My buddy Herschel at The Captain’s Journal has been following this incident from the very beginning and has a new post up with some great analysis. Go give it a read.
I don't know what happened that day in Iraq, nor can I tell you what I would have done had I been there. In a combat environment, taking a moment to think can be the last thing that you do. When you are being shot at, when Marines are dying, you cannot call time out, write a detailed analysis of the situation, send it to higher and wait for clearance to shoot back. When your comrades are bleeding and rounds are coming in, you fight back with all the force that you can muster. It's called survival.
The first rule of war is that people die. And a lot of the people that die, sadly, are completely innocent. Even in this day and age, it is not possible to wage a perfect war, free of civilian casualties.
We know that the terrorists are hiding among the civilian populace. We also know that some of the civilians in the area are loyal to terrorist or anti-coalition elements. And we know that children and women can kill Marines and soldiers, too.
As I said, I don't know all of the details of the incident, nor does anyone else. Yet.
But these Marines volunteered to serve their country. And we sent them over there. Right or wrong, good or bad, regardless of what happens in Iraq, they were there because we sent them. And they have earned our support.
If they knowingly murdered innocent civilians, as some in the MSM would have you believe, then they should be charged, tried and convicted. Combat is not an excuse to commit murder or massacre.
But if civilians were killed in the course of a battle, that's another matter entirely.
Let's wait until the facts are heard before we judge these men.
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