If you study conflicts between regular forces trained to fight under the Geneva Convention and irregular forces who follow no rules (asymmetric warfare), you will discover that in almost every case of protracted asymmetric warfare the regular forces become corrupted, leading inevitably to atrocities of one kind or another. It was the same for the French in Algeria, the British in Northern Ireland, the US in Viet Nam and the current mess. Sooner or later somebody is going to fail the Nietzsche Test:
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”
And those in authority should know that, and avoid protracted asymmetric conflicts. If they don’t then they are going to have some monsters on their hands and have to decide whether those people were born monsters or made monsters by the situation their superiors placed them in. Hence the pardons, and the possibility that either granting or denying a pardon could be a tragic error.
Earl