Whose Scandal is Haditha?

According to this Stars and Stripes report, the commander of the “Multi-National Corps-Iraq” has ordered a new round of training on the “legal, moral and ethical” conduct of war. This is in response to the Haditha massacre, in which it appears that Marines murdered Iraqis execution-style as revenge for the killing of a Marine, and as a broader expression of frustration and hatred. There are many things to say about this ongoing scandal, but this particular aspect of it highlights two important points.

First, while a somewhat half-hearted and opportunistic maneuver, the decision to renew training for the soldiers has a deeper meaning than mere emphasis on the military’s ostensible commitment to human rights. It points to how the major way of calling the war and occupation into question derives from the appearance of having violated human rights standards and international law. The problem, of course, is that the sheer fact of violating human rights standards or international law is not, in and of itself, an argument against the war. If the war is still felt to be necessary, then abuses can and should be tolerated for the broader aim. If the war is wrong, then even if the forces followed every legal, moral and ethical code to the letter, it would still be wrong. This is a familiar point, and there’s no reason to belabor it.

Second, we have discussed in previous posts the importance of sovereignty and self-determination, and the Haditha affair is a good example of why these principles matter. One of the most problematic aspects is not just that the armed forces committed these atrocities, but that the forces committing them cannot be held to account by Iraqis. It is up to the commander, and above him the Department of Defense, and above that the American people, to decide how this affair should be handled, what measures are appropriate, and who to punish. No matter how much Bush insists on the fact that sovereignty has been handed over to the Iraqis, the premise of the intervention was and continues to be that Iraqis are incapable of being the final authority in their own affairs, no matter how much ‘democracy’ they supposedly enjoy.

Once one assumes that Iraqis, or anyone else, can never be ultimately responsible for their own institutions, then foundations are laid not for temporary assistance but permanent dependence. That is exactly what is happening in Iraq. Respecting Iraqi sovereignty means that it is they who must hold their own government - responsible for abuses not all that dissimilar from Haditha - to account. Instead, Iraqis can look forward to a situation in which every scandal becomes a further reason why the US must stay and prove its good intentions, and further evidence that the one thing Iraqis don’t have is sovereignty. Of course, defending sovereignty on the aforementioned grounds means believing that people do possess the desire for liberty, and are capable of taking those collective acts necessary to acquire it. That is the precise belief that is in such low supply these days, as is a commitment to the idea of self-determination at any level of society. But anyone serious about freedom is forced to realize that it is not something that can be handed to you, it is something you take for yourself.