Are you presuming that US forces intentionally killed civilian bystanders? Are you presuming that all these "civilian" dead were civilian bystanders, when the insurgents terrorists almost always dress in civilian garb rather than military or paramilitary uniforms?
>>I do not know if Haditha was a war crime, and neither does anyone else at this point.<<
What part of the above sentence do you not understand?
The accusation is that civilian bystanders were intentionally killed by Marines. I have no idea if that has happened. However, such things happen in every war, and have absolutely no relationship to whether the war is just or not.
The difference is whether such actions are part of the policy of the military force involved, or are prohibited and prosecuted by it.
BTW, those dressed in civilian clothes and attacking soldiers are not legal combatants under the Geneva Convention and are legally subject to execution immediately on apprehension. A distinction generally lost on the MSM.
The question is not whether such illegal combatants can be legally executed. It is whether these individuals fit into that category.
What is the point of having rules if we promptly begin making excuses for those breaking them? Some of the excuses trotted out for these soldiers sound remarkably like excuses made by liberals for civilian criminality.