Tales of ‘dropping artillery on people’s homes’, of ‘shooting down [fleeing] men and women’, of intimidation and looting and mutilated children’s bodies have emerged from US military operations in Iraq. These accounts of brutality refer to a military that only twelve years earlier conducted what was then hailed as ‘the most legalistic war … ever fought’. They describe a war that prominent military commentator Michael Schmitt called ‘undoubtedly the most precise in the history of warfare’, during which US forces ‘went to great pains to comply with the applicable norms of international humanitarian law’; US forces that the famous investigative journalist Seymour Hersh denounced as more ‘violent and murderous’ than any American military before them.

Two themes dominate the popular and academic discussion of US military operations: criticism that US military practices inflict unacceptable harm on civilians, on the one hand, and praise for the subjection of every aspect of combat operations to legal review, on the other hand. The criticism is reinforced by media reports of widespread outrage about US military operations among the populations under attack. The praise seems vindicated by a closer examination of the military’s institutional set-up and organisational culture. An increasing number of professional lawyers have seen their involvement in decision-making grow, and legal terminology has gradually infused military discourse. Where once the law was considered to be silent – on the battlefield of war – today its voice, or at least its vocabulary, is omnipresent. Some commentators consider this an indication of the effectiveness of international humanitarian law (IHL), and indeed the normative acceptability of US warfare, notwithstanding the vigorous reprobation of just that warfare by their colleagues.