The Christian Science Monitor asks if the military can investigate itself and you might be surprised what the experts have to say.
“Once [allegations are] revealed, American citizens should have absolute confidence in the military-justice system to investigate and prosecute,” says Walter Huffman, judge advocate general of the Army from 1997 to 2001. “But there is a camaraderie among small military units that conceivably can lead to atrocities being committed by that unit and never revealed.”
“Do we know every one of the incidents that ever occurred?” he asks. “Probably not, and we don’t know what we don’t know.”
He says this not to suggest that the Haditha allegations point to rampant lawlessness. To the contrary, he and others believe that instances of murder are rare. But just as American police forces have their so-called “wall of silence,” military units can be insular and fiercely loyal.
I’d say that, on the whole, the U.S. military court system does a better job than the civilian court system. This will never convince those who have already made up their mind that this war is wrong. They’ll find any excuse they can to pretend to believe that life under the fist of Saddam was infinitely better than life in the new Iraq.
And perhaps, for those Iraqis who survived 30 years of Saddam, it was easier to keep their heads down and make no waves. That time is gone. Iraq is in transition.