Iraqi Death by Political Abstraction

Try as they might, apologists for the war in Iraq won’t be convincing when they insist that, at worst, the Haditha “incident” (or was it a mishap?) was the unfortunate work of a few bad Marines. It was something much worse.

When men trained to kill on a battlefield — this wasn’t the Salvation Army, after all — are ordered into civilian areas where many residents see the troops as an occupying force rather than as liberators, what would you expect to happen? We hear war defenders complain that “the enemy” doesn’t identify itself. Why should it? In the eyes of the “insurgents” they are resisting an army of occupation. That Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld didn’t foresee this resistance doesn’t mean it was unforeseeable.

So who is ultimately responsible for the massacre of the 24 unarmed Iraqis at Haditha? The one who put the Marines there: President George W. Bush.

Read the rest of my op-ed at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.