>So the Americans are evil to impose Karzai's regime on Afghanistan and maintain it by winking at massive election fraud?

That situation is actually much more morally and ethically complex than you seem to imply. Let's consider the alternatives:

1: If the Americans had forced Karzai to concede, or otherwise directly interfered in the election process, it would have destroyed the sovereignty of Afghanistan, and been no more democratic than the election fraud it would have displaced.

2: If the Americans had instead withdrawn support completely from Karzai and allowed his regime to collapse, it would not have been his electoral competitor who would have taken power, it would have been the Taliban. And then there would have been no more elections.

The situation there is far from perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was before, and there is at least a chance of a legitimate election in the future, which brings me to:

>No elections were held in South Vietnam because it was widely known in the American Administration that Ho and co would have won hands down.

After the American withdrawal, once the pressure of communist conquest was (temporarily) alleviated, the South had a legitimate election that rejected communism. Then we allowed them to be conquered by the communist NVA.

>It didn't matter.

Then why did you say it?

>And it was sometimes necessary to destroy Vietnamese villages to save them. Or waterboard and torture people to get information. Or drop an atom bomb on civilians to avoid casualties to your own armies in "honorable" combat against uniform wearing (but stubborn) foes. Use napalm against unarmed villagers. etc etc. Rendition and torture innocents. Protect mercenaries from prosecution etc.

You have mixed up a sampling of real war crimes, apocryphal incidents, and legitimate actions. The fact that war crimes are sometimes committed does not invalidate the principle of proportionality.

>By a strict interpretation, everyone from GW Bush down is a war criminal

Only if waterboarding is torture, a point over which there is considerable disagreement. In my profession, everyone must undergo training which includes being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques, up to and including waterboarding. This training is facilitated by individuals who have been subjected to acts that are indisputably torture. The general consensus among my peers is that waterboarding is not torture. YMMV

>All your examples of "dishonourable" fighting serves to illustrate my point that tactics which are effective against the dominant powers of the day are 'dishonorable' and as soon as they are adopted by them they become "honorable."

You obviously missed this point:

>War should be fought between combatants, and acts that either deliberately target non-combatants, or which deliberately make it harder for your enemy to tell you apart from non-combatants are dishonorable.

So I'll elaborate a little bit more: there is a clear and precise factor that distinguishes what I am calling "honorable" from what I call "dishonorable:" whether or not civilians are respected as illegitimate targets. This is completely independent of who happens to be dominant at the time.

>However if it makes you uncomfortable not to think of the US Army as some kind of paragons of honor and virtue fighting the forces of evil, go right ahead.

I have no such illusions. Even the best-run fighting forces include at least a small but significant minority of individuals who do illegal and/or dishonorable things, both on and off the battlefield. This does not mean that we shouldn't honor and respect the overwhelming majority who serve with professionalism and honor. As I said elsewhere:

>[Your] statement also seems to imply that we should judge the merits of military service on the basis of our political views about the particular wars fought, and on the degree of success achieved. In reality, we judge the merits of military service on the basis that these individuals volunteered to make tremendous sacrifices in service to a noble ideal: our Constitution, and the concept it embodies (a self-governed people).

The fact that some individuals fail to uphold these ideals, or that even some entire wars arguably do not serve them, does not change the fact that all members of our military are sworn to uphold them and that the overwhelming majority do so honorably.