How We Fight

Abstract

ON THE MORNING of November 19, 2005, a U.S. Marine unit patrolling Haditha, a small farming town in the heart of Iraq's violence-plagued Anbar Province, was hit by a powerful roadside bomb. The explosion killed one marine and wounded two others. But that was just the start of the killing that day. Following the attack, four Iraqi college students and a driver who were approaching the scene in a taxi were also killed, as were 19 civilians in nearby houses, including an elderly man in a wheelchair and several children and the women who were trying to shield them. The first official account of the incident claimed that only i5 civilians had died, all from the bomb blast. In March 2006, an extensive Time magazine investigation challenged that version of events. Subsequent inquiries found that the marines had probably killed all 24 Iraqi civilians themselves and that U.S. commanders should have conducted a more thorough investigation earlier. The marines involved in the incident appear likely to face criminal charges, including for murder. If the marines' responsibility is confirmed, the Haditha killings will be the gravest violation by U.S. forces of the legal prohibition against the wanton targeting of civilians since the invasion of Iraq. A bedrock of the laws of war for more than a century, noncombatant immunity encompasses two key concepts: distinction