The Fog of War Crimes-Who’s to blame when ‘just following orders’ means murder?

The Fog of War Crimes
Who’s to blame when ‘just following orders’ means murder?
by Frida Berrigan



A Marine squad was on a dusty road in Iraq, far from home. Suddenly, a deadly roadside bomb explodes the early morning calm and kills a lance corporal and wounds two other Marines. The mission: tend to the wounded and find those who were responsible … Or make someone pay? Three sleeping families awaken to the sound of grenades and guns.

By the end of the “operation,” 24 people were dead, including three women and six children. Bullets, fired at close range, tore through bodies and lodged deep in walls. A one-legged elderly man was shot nine times in the chest and abdomen. A man who watched the violence from his roof across the road told The Washington Post that he heard his neighbor speak to the Marines in English, begging for the lives of his wife and children, saying, “I am friend. I am good.” All the family was killed except one: 13-year-old Safa. Covered in her mother’s blood, she reportedly fainted and appeared dead.

In a road nearby lay the bodies of five men-four college students and their driver.

On Nov. 20, 2005, a Marine spokesman reported: “A U.S. Marine and 15 civilians were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb in Haditha. Immediately following the bombing, gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire. Iraqi army soldiers and Marines returned fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding another.”

The only truth in that statement was that there was a roadside bomb and that a Marine-Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, known as T.J. to the other men in his squad-was killed instantly. The rest was a lie. It took months for the truth to come out, and the search for justice is taking even longer. The 24 Iraqi bodies have since been buried in a cemetery in Haditha, a farming town beside the Euphrates River. But no one-from the commander on down-has been sentenced to prison, and the effort to hold Marines responsible for this crime has focused on a few men who are low on the chain of command.

Geoffrey Corn, a retired lieutenant colonel and a professor at Southern Texas College of Law, says the laws of war work because “for every case of atrocities that we read about, there are thousands of Marines and soldiers who act with restraint.”

The Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions were designed as the basis for military conduct in times of war. Three central principles govern armed conflict: military necessity, distinction (soldiers must engage only valid military targets) and proportionality (the loss of civilian lives and property damage must not outweigh the military advantage sought). Among other things, the Geneva Conventions identify grave breaches of international law as the “willful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; willful causing of great suffering; and extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully or wantonly.” An examination of the military’s actions in the aftermath of Haditha reveals a clear unwillingness to apply these principles.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/07/6217/

This is the reason I cringe every time they talk about "conflict with insurgents." I've read stories by AWOL soldiers reporting systematic genocide, and whether this event was due to passion or colder motives, it's still slaughter of a particular group.

If American soldiers are ordered to invade and occupy a country in a war of aggression-- one of the supreme crimes against humanity under international and U.S. law-- when does the "just following orders" defense protect them from responsibility for their crimes? The lesson we tried to teach the world at Nuremberg was that such protection from responsibility NEVER exists. The U.N. Charter likewise leaves NO loopholes for individual service men and women as long as a "moral choice" exists-- it specifically excludes legal choice from the matter. Only moral choice counts.

The war against Iraq and the occupation are criminal acts. Who commits crimes? In most aspects of human affairs we acknowledge without equivocation that CRIMINALS commit crimes. Some plan them, others implement them, but all are equally guilty.

to make combat as pleasant and calm as the subsequent investigations, this sort of thing would never happen. The fact that this sort of thing gets covered up goes to the validity of the larger mission.

unless that order is illegal, unethical or immoral. this was drilled into me at basic training. A soldier does not have to follow an order if it is wrong and killing innocent people is wrong.

even though the united states does not each soldier is familierized with the geneva conventions and what they mean.

Why have the "illegal orders" been followed?

Let's call a spade a spade- Nuremberg was and is a farce, proven by the fact that we are the ones pissing on it.

There is no one in the world strong enough to enforce the war crimes laws except the superpowers...and they are disinclined. They rather enjoy being outside any rules in all ways.

Might makes right- that's all there is.

I am reminded of a story about a new leader of the USSR denouncing the previous leader. Someone in the audience asked why the new leader didn't speak up earlier. The leader shouted "Who said that" and was met with scared silence. The leader said "That is why".

and people like Ehran Watada have been buried in their refusal to accept such orders.

I'm sick of everyone pretending that there is such an option.

You submit or you pay the penalty. We aren't a lawful country, and we don't bother to pretend to be anymore, either.

apparently, it's just not that important to most of the people here.