John Murtha was on Hardball this week and had some harsh and premature words about an incident that is under investigation!

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Let me ask you Mr. Murtha to give us some details about that. Draw us a picture of what happened at Haditha.
REP. JOHN “JACK” MURTHA: Well, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. One Marine was killed and the Marines just said we’re going to take care – we don’t know who the enemy is, the pressure was too much on them, so they went into houses and they actually killed civilians. And, and –

MATTHEWS:—was this My Lai? Was this a case of – when you say cold blood Congressman, a lot of people think you’re basically saying you got some civilians sitting in a room around a field and they’re executed.

MURTHA: That’s exactly it.
From Knight Ridder:

Murtha’s comments were the first on-the-record remarks by a U.S. official characterizing the findings of military investigators looking into the Nov. 19 incident. Murtha, the ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and an opponent of Bush administration policy in Iraq, said he hadn’t read the report but had learned about its findings from military commanders and other sources.

Jesus Pam, Murtha was setting up their PTSD defense.

Anderson, let me tell you something.

Two months ago, the day afterwards, they knew that the IED attack, they only killed one Marine. There was no hostile fire. There was nobody firing at our Marines. A taxi pulled up. They killed the people in the taxi. Then they went into the rooms and killed women and children.

One young woman on CNN today said, I -- he -- the young Marine, her son, carried the body of a -- I mean, this breaks my heart to think that this happened. And then they tried to cover it up. That even makes it worse.

What's up with that?

Murtha commented on what he knew about a possible atrocity.

Malkin obviously thinks that talking about an atrocity is a greater crime than young children being shot at close range.

But remember, it's a war zone, so it's okay.

Not to be uncharitable, but somehow I don't think we'd be seeing the same concern and restraint for the rights and defense of someone local accused of shooting children, including a year old baby.

Why? We're having a conversation, not investigating a possible crime, not deliberating and indictment.

Don't you think they should be charged first?

Nothing, Pam, nothing has been done to address this atrocity, this war crime, for six months. You're telling me that I should listen to the epitome of reason and restrained analysis, Michel Malkin? That's absolutely hilareous.

Leftists do see the Iraq war as amoral imperialism.

Well, no actually, I don't think that. And I am very much a leftist.

If leftists don't want us to think that they see the Iraq war as amoral imperialism, they need to pick something else to chant.

I have been continually chanting other stuff for the last three years, as have many others. Sorry, but I can't make you pick what to hear, Wince.

I don't see how you can criticize the article for saying something that is absolutely true.

It isn't absolutely true, it's simple-minded nonsense.

Beinart offers an incisive historical account of the conflicts straining postwar liberalism and of the contradictions, hubris and incompetence of Bush's actions.

Peter Beinart: Haditha
One of the critical differences between the liberal and conservative foreign policy traditions is their willingness to accept that America is capable of evil. For conservatives -- as I write in my new book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again -- the idea has traditionally been anathema. From the beginning of the modern conservative movement in the 1950s, conservatives have worried that if Americans recognized their moral fallibility, they would lack the self-confidence to fight their enemies. That's why conservatives largely refused to admit that Joseph McCarthy was violating civil liberties. It's why when Bush gets called on Guantanamo, he basically says, that's ridiculous, we're America, we can't violate human rights.

This horrible story from Haditha powerfully underscores the liberal vision, which is this. We are not angels: without sufficient moral and legal restrictions, and under conditions of extreme stress, Americans can be as barbaric as anyone. What's makes us an exceptional nation with the capacity to lead and inspire the world is our very recognition of that fact. We are capable of Hadithas and My Lais, so is everyone. But few societies are capable of acknowledging what happened, bringing the killers to justice, and instituting changes that make it less likely to happen again. That's how we show we are different from the jihadists. We don't just assert it. We prove it. That's the liberal version of American exceptionalism, and it's what we need right now in response to this horror.

The sunrise was beautiful, the ocean a deep green, the grass glistened with dew. They found a cigarette butt dropped by some GI - the Army had just taken over from the Marines. They lit it with a book of U.S. matches and hunkered down behind a rock sharing puffs. Not twenty yards away GI's began issuing from tents to wash and brush their teeth, and noticed the smoke curling from behind the rock. The two Japanese were signaled to come out. They didn't move; they wanted at least one American to draw closer so they could all die with the single grenade.

Several GI's approached cautiously and flipped two lighted cigarettes near the rock. Hirakawa retrieved his-the first whole cigarette he had seen in more than a month. Two packs landed at their feet. Certain they would die at any moment, the two stragglers frantically smoked one after another. Two apples bounced to the base of the rock. Hirakawa, already dizzy from the cigarettes, devoured his but couldn't taste it.
An American started to move slowly toward them with a couple of beer bottles. This is the last treat before death, thought Hirakawa, and reached for his grenade. The GI stopped fifteen feet away. He put down the bottles and tipped his hand to pantomime drinking. He was too far away to be killed by the grenade. The two Japanese moved forward but the GI stepped back. Hirakawa put the bottle to his mouth. It was water! Ambrosia after the sulphurous drippings they had subsisted on in the cave.

While the two stood indecisively savoring the water, a Japanese cadet in American uniform arrived breathless. He told them that the entire garrison on Iwo Jima had been listed as dead in Japan. "Why should we die twice?" the youngster reasoned. "It doesn't make sense."

Life had suddenly become possible for Hirakawa. I'm "dead" already, he rationalized, and now have the chance for a second existence, almost like reincarnation.

The two men surrendered. They were given a shower and clean fatigues, and they watched incredulous as an American doctor tenderly dressed a Japanese enlisted man's leg, allowing blood and pus to stain his own uniform. No Japanese doctor would ever do that, thought Hirakawa. How could he fear Americans after that? What a waste, those terrible months in the cave, he thought. Why did so many of us die so needlessly?

An honorable enemy is one who declares war before beginning combat; fights according to recognized rules of war, honoring such traditions as the flag of truce; treats civilians in occupied territory with due consideration; and—a crucial point—refrains from the mistreatment of prisoners of war. Those who surrender should be treated with generosity. Adversaries who honor the code will benefit from its protections, while those who want a dirty fight will get one.

This pattern was very clearly illustrated in the Civil War. The Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia faced one another throughout the war, and fought some of the bloodiest battles of the nineteenth century, including long bouts of trench warfare. Yet Robert E. Lee and his men were permitted an honorable surrender and returned unmolested to their homes with their horses and personal side arms. One Confederate, however, was executed after the war: Captain Henry Wirz, who was convicted of mistreating Union prisoners of war at Camp Sumter, Georgia.

Although American Indians often won respect for their extraordinary personal courage, Jacksonian opinion generally considered Indians to be dishonorable opponents. American-Indian warrior codes (also honor based) permitted surprise attacks on civilians and the torture of prisoners of war. This was all part of a complex system of limited warfare among the tribal nations, but Jacksonian frontier dwellers were not students of multicultural diversity. In their view, Indian war tactics were the sign of a dishonorable, unscrupulous and cowardly form of war. Anger at such tactics led Jacksonians to abandon the restraints imposed by their own war codes, and the ugly skirmishes along the frontier spiraled into a series of genocidal conflicts in which each side felt the other was violating every standard of humane conduct.

The Japanese, another people with a highly developed war code based on personal honor, had the misfortune to create the same kind of impression on American Jacksonians. The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the gross mistreatment of American pows (the Bataan Death March), and Japanese fighting tactics all served to enrage American Jacksonians and led them to see the Pacific enemy as ruthless, dishonorable and inhuman. All contributed to the vitriolic intensity of combat in the Pacific theater. By the summer of 1945, American popular opinion was fully prepared to countenance invasion of the Japanese home islands, even if they were defended with the tenacity (and indifference to civilian lives) that marked the fighting on Okinawa.

Given this background, the Americans who decided to use the atomic bomb may have been correct that the use of the weapon saved lives, and not only of American soldiers. In any case, Jacksonians had no compunction about using the bomb. General Curtis LeMay (subsequently the 1968 running mate of Jacksonian populist third-party candidate George Wallace) succinctly summed up this attitude toward fighting a dishonorable opponent: "I’ll tell you what war is about", said Lemay in an interview, "You’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting."

By contrast, although the Germans committed bestial crimes against civilians and pows (especially Soviet pows), their behavior toward the armed forces of the United States was more in accordance with American ideas about military honor. Indeed, General Erwin Rommel is considered something of a military hero among American Jacksonians: an honorable enemy. Still, if the Germans avoided exposure to the utmost fury of an aroused American people at war, they were nevertheless subjected to the full, ferocious scope of the violence that a fully aroused American public opinion will sustain—and even insist upon.

For the first Jacksonian rule of war is that wars must be fought with all available force. The use of limited force is deeply repugnant. Jacksonians see war as a switch that is either "on" or "off." They do not like the idea of violence on a dimmer switch. Either the stakes are important enough to fight for—in which case you should fight with everything you have—or they are not, in which case you should mind your own business and stay home. To engage in a limited war is one of the costliest political decisions an American president can make—neither Truman nor Johnson survived it.

The second key concept in Jacksonian thought about war is that the strategic and tactical objective of American forces is to impose our will on the enemy with as few American casualties as possible. The Jacksonian code of military honor does not turn war into sport. It is a deadly and earnest business. This is not the chivalry of a medieval joust, or of the orderly battlefields of eighteenth-century Europe. One does not take risks with soldiers’ lives to give a "fair fight." Some sectors of opinion in the United States and abroad were both shocked and appalled during the Gulf and Kosovo wars over the way in which American forces attacked the enemy from the air without engaging in much ground combat. The "turkey shoot" quality of the closing moments of the war against Iraq created a particularly painful impression. Jacksonians dismiss such thoughts out of hand. It is the obvious duty of American leaders to crush the forces arrayed against us as quickly, thoroughly and professionally as possible.