Lessons from Haditha.(Abu Gharib prisoner scandal)

Haditha, Iraq, remains in the news. Perhaps not since the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal, or even the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam in March 1968, when American troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians, has the U.S. military received such adverse criticism. According to reports, the details of which are still under investigation, U.S. Marines allegedly killed two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November, after a roadside bomb hit a Humvee, killing Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. Initial military reports stated that 15 Iraqis were killed by the blast and that eight Iraqi insurgents were killed in a subsequent firefight. Later, conflicting reports stated that all of the Iraqis who died were unarmed civilians killed by Marines in a retaliatory attack.

The New York Times for June 1 quoted General Peter W. Chiarelli, the top operational commander for the American-led forces in Iraq, who said of the Haditha incident: "Of the nearly 150,000 coalition forces presently in Iraq, 99.9 percent of them perform their jobs magnificently every day. They do their duty with honor under difficult circumstances. Unfortunately, there are a few individuals who sometimes choose the wrong path."

It is hard to find fault with the essence of the general's statement, though it is probably impossible to determine the extent of misconduct so precisely. Hopefully we can all agree that "bad apples" are a very small minority of the military, and do not reflect the character of American servicemen as a whole. Regardless of the outcome of the Haditha allegations, however, there is no doubt that that tragedy promises to become another polarizing incident, and an episode from which we should learn some important lessons.

The first lesson to learn is that whenever we depart from the principles of warfare traditionally associated with our Western, Christian-style civilization (which include sparing civilians from harm as much as possible), we are asking for trouble.

A second lesson to be learned is that we should never engage in war except to defend our own territory and population. We especially should not go to war against a country that did not attack us, thereby putting our soldiers in a situation where they will likely be viewed as "oppressors" rather than "liberators."

A third lesson to be learned is that we should never again go to war except by the constitutional mandate that only Congress declare war. Our Constitution presumes that wars will be declared, and it limits that critical function to Congress for a reason: Congress is likely to declare war only against ...