When good soldiers go bad

I noted this morning that the Commanding Officer of the US Army's 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, has received a "letter of admonition" over the "kill team" murders in Afghanistan. Military Times reports:

An Army investigation finds no "causal relationship" between Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV’s aggressive leadership and the killings, but it criticizes Tunnell for neglectfulness that created a climate ripe for misconduct.

The investigation ... ended in a letter of admonition for Tunnell, per I Corps Commander Lt. Gen Curtis "Mike" Scaparotti.

Tunnell’s superiors in Afghanistan lost confidence in him after he threw out the playbook and butted heads with commanders, derisively rejecting capacity-building counterinsurgency doctrine in favor of a "counter-guerilla" strategy that concentrated in engaging and destroying the enemy.

"Soldiers lives are routinely put at hazard because the doctrine has not been written within a context of American military art and science, organization or capability," he told investigators in his own statement for the report. "US Army forces are not organized, trained, or equipped to implement the doctrine."

Der Speigel, quoting from the report, said Tunnell was on a personal crusade in Afghanistan to take revenge for being shot in the leg in Iraq; He kept the metal rod from his leg on his desk and would use it "as an illustration," one officer said.

One soldier said of a talk by Tunnell, "If I were to paraphrase the speech and my impressions about the speech in a single sentence, the phrase would be: 'Let’s kill those mother****ers'."

There's more at the link.

The sad thing is, I have to agree with Col. Tunnell that "US Army forces are not organized, trained, or equipped to implement" the doctrine presently being applied in Afghanistan. Soldiers are trained, equipped and indoctrinated to attack and destroy the enemy. When their hands are tied by higher authority; when they see their comrades being wounded and killed because their superiors (be they military or political) won't allow them to do the job they were trained to do; when they see their safety and security undermined by policies and procedures that force them to put their own lives on the line for no good reason they can discern . . . they can (and frequently do) become unpredictable, sometimes even uncontrollable. The only answer is for commanders to implement and maintain strong, robust leadership of their unit(s). Where commanders fail to do this, or authorize and/or encourage "extracurricular" methods of dealing with the situation . . . atrocities can all too easily result.

Lidice. Oradour-sur-Glane. The Bodo League. The Mau Mau detainees. My Lai. Srebrenica. I could add literally dozens, if not hundreds, more names and locations to the list, all post-World War II, but what's the point? The lesson is the same. Remove soldiers from civilization, cut them off from their civilized roots, expose them to barbarity, and soon you will remove civilization from the soldier. I've seen such conduct in person in Africa. Today the Daily Mail ran an article reporting how German prisoners of war in England boasted about - delighted in - the casualties they'd inflicted on civilians; and it's a matter of historical record that Allied servicemen did similar things. (I've personally spoken with a former Mustang pilot in the USAAF who recounted to me his experiences in 1944/45, strafing farmers and their horses in the fields 'to prevent the Germans growing food', or shooting up farm markets in village squares for the same reason.)

I guess the "letter of admonition" to Col. Tunnell has effectively ended his military career. I'm afraid it's his own fault . . . if he was convinced that US policies were in error, he should have followed Napoleon's famous dictum (of which he must certainly have been aware, as it's cited in many officer training materials):

A commander is not protected by an order from a minister or prince who is absent from the theater of operations and has little or no knowledge of the most recent turn of events. Every commander responsible for executing a plan that he considers bad or disastrous is criminal. He must point out the flaws, insist that it be changed and at last resort resign rather than be the instrument of the destruction of his own men. Every commander in chief who - as a result of superior orders - delivers a battle convinced that he will lose it, is likewise a criminal.

(Bold print is my emphasis.)

If he'd followed Napoleon's advice, Col. Tunnell might have ended up cutting short his own career . . . but at least he'd have done so with honor; and he wouldn't have gone into retirement bearing the stigma of having commanded the "kill team" murderers.

Peter