Opinion: Haditha Tests The US

ByABC News
June 2, 2006, 1:14 PM

— -- What happened in Haditha last November is as much a test of the American people as a whole as it is a test of the Marine Corps and the military community. How we, the majority of civilians react, will have a profound impact on the way the war in Iraq is waged from this time onward.

As a retired Marine I will not rush to judgment about the individual culpability of those directly implicated in the unfolding events. However, as this event is investigated, and those responsible are prosecuted, more gruesome details are likely to unfold and some people will be seen to be more responsible than others.

Murder and cover-up can never be condoned. Those responsible must be judged and, if guilty, punished. As a Marine General I served with used to say, "The American people can be very understanding of human frailties and individual mistakes. However, they are very reluctant to forgive institutional cover-up."

When all the investigations are complete, it is likely there will be little agreement about what happened, why it happened and what action should be taken. It is unlikely there ever will be a single, clear picture of what happened in Haditha. Events will be distorted, filtered, forgotten and glossed to suit individual perceptions and ambitions.

Onlookers, pundits and commentators, especially those with political agendas, are already using this event to characterize and justify their points of view, honing the message they are promulgating by the details they choose to use. Some will excoriate the men in the squad; some will use this event to condemn the entire military community; some will use it to attack or defend the Administration and one political party or the other.

What we must not overlook is the hard fact that the purpose of the military is to deliver controlled violence - to amass overwhelming force and to crush an opponent. 21st Century technology has distanced warriors from the violence they deliver, whether in an airplane at 30,000 feet above the battlefield or at an artillery weapon many miles from where the shells impact.