Death by ROE

[Skyray]

I received an email from a member of National Capital Squadron discussing an essay by Diane West over the best selling book:

"Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10,"

both the essay and the book raise some very troubling issues.  This element of Seal Team 10 essentially committed suicide by releasing unarmed civilians who immediately informed the Taliban of their presence and caused them to be attacked by an overwhelming force. The ROE (rules of engagement) say that you don't harm unarmed civilians--but what do you do if they have the intention and ability to harm you?

[JohnKachenmeister]

Civilians may be detained (Under the Geneva Convention Protocols) if their release will compromise the mission.  There is a requirement to not execute civilians, but there is nobody in any place ending in "--Stan" who can sue you for false arrest.

A SEAL team might be in a position that it would be unable to detain civilians since their force was too small.  If support was not available, the team leader had better have a new plan in his hip pocket.

[SJFedor]

Have the team medic give everyone some etomidate! That'll snow them just long enough to escape.

(Only give succs if you're really a mean person  )

[/medical terminology]

[Skyray]

You bring up an option that I had not considered: temporary incapacitation.  I wonder if the succs you are talking about is succinyl hydrocloride, a smooth muscle relaxant that is pretty invariably fatal unless someone breathes for you.  Anyway, the whole Diane West Article follows--as you can see, it raises some knotty issues.

August 17, 2007

Ideas Cause Actions, and Actions Have Consequences

Ultimately, it was philosophers and their politician progeny who killed these men.

*********************************

Death by rules of engagement

By Diana West

Friday, August 17, 2007

Now that Marcus Luttrell's book, "Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10," is a national bestseller, maybe Americans are ready to start a discussion about the core issue his story brings to light: the inverted morality and insanity of U.S. military rules of engagement.

On a stark mountaintop in Afghanistan, Leading Petty Officer Luttrell and three Navy SEAL teammates found themselves having just such a discussion back in 2005. Dropped behind enemy lines to kill or capture a Taliban kingpin who commanded between 150 and 200 fighters, the SEAL team was unexpectedly discovered in the early stages of a mission whose success, of course, depended on secrecy. Three unarmed Afghan goatherds, one a teenager, had stumbled across the Americans' position, presenting the soldiers with an urgent dilemma: What should they do?

If they let the Afghans go, the Afghans would probably alert the Taliban to the their whereabouts. This would mean a battle in which the Americans were outnumbered by at least 35 to 1. If the Americans didn't let the goatherds go -- if they killed them, because there was no way to hold them -- the Americans would avoid detection and, most likely, leave the area safely. On a treeless mountainside far from home, four of our bravest patriots came to the ghastly conclusion that the only way to save themselves was forbidden by the ROE. Such an action would set off a media firestorm, and lead to murder charges for all.

It is agonizing to read their tense debate as recounted by Marcus Luttrell, the "lone survivor" of the disastrous mission. Each of the SEALs was aware of "the strictly correct military decision" -- namely, that it would be suicide to let the goatherds live. But they were also aware that their own country, for which they were fighting, would ultimately turn on them if they made that decision. It was as if committing suicide had become the only politically correct option. For fighting men ordered behind enemy lines, such rules are not only insane, they're immoral.

The SEALs sent the goatherds on their way. One hour later, a sizeable Taliban force attacked, beginning a horrendous battle that resulted not only in the deaths of Mr. Luttrell's three SEAL teammates, but also the deaths of 16 would-be rescuers -- eight additional SEALs and eight Army special operations soldiers whose helicopter was shot down by a Taliban RPG. "Look at me right now in my story," Mr. Luttrell writes. "Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it's worth: If you don't want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place." I couldn't agree more, except for the fact that conservatives, up to and including the president, are at least as responsible for our outrageous rules of engagement as liberals. The question Americans need to ask themselves now, with "Lone Survivor" as Exhibit A, is whether adhering to these precious rules is worth the exorbitant price -- in this case, 19 valiant soldiers.

Another question to raise is why our military, knowing the precise location of a Taliban kingpin, sends in Navy SEALs, not Air Force bombers, in the first place? The answer is "collateral damage." I know this -- and so do our enemies, who, as Mr. Luttrell writes, laugh at our rules of engagement as they sleep safely at night. I find it hard to believe that this is something most Americans applaud, but it's impossible to know because this debate hasn't begun. But it should. It strikes at the core not only of our capacity to make war, but also our will to survive. A nation that doesn't automatically value its sons who fight to protect it more than the "unarmed civilians" they encounter behind enemy lines is not only unlikely to win a war: It isn't showing much interest in its own survival. This is what comes through, loud and ugly, from that mountaintop in Afghanistan, where four young Americans ultimately agreed it was better to be killed than to kill.

Diana West is a contributing columnist for Townhall.com and author of the new book, The Death of the Grown-up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. Be the first to read Diana West's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.

Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

[JohnKachenmeister]

While I do not presume to judge the actions of the SEALs, I would like to make some tactical observations:

1.  Their mission depended on secrecy.  Well, it isn't a secret anymore.  Why not abandon it and withdraw? 

2.  Tie up and gag the civilians, and leave them.  That might give them enough time to escape, even to finish their mission.

3.  (You didn't hear this from me) Kill them anyway.  Decide among yourselves whether they committed suicide or were killed trying to escape.  That's your story, stick to it.  If it is questioned, insist that the Afghans were a "Taliban scout/recon element," and therefore a legitmate target of war.  Given the circumstances, and hindsight being 20/20, this is actually pretty close to the truth.

Overall, the propensity for charging folks with "War Crimes" is a self-inflicted wound.  We should do it only in extreme cases, such as was encountered at Mai Lai.  Close calls should be decided in favor of the G.I.

[flyguy06]

How is a Vietnam vet an expert on whats going on in Iraq and Afghanastan?

Kill them anyway? that kind of defeats the whole reason we are over there. I WAS a patrol leader in Iraq, and it is very differant. But I amnot going to get into it on this website.

[mikeylikey]

^  I totally agree with Kach on his items 1, 2.  I believe IRAQ Civilians should not be considered civilians (in the normal sense of the word) there anymore.  We need a major overhaul of the conventions as well as the rules of warfare.  I know of children no older than 8 that planted IED's and killed our fellow service members.  It is absolutely VIETNAM.  KACH is most likely an intelligent man and can make the relation between Nam and Iraq without having been there. 

[Skyray]

Sometimes you are faced with a dilemma in which there is no good solution.  Leave them sentient and free and you are courting disaster for your team.  In this case, nineteen good men bought it for the sake of three goatherds.  Would I have let them go unharmed and put my team in danger? Absolutely not!!  If possible and I had the means, I would have incapacitated them and withdrawn.  If not, then that is the fortunes of war.  Like the Arab that wouldn't be still in the Mosque when the marine told him to.  The marine shot him and got charged with murder.  There are a lot of cops here.  If you tell someone who is a threat to "Freeze" and he doesn't and you shoot him, is it a good shoot?

[JohnKachenmeister]

^  I totally agree with Kach on his items 1, 2.  I believe IRAQ Civilians should not be considered civilians (in the normal sense of the word) there anymore.  We need a major overhaul of the conventions as well as the rules of warfare.  I know of children no older than 8 that planted IED's and killed our fellow service members.  It is absolutely VIETNAM.  KACH is most likely an intelligent man and can make the relation between Nam and Iraq without having been there. 

Mike:

We faced, in many cases in Vietnam, the same situation.  There is a difference between "civilians" and "noncombatants."  If a civilian is performing a mission or function for the military, he makes himself a target.  In this case, the reporting of the American SEAL position was acting as a de facto enemy recon patrol.

I do not claim any special knowledge of conditions in the current war, but as a career officer (MP branch, even) I do claim to have some knowledge of the Protocols that govern the conduct of war.

My personal view is, if the mission is dependent upon secrecy, and secrecy is compromised, your mission is over.  Unless you have ample support and a "Surprise lost" contingency plan, the BEST action is to withdraw and come back another day.

[Earhart1971]

I received an email from a member of National Capital Squadron discussing an essay by Diane West over the best selling book:

"Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10,"

both the essay and the book raise some very troubling issues.  This element of Seal Team 10 essentially committed suicide by releasing unarmed civilians who immediately informed the Taliban of their presence and caused them to be attacked by an overwhelming force. The ROE (rules of engagement) say that you don't harm unarmed civilians--but what do you do if they have the intention and ability to harm you?

Hindsight being 20/20, and I am sure the operations profiles have been changed since.

But take one member of your team, and that person guards the group of three for the rest of the mission.

The rest of the team proceeds.

Or yes, you just call off the mission.

Its happened before in Iraq.

The SAS and a Delta Force get discovered in the boonies, where nobody should be, by wandering civilians. Civilians being there was no accident. The enemy knows how to work us.

The elite force become targets and need rescue.

That's why a lot of non-snake eating Generals don't like "Special Forces" missions.

[JohnKachenmeister]

It is true that non-SF commanders do not appreciate the work of SF units, and as such frequently mis-employ them to missions outside of their capability.  For example, why would a SEAL team be tasked to strike deep into Afghanistan, under conditions that it had no support for enemy PW's that may be captured?  That's actually a Ranger mission.  Had that been a platoon of Rangers rather than a small team of SEALs, the operational commander would have had some flexibility with regard to prisoners.

Hindsight IS 20/20.

[afgeo4]

Civillian personnel may be detained for the duration of the operation or as long as needed as long as there is no harm done to them. The issue is more of who's going to detain and guard them. The SO team usually doesn't have the spare manpower to do so and getting a conventional team to the location is usually not an option, so what do you do? They interrogated the people, calculated the risk and made a decision. It turned out to be the wrong one, but many decisions are and in the special operations community, you just never know how things will turn out. That's why they train for the unforseen.

On the comment of Taliban using civillians against us... most of us know that tactic by now and have used it back against the Taliban by feeding false information and/or tracking communications to the source. It's tricky and dangerous... it's war actually.

[Sgt. Savage]

"War is an art and as such is not susceptible of explanation by fixed formula"
- General George Patton Jr

They did what they did. It cost them. I'm sure they would have done it differently had they known the outcome. It was a risk, I'm sure the Team Leader knew it.