Military justice

What seems really alarming about the whole prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq is the line of defense being given by the guilty parties, namely "We were just following orders."

Why this is disturbing is the way it directly clashes with the Nuremburg precedent. Back after World War II, the Allies decided they'd bring the major surviving Nazi war criminals to justice with special tribunals at Nuremburg. While it's easily arguable that this was a case of victor's justice (as such extraordinary tribunals tend to be), a very important principle handed down in the judgments was one of individual responsibility: claiming you were just playing a good soldier and following orders didn't matter. Now soldiers were expected to exercise their better judgment when told to do something they knew transgressed the normal conventions of warfare.

And yet, that seems to have gone entirely out the window. The Good Soldier routine seems to be popular with the perpetrators of Abu Ghraib, despite an established precedent that it doesn't hold water. Or shouldn't.

It's worth noting that the United States has only ever really paid lip service to ideas of international justice and military justice, and that it hasn't even done this much when it comes to itself. (See the impassioned efforts to have Americans exempted from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court whenever U.S. intervention is afoot.) After all, while we cry and scream and angrily demand justice whenever Americans are wronged, we're all too willing to deny the privilege to any foreigners thusly wronged by Americans. Because, damnit, we have to have it both ways.

Passing the buck looks especially ineffective given the refusal of those high-level officials who either issued the orders or were at least aware of the abuses to acknowledge their complicity.