According to an AP report out today on a Pentagon survey: only 1/3 of Marines and only 1/2 of all soldiers in Iraq believe that noncombatants should be treated with dignity. The principle of discriminating between perpetrators of wrong and the innocent civilians who get caught in circumstances that they did not create is at the heart of Just War ethics.
If our troops generally do not believe in protecting the dignity of common Iraqis, then what are they fighting for again? And what are we going to do to reintegrate the troops who do return back into our society after the war given their general lack of commitment to civilian dignity? Are we prepared to deal with a moral crisis of increased violence at home as fall-out from the Iraq War?
It's a bit difficult to distinguish when little kids carry AK-47s and mothers strap C-4 to their chests on the way to the bus stop. There are no rules in a war like this, which is why it has become such a disaster.
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