American soldiers and Marines in Iraq are convicted of the homicides of noncombatants but sentenced to no confinement; no officer is held accountable for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. These are just two disturbing military legal headlines.
Why are court-martial convictions seemingly hard to come by? The homicides of 24 Haditha civilians, including women and children, for example, resulted in court-martial charges against eight Marines, including four officers. Almost two years later, however, charges have been dropped against -- so far -- two of the four alleged shooters and one of the four officers.
Is the military justice system broken? Has the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military's criminal code, failed? Does the United States pay lip service to the law of war while disregarding it in fact?
First, remember that war crime charges involve very few of the many thousands of heroic U.S. war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also that being charged does not necessarily mean one is guilty. The Uniform Code of Military Justice has proved itself in peace and combat, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, undeniably, there are problems in prosecuting war crimes.
Although the code works well, the law of war -- the part of international law that regulates armed hostilities -- does not. The wonder is that it works at all. Some war crimes go unreported. That was particularly true in the early stages of the Iraq conflict. After the Abu Ghraib scandal, greater attention is now given to enforcing the law of war, which partly explains the greater number of media accounts of criminality. Our military is not riddled with criminals. Rather, commanders are paying closer attention to possible war crimes and, as required by military law, they are investigating and reporting them.
In Haditha, after an improvised explosive device killed a popular Marine, 24 Iraqi noncombatants were killed. The Marine battalion commander denied the possibility of his men's criminality and failed to make sufficient inquiry into their actions, multiple investigations allege. Time magazine backed this up, and Marine headquarters cast a wide net in charging those possibly involved, including senior officers who may have inadequately investigated. The division commander, a two-star general, has been administratively punished.
