Quote Originally Posted by Cecil Turner View Post
Totally inapt. This isn't a backyard outing, it's a wartime engagement in which the convoy in question had already been fired upon.
Thanks, that's what I waited for.

This is the core of the problem. Any attitude like "we are soldiers in a war zone, thus we are above the law and our lives are more worth than civilian lives, we can kill civilians for the smallest of reasons" is simply wrong.
It may have become institutional culture in some places, but that doesn't change the fact that it's just wrong. It merely casts a damning light on the institution.
Soldiers are not above the law, they cannot re-define terms, they are not allowed to shoot civilians trying to evac wounded.


In addition to that, you seem to purposefully ignore the Geneva Convention quoted earlier in this thread.

GC III was ratified by the U.S. and Iraq and forbids the attack on the van without doubt. It needs no red-white paint job at all.

Art 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following
provisions:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(...)
You guys should really have a milieu change and get out of the "war and soldiers are special" group think. Murder is murder, crime is crime and the van scene was beyond doubt a war crime.
The only thing that's so special about war in this regard is that a murder has been turned into a war crime. Killing unarmed people who merely want to move a wounded man into a hospital with aimed fire is a crime, no matter war or peace.



The whole affair will simply add to the reputation, national security and foreign policy problems of the U.S..
Pro war crime excuses on an internationally accessible forum only add to the unappreciated effect. Every excuse of the attack on unarmed medevac effort by civilians simply tells the world: "This is what we do and we think it's right. Expect more."

This extreme unreadiness to correct own faults is a recurrent theme in U.S . policy and the GWOT. Take the Guantanamo example. First this extralegal extradition (much of it outright illegal, such as abduction of people in Europe) and then the unreadiness to correct it by accepting these abducted persons either in a domestic prison for criminals or in a POW camp.


Guess what? This kind of #### is the reason why you have so many troubles with foreigners in the first place (and it certainly sabotaged the military mission in both Iraq & AFG).