America's worrying war crimes regression

Our Founding Fathers would be appalled

Graffiti denouncing U.S. drone strikes in Yemen.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah)

"I charge you," George Washington wrote to the then-loyal Benedict Arnold preparing to lead the Quebec Campaign of 1775, "as you value your own safety and honour, and the favour and esteem of your Country, that you check, by every motive of duty and fear of punishment, every attempt to plunder or insult any of the inhabitants of Canada."

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any Canadian or Indian," Washington continued, that soldier should be subject to "severe and exemplary punishment" appropriate to the "shame, disgrace, and ruin" such behavior brought "to themselves and Country."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.