I've always hated the term "war crime," since it's an insidious tautology. It implies that some wars are not crimes, and some of the atrocities committed during war are excusable by virtue of their context.
I believe that if there can be any single concept by which a civilization ought to be defined it's this: there is no context that can justify the intentional killing of a sentient being who does not wish it. Period.
Today is a special agony for a pacifist like me.
By pure coincidence, I taught the Tim O'Brien story "The Things They Carried" to my sophomore literature students. It's a haunting and excellent work, which I highly recommend. O'Brien was a soldier in Vietnam, and the story traces the subtle process of dehumanization by which young men are turned into the kind of killing machines who burned My Lai. O'Brien also elegantly contrasts the brute reality of the war to the distant, almost fantastic dreamworld of "home," a hypnagogic America, land of "sleeping cities and McDonald's," an ideal for which those young men believed they were sacrificing their lives to sustain.
My students are not particularly politically aware -- most spend their free time shopping or downloading mp3's illegally -- and had not heard the name "Haditha." They certainly had never heard of My Lai.
Once made aware, though, by reading the story and by seeing the documentary evidence of My Lai, these students are now different people. They now understand the direct relationship between their own deliberately inculcated ignorance and the crimes that are committed in their name. The scope and horror of what happened at Haditha remains yet to be revealed, but what has thus far been alleged is already more than I can bear to hear.
All this brings me to my point. I am a pacifist, but even many of us who are not pacifists were opposed to the Iraq war from the start because we understood that it was sheer idiocy and bamboozlement. It's nice to see the rest of America waking up to that fact, but too little, too late. My Lai was a major turning point in public support for the Vietnam war, and although Haditha may not have as powerful an impact, it is sure to further weaken waning American endurance for this "Long War."
But the conundrum for me is greater now than ever it was. The dilemma is simply escalation or withdrawal, now as it was in 1968. It is times like these that truly test one's moral fundamentals. As Chomsky noted in a very sapient essay "Why It's Over for America:
To achieve the traditional goals in Iraq has proven to be surprisingly difficult, despite unusually favorable circumstances. The dilemma of combining a measure of independence with firm control arose in a stark form not long after the invasion, as mass non-violent resistance compelled the invaders to accept far more Iraqi initiative than they had anticipated. The outcome even evoked the nightmarish prospect of a more or less democratic and sovereign Iraq taking its place in a loose Shiite alliance comprising Iran, Shiite Iraq, and possibly the nearby Shiite-dominated regions of Saudi Arabia, controlling most of the world's oil and independent of Washington.
Will withdrawal result in carnage the likes of which will make the current death toll seem like mere attendance numbers at a football game, the aftermath being a dangerously empowered Islamic state? Would we simply leave the Iraqis twisting in the wind? On the other hand, would escalation do anything to pacify, at least temporarily the "insurgency?" Would it result in more Hadithas? From a purely utilitarian point of view, which course is likely to result in the least harm?
It doesn't really matter anymore. Chomsky's right. It's over for America. Not just this war, but the American idea. And right now, the peace I'm enjoying in my living room, every selfish mile I drive to and from my home, the electricity that's powering my computer, and the privilege of education that allows me to articulate these thoughts is bought with the blood and dust of all the Hadithas that have made a moment like this and a person like me possible.
And it's more than I can bear.