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
I feel a need to quibble: You are wrapping atrocities which were the direct result of regime policies, ordered by the responsible command authorities, and carried out with the full knowledge of the chain of command with other events like My Lai, which were not. There is one hell of a difference between what happened in My Lai with what went on at Lidice, Oradour-sur-Glane, Cambodia, and at Srebrenica. On the one hand, you have an act which was an aberration committed by men in combat who were investigated, punished, and who had to try to hide what they'd done from their commanders and civilian authorities.
ReplyDeleteThat's not quite what happened at Lidice or Oradour-sur-Glane, is it? Good God, the Nazis put up signs and made movies celebrating the vigor and thoroughness with which they conducted their reprisal actions, in order to discourage resistance. Slightly different than what happened in the case of My Lai, no?
I'll take full ownership for what happened in 5/2. Reprehensible evil was done on COL Tunnell's watch, and we're responsible as an Army and a nation for letting someone as flawed as he was being placed into command.
However, that being said, to conflate the events in Afghanistan with what went on with full regime backing in Cambodia... That's not just including apples with oranges, that's trying to create a like set with oranges and octopi.
In order to include Lidice, et al with the killings in Afghanistan, you'd have to show that the killings were both sanctioned and encouraged by the hierarchy within the Army, and the civilian authorities overseeing them. You can't do that, can you? Not unless my background in military history is entirely different than your own, that is...
Anonymous at 1.07 a.m.:
ReplyDeleteI respectfully disagree. The atrocities at Lidice, Oradour, etc. were not ordered by a headquarters or general officer. They were a local implementation of a general "vigorous deterrence" policy. I'm sure the officers who ordered them didn't even bother to consult an army headquarters about them - they simply saw them as a continuation of the policies of deterrence already established.
My Lai was similar. It was an illegal and criminal application of a policy already in place, one designed to deter local villagers from supporting the Viet Cong or NVA. If it hadn't been for the presence of witnesses to give testimony to its true nature, those involved would have gotten away with it, I'm sure.
Something similar went on in Iraq. Remember the First and Second Battles of Fallujah? Many civilians were killed or injured in the fighting. I know that US forces tried to warn civilians to evacuate, but many did not or could not, and were caught up in the resulting bloodshed. That happened in other Iraqi cities and towns, too. I don't blame the US for taking action against terrorists: I've done likewise myself, in the past, in another war . . . but there are always casualties among the innocent.
As for Cambodia, I must agree with you: that was a deliberate policy of genocide on the part of the Khmer Rouge government. I shouldn't have included it as an example, and I've edited the article to remove it.
I think you may want to read Michael Yons column of 29 March 2011.
ReplyDeleteGerry
Gerry: I've read that column (both of them). I agree with Michael Yon - but that doesn't negate the points I made.
ReplyDeleteI feel very, very sad for the US soldiers fighting a no-win battle in Afghanistan. Their hands are tied, politically speaking, so they can't possibly win; and they're being forced to put their own lives on the line to implement policies that have been decided by those far removed from the troops on the ground. We've been here before - and our soldiers deserve better.
I'd hoped our military leaders had learned that lesson in Vietnam. It seems at least some of them have not. Certainly, the past two Administrations show no evidence of having done so.
Peter, your understanding of what went on at Lidice is more than slightly flawed:
ReplyDelete"Adolf Hitler ordered Kurt Daluege, Heydrich's successor, to `wade through blood` to find Heydrich's killers.[citation needed] The Germans began a massive and bloody retaliation campaign targeting the entire Czech population.
The mourning speeches at Heydrich's funeral in Berlin were not yet over, when on June 9 the decision was made to "make up for his death". Karl Hermann Frank, Secretary of State for the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, reported from Berlin that the Führer had commanded the following concerning any village found to have harboured Heydrich's killers:[citation needed]
Execute all adult men
Transport all women to a concentration camp
Gather the children suitable for Germanization, then place them in SS families in the Reich and bring the rest of the children up in other ways
Burn down the village and level it entirely"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice
Not quite the "local implementation of a general "vigorous deterrence" policy" you're asserting, is it?
I'll agree that the events at Oradour-sur-Glane fall into a somewhat different category, in that specific orders for that action were not issued by the national command authorities. However, they were completely consistent with how the SS and Wehrmacht were conducting themselves at war. An incomplete list of the major atrocities committed by the Germans, as a matter of policy, is laid out here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane#German_attitudes_to_resistance
You're still going to have a very hard time conflating those actions with My Lai or what happened in Afghanistan. Despite your assertion "It was an illegal and criminal application of a policy already in place, one designed to deter local villagers from supporting the Viet Cong or NVA.", there was no such official policy authorizing the killing of civilians, especially the manner in which it was carried out. Everything in the official realm in the way of Rules of Engagement and general policy demanded due diligence in safeguarding civilian life. It wasn't always followed, I'll grant, but those were the official policies. The official policies of the Nazis? Hmmmm... Those positively encouraged killing civilians, didn't they?
COL Henderson, the commander of 11th Brigade, ordered his subordinates to "...go in there aggressively, close with the enemy and wipe them out for good.", while the battalion commander, LTC Barker issued further orders to "burn the houses, kill the livestock, destroy foodstuffs, and perhaps to close the wells."
Notice anything missing, in there? Like direct and emphatic orders to kill civilians? Somewhat different from the Nazis, no?
I'd also point out that there are no equivalents to Hugh Thompson in the incidents you're including with the same list. Along with the fact that when these incidents came to light, the US Army immediately investigated them, and put the responsible parties up for court martials. Perhaps you can point to something similar, for the Nazi regime? I know I can't think of any cases where the Nazi regime put its own soldiers on trial for violating the laws of war, off the top of my head. Can you name any?
You are just not making an honest argument here, I'm afraid. You cannot include events which were ordered as policy by criminal regimes with those that are made by aberrant members of an army who are acting in direct violation of that army's standing orders and policies.
(continued in next post)
Understand this, however: I'm not defending a single thing done by the US Army, here. COL Tunnell should not have been in command, and SSG Gibbs should have been identified and dealt with long before he had a chance to corrupt the junior Soldiers whose lives he was given responsibility for.
ReplyDeleteOne point you've missed in all this, however: SSG Gibbs was on the Personal Security Detachment, or PSD, which was tasked with serving as COL Tunnell's personal guard and security escort as he conducted what the US Army refers to as "battlefield circulation". A PSD consists of somewhere between 10 and 30 Soldiers, and SSG Gibbs would no doubt have had a prominent role within that element. The idea that he would not have taken cues from COL Tunnell, or that the Colonel would not have had extensive inter-personal contact with SSG Gibbs is ludicrous. Had SSG Gibbs simply been some random squad leader assigned in the Brigade, I'd say COL Tunnell couldn't be held 100% culpable for what happened. However, given that the Colonel had to have had contact with SSG Gibbs on a routine basis, that flies right out the window.
I still want to know more about the circumstances surrounding SSG Gibbs transfer down to the line unit where he committed those crimes, and whether or not it was a case of passing off a "bad apple" on that unit. If there was some indication that SSG Gibbs had "issues", then the subordinate unit should have been informed. It appears, however, that they simply treated him as a routine re-assignment, and did not closely monitor what he was up to.
Anonymous at 2.26 and 2.28: I think you're missing my point. It's made in this sentence, after I named a number of atrocities:
ReplyDelete"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."
In that context, all the incidents I mentioned fit well enough, because they were perpetrated by ordinary troops and soldiers. Irrespective of where the orders came from, people like you and I set aside their humanity and murdered others without reason, without excuse, without demur. They became the "criminals and degenerates" they were (at least in their own minds) trying to punish.
This is the deficiency in leadership for which Col. Tunnell was admonished; and this is the inevitable result of policies which force soldiers (ours, or anyone else's) to put their lives on the line for what they cannot discern as being any sort of good reason, in support of political goals which tie their hands and cost them casualties.
Except that you're missing a fundamental point: Tens of thousands of other men have had identical experiences in the US Army, and they somehow managed to avoid that whole "...remove(al) of civilization from the Soldier..." that you refer to. How to account for them? Following your thesis, we should have had many more of these crimes committed, shouldn't we?
ReplyDeleteAs you note, the prisoners of war from Nazi Germany in England positively gloried in having taken part in war crimes, and enthusiastically discussed having done so. You can also go back and trace a similar thread of enthusiasm through German military history back to the 1870s: Schrecklichkeit and the fantasy horror of Francs-tireurs aren't exactly phenomena that can be blamed on the "horrors of war unique to WWII". They were damn near pillars of German war theory and conduct.
You're absolutely correct in saying that men are prone to losing their moral compass in combat. It's happened in every war we've ever fought in. Where you're mistaken is in conflating the aberrational events occurring in the US Army with those that were regime policy under the Nazis, Communists, and other state-sponsored and approved "crimes of policy".
Contrast the differences, here: Nazi POWs boast of war-crimes participation to their captors, while the perpetrators of My Lai and these killings in Afghanistan have to cover up their crimes from their commanders and the public. By including the Nazi atrocities with these crimes, you're equating the two institutions, which are clearly not equivalent in terms of moral conduct. Try to extrapolate the Nazi regime's moral code onto Iraq, and I think you can start to get a glimpse of what I'm talking about: How many Iraqi villages would have been utterly erased, were the tactical commanders of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS running things according to the precepts of their times?
The general tone I take from your posting is one that says "Well, it's not really COL Tunnell's fault, or his men's... We've put them into an impossible situation... Nobody could cope with those stresses...".
Except for on thing: Tens of thousands of men have undergone similar stress, along with hundreds of other senior commanders, and somehow haven't had to resort to drug-use and thrill-killing to cope with it. In a well-led unit, things like this don't happen.
On the one hand, we have crimes committed by flawed human beings acting in complete contravention to their organization's policies and training. On the other, we have events carried out in full view, with utter and complete trust that they were carrying out the intent of the commander. How on earth can you even begin to make an argument for equivalency? You're falling into the same trap the ideologues of the left commonly espouse, that of there being a false equivalency. Because bad men commit crimes doesn't make the argument that the current government/leadership team running US policy is just as bad as the Nazis, which is precisely what those ideologues want us to be thinking. The true test of equivalency is not whether crimes are committed in wartime, but in how they are dealt with by the responsible authorities. On the one hand, medals... On the other, criminal prosecutions and punishments.
As an aside, I will note one thing: The US military does a very poor job of clearly discussing this sort of thing, and equipping young Soldiers with tools to prevent these things from happening.
ReplyDeleteThere's a Code of Conduct for how to conduct yourself if taken captive. You get annual and pre-deployment briefings on the Law of Land Warfare, but there is just about nothing discussed about the morality of killing, or what we do in combat. In 25 years of service as a private Soldier and NCO in one of the combat arms, I can't recall these issues ever being brought forward and discussed formally and openly, at least where I wasn't the idiot initiating the discussion. And, when I did that, I had to roll it into another training subject, because there's no formal requirement to train on or discuss the morality of killing. Talking about killing is virtually taboo, by informal consensus, and I think that's a very profound error.
When I was charged with running and/or giving Law of War training, I usually tried to include this sort of thing. Every time I did so, the amount of squirming reluctance to talk about these aspects of military service was readily apparent, and I eventually quit being picked to run these things by the commanders I worked for.
Usually, I'd pick some outrageous premise, like "When is it OK to shoot children in combat?", throw it out in front of the group I was training, and watch the fun begin. Getting people to think through things like that is hellishly difficult, but if you do it right, you can get even the most jaded and inattentive to pay attention.
There are two key reasons for this sort of thing being necessary: One, you have to put into place a set of formal, pre-thought through guiding principles in order to prevent things like what happened in Afghanistan from happening, and two, that doing so ahead of time will help prevent a lot of the PTSD triggers from being hit.
One of the most worthwhile departure points I've discovered for this is included in the Israeli Defense Forces "Purity of Arms" doctrine and training. We'd do well to thoroughly examine that program, adapt it to US use, and inculcate the entire force with the precepts laid out there.
The subject needs to be taught, trained, and woven into operations as much as anything else major like safety. So long as it's left as a taboo subject, we're going to have things like what happened in Afghanistan occur.
The Greeks had two gods of war--Athena Promachos and Ares. We've forgotten Athena, she of the disciplined, lawful war, and enshrined the patron of violence, bloodlust and slaughter, simply through the omission of emphasis on the things Athena stood for. We should be changing that, especially in the midst of a war with such chaotic conditions.
The biggest problem was that the Company Commander, CPT Quiggle, was an Armor Officer assigned to the Cavalry Squadron in 5/2 and the Cav Troops have all the vehicles that an Infantry Company does, but only half the troops.
ReplyDeleteTo fix that the Brigade "shifted forces" to the Cav Troops from the Line Companies, which means during combat CPT Quiggle was put in charge of platoons that he had never commanded nor trained with before.
The "Kill Squad" came from one of these transplanted platoons. Seriously, what Battalion Commander is going to give up his BEST platoon to go work with the Cav unit? Obviously none of them.
But Col Tunnel was a tool and his command climate sucked balls. He should leave the Army quickly.
As a counter-argument to anyone thinking the Nazis were only doing the same thing everyone else was, I'd suggest reading this der Speigel article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,755385,00.html
Sort of puts paid to the notion that the Nazis were just like everyone else, or that the Wehrmacht fought a "clean war".