them, but I have a serious scruple about capital punishment. And their officers as far up the line as necessary should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. If they ordered murder, they are murderers themselves under the Code of Military Justice. If they covered up murder, they are accessories after the fact. If they failed to inculcate in their men an aversion to murder, they are simply not fit to serve as officers.
Sadly, I reckon that the officer corps is rotten and that there are none with honor enough to do the right thing. Certainly, men of honor will not have advanced under the present regime.
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But war is legalized murder, isn't it?
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