Max Boot trots out a tired old "ends justify the means" argument as he casts about for some way to salvage the war he has supported from the start:

 …What matters most to most
folks back home is whether their "boys" are fighting for a just cause
and whether they are winning. If the answer to both questions is yes,
the public will forgive a great deal of misconduct. Thus, celebrated
war-crimes cases did not prevent American victory in the Philippines or
British victory in South Africa. Nor was the My Lai massacre a turning
point in the Vietnam War. By the time it was exposed in late 1969,
support for the war was already in freefall because victory did not
appear to be in sight.

Today, Americans’ (and Iraqis’) verdict
on the war will not turn on what happened in Abu Ghraib or Haditha.
More important is what is happening in Ramadi and Baghdad — major
cities where the security situation has deteriorated over the last
year. The Bush administration can weather the excesses of some
soldiers; it cannot survive the perception that we are losing. Instead
of indulging in excessive self-flagellation, therefore, the Pentagon
and the White House would be well advised to take decisive steps, such
as sending more troops, to restore law and order.

Victory diminishes the significance of war crimes; defeat magnifies them into defining events.

     Victory is all that matters.  War crimes in the name of victory are no vice; or, at least, they do not upset the comfortable patriotic narrative of how good our "boys" are.

     Boot is, of course, wrong.  He is wrong both morally and politically.  Actually he is simply amoral: seemingly willing to accept Abu Graib and Haditha in the name of victory.  What he elides is the fact that the immorality of the Iraq war stretches well beyond these most infamous atrocities.  Here is the question Boot and Rumsfeld and neo con backers of the war avoid at every turn: how many innocent civilians have been killed both directly and indirectly because of American military action?   I suspect an honest answer to that question would bring all moral debate about the war to a screeching halt.  So many have died that the terrible toll cannot be justified by the evil of the previous regime.  Yes, Saddam was horrible.  But the past three years are not better and, very possibly worse.  Boot’s war is a fundamental moral failure.

    But Boot is also wrong politically.  He fails to see just how much Abu Graib and Haditha, and the countless instances of brutality against Iraqi citizens, matter in Iraqi politics. Perhaps he has not been listening of late, but the Prime Minister has suggested that US abuses are a daily occurrence.  Boot also does not mentioned the fact that a leading Sunni political party in the Iraqi parliament is now accusing the US of numerous killings of innocent civilians.  Juan Cole analyzes the politics of this statement:

The significance of these charges is that they are coming from the
Iraqi Islamic Party, a group that has been mostly willing to cooperate
with the US. Indeed, al-Zaman says that they handed the file to US
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. The IIP forms the core of the Iraqi Accord
Front, the Sunni religious coalition that holds 44 seats in parliament.
A vice president, a vice premier, 4 cabinet members, and the speaker of
the house all belong to this coalition. So these charges are
originating not with hard liners or radicals outside the new system,
but with persons who are de facto allies of the United States. If this
is how a key element of the Iraqi Accord Front feels about the US,
relations between Washington and parts of the new government it so
trumpeted are obviously very shaky.

     War is a fundamentally immoral act (because it invariably leads to the death of innocents) and should only be embarked upon in the most extreme and dire of circumstances.  Bush and company chose to go to war when they did not have to.  And all we now have to show for it is the bare inhumanity they have created.   The ancient Confucians and Taoists understood all too well the horrors of war, and they counseled us to avoid it.  Iraq has certainly borne them out.

     And one last question for Boot: what happens if victory escapes us, as  seems to be happening in Iraq?  Will Abu Graib and Haditha matter for him then?