Lessons from Haditha.

Haditha, Iraq, remains in the news. Perhaps not since the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal, or even the infamous My Lai massacre in Vietnam in March 1968, when American troops killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians, has the U.S. military received such adverse criticism. According to reports, the details of which are still under investigation, U.S. Marines allegedly killed two dozen unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November, after a roadside bomb hit a Humvee, killing Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. Initial military reports stated that 15 Iraqis were killed by the blast and that eight Iraqi insurgents were killed in a subsequent firefight. Later, conflicting reports stated that all of the Iraqis who died were unarmed civilians killed by Marines in a retaliatory attack.

The New York Times for June 1 quoted General Peter W. Chiarelli, the top operational commander for the American-led forces in Iraq, who said of the Haditha incident: "Of the nearly 150,000 coalition forces presently in Iraq, 99.9 percent of them perform their jobs magnificently every day. They do their duty with honor under difficult circumstances. Unfortunately, there are a few individuals who sometimes choose the wrong path."

It is hard to find fault with the essence of the general's statement, though it is probably impossible to determine the extent of misconduct so precisely. Hopefully we can all agree that "bad apples" are a very small minority of the military, and do not reflect the character of American servicemen as a whole. Regardless of the outcome of the Haditha allegations, however, there is no doubt that that tragedy promises to become another polarizing incident, and an episode from which we should learn some important lessons.

The first lesson to learn is that whenever we depart from the principles of warfare traditionally associated with our Western, Christian-style civilization (which include sparing civilians from harm as much as possible), we are asking for trouble.

A second lesson to be learned is that we should never engage in war except to defend our own territory and population. We especially should not go to war against a country that did not attack us, thereby putting our soldiers in a situation where they will likely be viewed as "oppressors" rather than "liberators."

A third lesson to be learned is that we should never again go to war except by the constitutional mandate that only Congress declare war. Our Constitution presumes that wars will be declared, and it limits that critical function to Congress for a reason: Congress is likely to declare war only against enemies that pose credible threats to the United States.

When President Bush announced the invasion of Iraq, he cited that regime's violation of UN resolutions as justification. This is the latest example of our entanglement in UN military operations--a trap that has ensnared us for over 50 years and that far exceeds anything that George Washington envisioned when he warned about the perils of foreign entanglement in his farewell address. Whenever a president feels he needs to skirt the Constitution to go to war, it is probably because there is a lack of consensus concerning the threat, and obtaining a congressional declaration of war would be difficult if not impossible.

A fourth lesson is that whenever we do go to war, military victory must always be the goal. Anything less--as in Korea or Vietnam--is demoralizing. Anything more, such as our post-victory occupation of Iraq--in a futile attempt to enforce representative government on a population unaccustomed to such governance--places our military forces in a field outside their proper role: defense of our nation.

We must ask ourselves: what constitutes victory in Iraq? We have toppled Saddam Hussein; we have not found weapons of mass destruction because there were none to be found. If victory means propping up the new Iraqi regime until that regime can stand on its own, then that "victory" is a betrayal of our own war on terrorism because it can be shown that the new Iraqi regime is fast becoming another Iran, an "axis of evil" nation.

Haditha will undoubtedly fuel the polarization in our nation between those who are opposed to our presence in Iraq, and those who believe that support for that invasion and support for our troops are synonymous. But many people on both sides of the argument are misguided. Some anti-military liberals are ready to hang out to dry any troops caught up in civilian-casualty incidents, without understanding the impossible pressures under which these troops have been forced to serve--the enemy can be any man, woman, or child at any time; most attacks are by a faceless enemy placing roadside bombs; sectarian violence adds to the confusion; and many of the enemy look forward to dying. On the other hand, many equally misguided conservatives who have a false understanding of patriotism are quick to justify the actions of troops who intentionally kill civilians and to absolve them of blame or punishment.

We must learn the lessons outlined above and adhere to the advice of Washington and the authors of our Constitution in conducting our foreign policy.

Anything less is a recipe for disaster.