Hornberger, Jacob G. “Killing Iraqi children.”. The Future of Freedom Foundation, June 19, 2006.

Summary: The government of the United States and its military authorities are heartlessly indifferent to the innocent Iraqis killed and wounded in our attempts to slaughter insurgent leaders, such as the five-year-old girl who was killed by the same bombs that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The government and the military view such events as incidental, assuming that achieving the goals of American foreign policy would justify the means.

However, American foreign policy in Iraq is itself immoral, so that using it to justify further immoralities is particularly callous and vicious.

Some would argue that such “ccollateral damage” is just an unfortunate byproduct of war. War is brutal. People get killed in war. Compared with the two world wars, not that many people have been killed in Iraq, proponents of the Iraq war and occupation would claim.

Such claims, however, miss an important point: U.S. military forces have no right, legal or moral, even to be in Iraq killing anyone. Why? Because neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States. The Iraqi people had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. Thus, this was an optional war against Iraq, one that President Bush and his military forces did not have to wage. ...

Moreover, what people often forget is that the United States is no longer at war in Iraq. This is an occupation, not a war. The war ended when Saddam Hussein's government fell. At that point, U.S. forces could have exited the country. (Or they could have exited the country when it became obvious that Saddam's infamous WMDs were nonexistent.) Instead, the president opted to have the troops remain in Iraq to “rebuild” the country and to establish “democracy,” and the troops opted to obey his orders to do so. Occupying Iraq, like invading Iraq, was an optional course of action. ...

... All too many Americans have yet to confront the moral implications of invading and occupying Iraq. U.S. officials continue to exhort the American people to judge the war and occupation on whether it proves to be “successful” in establishing “stability” and “democracy” in Iraq. If so, the idea will be that the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, including countless Iraqi children, will have been worth it. It would be difficult to find a more morally repugnant position than that.