The Politics of "Personnel" Destruction

The Wall Street Journal provides a fact-based summary of the events at Haditha. You'll have to check with Representative John Murtha to get the version pulled from thin air. The WSJ concludes:

At Haditha, did the Marines act reasonably and appropriately based on their training? They were in a hostile combat situation where deadly force was authorized against suspected triggermen for the IED, and were ordered to assault a suspected insurgent hideout. In retrospect, the men in the car had no weapons or explosives; in retrospect, the people in the house were not insurgents. No one knew at the time.

Innocents were killed at Haditha, as they inevitably are in all wars--though that does not excuse or justify wrongdoing. Yet neither was Haditha the atrocity or "massacre" that many assumed--though errors in judgment may well have been committed. And while some violent crimes have been visited on civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, overall the highly disciplined U.S. military has conducted itself in an exemplary fashion. When there have been aberrations, the services have typically held themselves accountable.

The same cannot be said of the political and media classes. Many, including Members of Congress, were looking for another moral bonfire to discredit the cause in Iraq, and they found a pretext in Haditha. The critics rushed to judgment; facts and evidence were discarded to fit the antiwar template.

Too bad the Democrats couldn't attack terrorists with the same vehemence as they attack their own military. Heaven help us if they did that, though; their complete disregard for facts would wind up exposing more innocents to danger than our military does.

Originally posted in UNCoRRELATED Oct 19 2007