The limits to the "honor the soldiers" slogan

Dishonorable actions don't deserve to be honored, whether they occur in the officer corps or in the ranks.  In "Requiem for the Bush Doctrine", Current History Dec 2005, Andrew Bacevich writes:

Especially in a democracy, a doctrine of preventive war also requires soldiers who manifest a consistently high level of professionalism. To maintain public support for what is, stripped to its essentials, a policy of aggression, the military forces committed to the enterprise must acquit themselves with honor, thereby making it easier to suppress questions about the war's moral justification. As long as us soldiers in Iraq behave like liberators, for example, it becomes easier for President Bush to maintain the position that America's true purpose is to spread the blessings of freedom and democracy.

Sadly, in the dirty war that Iraq has become, a number of American soldiers have behaved in wavs that have undermined the administrations liberation narrative. This is a story in which the facts are as vet only partially known. But this much we can say tor sure: after the revelations from Abu Ghraib prison and the credible allegations lodged recentlv bv Captain Ian Fishback regarding widespread detainee abuse in the 82d Airborne Division, and with other accounts of misconduct steadily accumulating from week to week, it is no longer possible to pass off soldierly misbehavior as the late-night shenanigans of a few low-ranking sadists lacking adequate supervision. Unprofessional behavior in the ranks of the American military may not have reached epidemic proportions, but it is far from rare.

More sadly still, the chain of command seems determined to turn a blind eye to this growing problem. ...  The American officer corps once professed to hold sacrosanct the principle of command responsibility. No more. At the very least it no longer applies to those occupying the executive suites in Baghdad and Washington.

The US military may well be teetering on the brink of a profound moral crisis. Another conflict like Iraq could easily prove the tipping point. That prospect alone ought to temper the Bush administration's enthusiasm for any further experiments with preventive war. (my emphasis)