Wars are horrible enough as-is; we have laws of armed conflict to try the best we can to keep a lid on the utter barbarity of it all, and to help our warfighters be able to live with themselves after.
This is not a new concept; one of the first people to expound on the proper laws of war in the West was Saint Augustine, and his work is still the philosophical foundation of the subject.
In comparison, the French put a general in the dock when his soldiers in the Ivory Coast, at his implicit orders, extrajudicially killed Firmin Mahé, a bandit himself responsible for many murders, and I believe other European countries have done similar prosecutions of senior officers.
Impunity is a choice.
I'll buy that all of the above were disgraces to the US, and I'll buy that the IDF is a little too cavalier with the rules of engagement. But come on. It's easy to pontificate from an armchair about who's "whitewashing" things when it isn't your friends getting shot. In wars, these things will happen and the best a government can do is put measures in place to stop it and then punish it severely when it occurs.
Compare this with the US during the Philippines War in the 19th century, an exceedingly dirty colonial conflict with no meaningful press involvement to blow the whistle, yet a major was court-martialled for waterboarding a prisoner:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#During_the_Phili...
Ultimately these practices are either a sign of rotten leadership, or poor discipline. Once you let the rot fester, it's only a matter of time before the entire army is gangrened.
So let's take that bigoted "veterans are broken people" narrative and stuff it where the sun don't shine alongside "women are hysterical" and so forth.
I know far to much army men (mostly airforce, some Marsouins) to say "veterans are broken people", i know it isn't the case.