There's a reason "war crimes" has to be in scare quotes there.
Do you think the American public has the temerity to survive the shock of its own complicity in the murder of literally, millions of innocent people by their own armed forces?
I don't think it will be good for America unless their war criminals are prosecuted - and we all know that isn't going to happen. Trouble is, the evidence of those crimes is not going away ...
http://psr.org/blog/resource/body-count
“I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face.”
U.S. General Stanley A. McCrystal in his inaugural speech as ISAF Commander in June 2009.1
A bit like what happened to the WTC in 2001. I mean, what were they doing, navigating those buildings into the path of a couple of innocent planes, eh?
It's an understandable, though regrettable, mistake when you look past Assange's "collateral murder" editorializing.
Lied into a criminal war against Iraq, the American people are now complicit in the war crimes committed in their names. What is understandable, though indeed very regrettable, is the American public's general desire to not be held accountable for these crimes against humanity...
This is circular. Your argument that this is "murder" cannot proceed from an assumption of the same.
> Your opinion... is utterly abhorrent to anyone who has watched that video...
I don't think personal attacks are productive. Additionally, there are wide arrays of views on this video. Your argument in support of your view appears to be based on an assumption that it is widely held and then an appeal to popularity, so it is doubly fallacious. Try making your point without assuming that everyone already agrees with you.
> can clearly see, for themselves, that these people were absolutely NO threat to US forces in the area
This isn't apparent from the footage; in fact the audio clearly indicates otherwise. They believed they had arms including an RPG. In any case, that isn't the legal test. Even unclassified ROE materials are clear that national self-defense is not the only lawful basis for the use of force in jus in bello.
"They could have had a rocket launcher" is an agitprop straw man intentionally proffered in order to minimise the magnitude of the crime committed. I wonder why it is so important for you, personally, to minimise this criminal act?
1) They were military-age males
Say you have the ability to rain death miles above at whim. Do you think "military-age male" is a robust separator of who lives and who dies? Would you fit in this category? There but for the grace of god go you.
The video doesn't show a mistake at all. It shows a very deliberate action, carried out with great success. That these people were "innocent" in that some westerners cared whether they lived or died is the only reason you're here now defending their murder.
2) they were in an group of armed men on a battlefield and were pointing the long barrel of a telephoto lens at American Humvees from behind cover.
Yes it has nothing to do with a patrol taking fire from that area and confusion over a camera one of the journalists was carrying on his shoulder. I agree it absolutely shouldn't have happened but to gloss over these facts if you have watched the video is revisionist in my opinion.
Also you failed to mention the real war crime which was firing at first responders some of who were children.
We can go on and on about what the real war crime was but for my money it's that this incident was not unusual. We talk about it a lot because some westerners cared about two people who were killed, but these things happened over and over and over and over and over. Maybe someone wants to go litigate those one by one. Or they can zoom out and see that this lax standard for killing people will inevitably lead to many of these incidents, and that going forward with the policy anyway is a war crime reminiscent of free-fire zones in Vietnam.
I'm genuinely sorry Namir died and it shouldn't have happened but he knew that he was putting his life at risk let's be honest. On the other hand the passers by in the van who tried to take the wounded to the hospital who also were obliterated were just good Samaritans and I really think you should at least acknowledge them when talking about what happened to Namir as a war crime.