The Fallujah Marine and War Crimes

There are plenty of people ready to give the Marine who killed a wounded fellow in a mosque a pass because our guys should never be exposed to any risk more than absolutly neccesary. But given the American military power is overwhelming and that this keeps our guys safer, its not unreasonable that we seek to restrain ourselves from doing any more harm than in neccesary to accomplish our mission. This sets up a conflict between those who seek to minimize harm to our troops and those who seek to minimize harm to innocents, which is made more difficult because the enemy seeks to use innocents to shield them from harm. Of course the proper approach is to give both principles respect, and not just advocate for protection of only the troops or only the innocents. Only protecting the troops leads to unneccesary harm to innocents by negligence, which is wrong. Only protecting the innocent empowers those, like terrorists, willing to violate the same principle. The shooting in question did take place in a mosque, after all. Clinton era legal constraints of many kinds tended to put too many restrictions on US intelligence and military action. But the princple of legal restraint, that is the notion of war crimes, should not be thrown out because some enemy has decided to ignore them. Too many statements supporting the marine seem to come from the "worried mom" school of engagement, which is kill anything that my harm my darling boy.

Wars like the War on Terror, as fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are more political than they are military. Indeed, one could say more political, social, and economic than military. Suppose the reputation of Americans was such that it was supposed that a fleeing terrorist fell down while fleeing, we'd help him up, give him his weapon back and give him a count of ten to get back to his fellows. Would the average Iraqi be more inclined to favor the guy who hides in mosques and lays roadside bombs and blows up civilian services, or the Americans? Now we should not be handing back the weapons of terrorists who fall down, but neither should we be shooting the unarmed and fallen.

See the last paragraph of this NRO article by Mackubin Thomas Owens.