Quote Originally Posted by Sarmatian View Post
We need specify are we talking about moral issues or legal practicality here.

From legal point of view, it doesn't really matter. Some countries, most notably USA, but also other powerful countries like Russia and China can do what they want with impunity. The international institutions are set up in such a way that they could never be held legally responsible, and even if they were by some miracle, it would be impossible to enforce such a ruling. Go back a few decades, every single American president was a war criminal. Who's gonna come over and arrest an American president?

A multipolar world might at least bring some semblance of equality as multiple centers of power would keep each other in check. On the other hand, it could go horribly wrong, see WW1.

So, I'm not very interested in legal issues, because of those reasons. I find moral aspects more important, and with those in mind, the marine involved was guilty. There was even no draft for the Iraqi war. He volunteered for service. If he sincerely didn't expect to be put in a situation where his life might be in danger than he had no grasp of reality.
The moral issue is the same as the legal one in my original question to the thread, since the matter struck me as war-crimey and I'm asking how you all judge the legality.

My subsequent thoughts are speculating on why the official investigation came to a different conclusion.

That is, if successful courts-martial of the Marine and his comrade sets a precedent over the incident, then there isn't much to justify why that precedent shouldn't be pursued in likely similar incidents throughout the battle involving many other Marines and soldiers. Indeed, if it turns out the operating procedure developed for the battle was especially prone to encourage or demand actions that would frequently be criminal, you could move up to high-ranking officers, and eventually even the civilian leadership, who developed and approved these procedures.

Justice is easy to apply to 'isolated' cases, but if you take strict legalism to its logical conclusion the whole institution implodes - for example, as in your example of trying the POTUS for war crimes.