Docs' delusional 'war crime' charge: Column

The reaction from officials of Doctors Without Borders to the attack on its hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz was to condemn it as a "war crime." The use of that term is characteristic of the the overheated, inflammatory rhetoric used these days by modern media to capture the attention of a jaded public suffering from sensory overload that has become increasingly receptive to hyperbole, exaggeration and sometimes even outright falsehood.

Such language tends to conflate mistakes and malice and equates stupidity with sin.

President Obama's apology to Doctors Without Borders was certainly in order, as would have been a retraction by the organization of their overheated 'war crimes' allegation.

Sadly, the reckless use of the term "war crime" was given credibility by the blundering response of U.S. military officials who couldn't get straight the story of whether it was American or Afghan soldiers who were under attack and needing air support to avoid being overrun. It is also unclear whether Taliban fighters were sheltering in the hospital and although it is indisputable that more than 20 patients and staff were killed, calling it a war crime is not a sober accusation, it is hysteria.

Glenn Reynolds: Obama saves himself by gunning down Democrats' electoral chances

What happened in Kunduz was not the result of a U.S. government policy to attack the facilities of international charitable organizations or universally recognized sanctuaries. You can trace the implementation of the Holocaust to the notorious Wannsee conference in 1942 when Nazi leaders formalized plans for the extermination of the Jews — that was the blueprint for a war crime — but no evidence has surfaced that such a meeting preceded the Kunduz attack.

To use the term "war crime" to describe the dreadful air-strike on the Afghan hospital is to equate it to Babi Yar, the ravine in Ukraine where tens of thousands of Jews were willfully and systematically slaughtered by Nazi troops. Only someone blinded by moral obtuseness would draw such a comparison. Yet prominent commentators such as Glenn Greenwald who publicized the revelations of Edward Snowden unblushingly used the term. If every blunder by an army in the course of a battle is seen as a war crime then the term has been defined out of existence and the horror that such incidents represent is trivialized.

My own experience with the mindless use of the term came last year, when my university extended an invitation to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to serve as commencement speaker. The invitation was greeted by a denunciation from a group of faculty members and a sit-in in the office of the university president by 50 students who conspicuously used the term "war criminal" to describe Rice. Concerned about disruption at the graduation ceremony, she withdrew. The result not only forced the university to scramble at the last minute to get a substitute speaker but cast a cloud over the university as a place of free discussion and intellectual freedom. Turn your back on a speaker? Fine. Abstain from the ceremony? Your choice. But intimidate a guest speaker by branding her a war criminal? Unpardonable. The invitation was to Condoleezza Rice not Slobodan Milosevic or Joseph Kony of the notorious Lord's Resistance Army.

Column: The Democrats' great education schism

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

Was the invasion of Iraq a mistake? I certainly came around to that view. Some very intelligent members of Congress were duped by bad intelligence supplied by the Bush Administration.

Were they also war criminals? Proof that a war crime has occurred needs to meet a very high evidentiary standard that includes intent. Those using the loaded term "war crime" have not a shred of evidence to suggest that the attack was pursuant to a policy decision calling for attacks on protected facilities such as hospitals.

Doctors Without Borders cheapens the value of its own indignation by raising what seems to have been a deadly mistake to the level of a wanton moral transgression, but the Pentagon also shouldn't simply dismiss it with the default explanation that it was just the "fog of war." It was a bloody blunder, but not, by any reasonable definition, a war crime.

Ross K. Baker is distinguished professor of political science at Rutgers University and a member of the Board of Contributors of USA TODAY.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to the Opinion front page.