Death penalty for soldiers?

A story in the Seattle Times and numerous other news sources is reporting that the Army investigator looking into the case of four soldiers accused of murder during a raid in Iraq will recommend the death penalty. The story makes me curious whether or not those in our state that wish to reinstate the death penalty are in favor of putting these soldiers to death if they are found guilty. Just how far does the support for the death penalty go?

The military has its own justice system so obviously whether or not our state has the death penalty has no direct effect on soldiers being put to death for crimes in the military. But I think putting a soldier to death for a crime committed during a war sheds some light on just how complicated it is to allow the government to order people to be executed.

Nothing completely excuses a soldier murdering a civilian that is not threatening him or her. A lot of people probably believe they themselves would never execute a defenseless civilian. However, war and the horrible situations it throws people into often create the conditions for rational people to do things they never thought they could do.

There is a character in the movie Saving Private Ryan that is meant to drive home this point. He is the translator that talks the leader of the group, Tom Hanks' character, that is looking for Private Ryan into letting the German prisoner they have caught go free when the others argue to kill him so he can't go back to his unit and kill more Americans.

Later in the movie it is easy to actually loathe this character because he can't bring himself to go into a room and kill a German soldier that is about to kill one of soldiers from his group. He is paralyzed by fear and the fact that he doesn't want to actually kill anyone so he sits on the stairs while the German soldier kills an American soldier.

Then he sees the soldier he talked Hanks into letting go shoot and kill Hanks. When he is later put in charge of the German soldiers that have surrendered after the battle is won, he shoots the German that killed Hanks right in the head even though he has surrendered and is unarmed. He breaks and his belief that he shouldn't kill anyone becomes secondary to the hatred that developed very quickly for the German soldier that killed Hanks. His character illustrates how even a person completely opposed to killing people can become capable of something that is techincally murder.

I don't know all of the facts in the current case of the American soldiers accused of murdering an Iraqi, but no matter what the facts are, I don't think the soldiers should be put to death. We put them into horrible situations every day and force them to deal with stress that most of us cannot even begin to imagine and then expect them to be perfect. They should definitely be punished if they are guilty, but having our government execute them after putting them into the middle of a civil war seems almost like a sick joke.

The most ridiculous aspect of potentially killing these soldiers is that like the death penalty for civilians, it will not stop this from happening again in the future. Doe anyone really believe that potentially being put to death by a trial is the dominant thought of any soldier when they are faced with what they perceive to be a dangerous situation after living for months with the fear that they could be blown up every time they drive down a road?

This case, like every civilian murder case, might rest on a lot of conflicting testimony that will be hard to sort out and it will probably be almost impossible to determine exactly what happened that day. Humans make mistakes and sometimes think they have seen things they haven't seen. No one should ever be put to death in a system where human error could lead to a mistake that could never be undone.