A Mile In His Moccasins
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (16) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
It is the classic dilemma posed in law of land warfare classes in the Army.
You are an isolated patrol (in the Special Forces Course the example was a deep penetration raid) and you have a close encounter of the worst kind and are discovered by civilians, invariably women, children or old folks. You know that if you let the civilians go they will tell someone and things will get really ugly really fast for your unit. You can always tie them up and leave them as you move smartly out of the area but eventually they will be found. The last option is fraught with moral and legal difficulties and unpalatable to anyone who isn't inclined to view war at the small unit level as a Hobbesian race to the bottom.
It isn't an academic exercise. It happens. And the men who deal with it have to live with the consequences... if they are lucky.
Read on.
On February 24th, 1991, a Special Forces team was located just south of Baghdad; its mission was to watch for Iraqi troop movements that might threaten the 18th Airborne Corps. Suddenly, three children came upon the team’s position. Two of the soldiers aimed their silenced weapons at the Iraqi children and waited for the order to shoot. However, Richard Balwanz, the warrant officer in charge of the mission, decided to let the children go free, even though this meant that the children would probably tell adults that they saw the Americans. Eventually, Iraqi soldiers returned, and the soldiers were extracted after a fierce fire fight.
In Andy McNabb's best selling memoir (maybe) of his experiences during the Gulf War, Bravo Two Zero, his SAS team is compromised by a teenage goatherd. They let him depart and he immediately tells adults of his discovery. In the ensuing exfilitration in the general direction of the Syrian frontier conducted under fire three members of the eight man team are killed, four are captured, one manages to escape.
Now we have an instance from the Long War. Flash back to June 2005.
Luttrell's mission had begun routinely. As darkness fell on Monday, June 27, his Seal team fast-roped from a Chinook helicopter onto a grassy ridge near the Pakistan border. They were Navy Special Operations forces, among the most elite troops in the military: Lt. Michael P. Murphy and three petty officers -- Matthew G. Axelson, Danny P. Dietz and Luttrell. Their mission, code-named Operation Redwing, was to capture or kill Ahmad Shah, a Taliban leader. U.S. intelligence officials believed Shah was close to Osama bin Laden.
[...]
The four Seals zigzagged all night and through the morning until they reached a wooded slope. An Afghan man wearing a turban suddenly appeared, then a farmer and a teenage boy. Luttrell gave a PowerBar to the boy while the Seals debated whether the Afghans would live or die.
If the Seals killed the unarmed civilians, they would violate military rules of engagement; if they let them go, they risked alerting the Taliban. According to Luttrell, one Seal voted to kill them, one voted to spare them and one abstained. It was up to Luttrell.
Part of his calculus was practical. "I didn't want to go to jail." Ultimately, the core of his decision was moral. "A frogman has two personalities. The military guy in me wanted to kill them," he recalled. And yet: "They just seemed like -- people. I'm not a murderer."
Luttrell, by his account, voted to let the Afghans go. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about that decision," he said. "Not a second goes by."
At 1:20 p.m., about an hour after the Seals released the Afghans, dozens of Taliban members overwhelmed them. The civilians he had spared, Luttrell believed, had betrayed them.
In the ensuing fight three SEALs died. An additional 16 men, SEALs and members of 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, died in a rescue attempt.
Did Petty Officer Luttrell make the right decision? In the final analysis was his decision moral? What does his conscience tell him when he wakes up at 3 am trembling and in a cold sweat? What do his team mates tell him when they enter his dreams late at night?
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A Mile In His Moccasins 16 Comments (0 topical, 16 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Are cold comforts to these men if they take such an action, or their families because if they didn't. I would defend whatever choice they made.
"Diplomacy --- the art of saying "Nice doggie" 'til you can find a stick." Wynn Catlin
the mission and my men get priority.
" in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Abe Lincoln
I would not have killed them. It would have been extraordinarily difficult. I suppose if I were faced a second time with the decision I probably would have killed them. This is the kind of outcome that doesn't occur the first time out but the second and subsequent times. That is what makes war so ugly. The British/German experience in World War 2 illustrates this...a gentlemanly war in North Africa devolved into aerial bombing of civilians.
If this occurs all the time, where is the ROE to deal with this circumstance? If ROE explicitly tells you that you can use deadly force to avoid capture then so be it. Of course this would likely be an illegal order, but I would ask for guidance nonetheless.
Can our science develop a way to sedate these people for an extended period? And would the disappearance of these civilians also create a risk of detection?
"The pain inflicted by your country's indifference is tenfold that inflicted by your ruthless captors."
Rep Sam Johnson on the House floor commenting on his experience as a Vietnam POW
I guess the real question is if there is any such thing as a 'non-combatant'. If you were reasonably certain that the civilian who you came across had the ability to wreck the mission or cause the death of your compatriots, and would do so, they then become combatants by default. It's not fair, or just - but there it is.
So the real judgement becomes will they remain silent?
There is no pre-judging that.
I am just thankful I have never been in a situation that called for a decision like that.
How many other soldiers have made that awful decision the other way and successfully carried out thier missions and brought thier men home safely.
Those are the men we should keep in our prayers.
First of all, glad it's not my call. I'm inclined to weasel out of it any way possible, so my first answer is "whatever my commander says". In this sort of deep incursion, high-value target mission, it should not be possible that the scenario of "discovery by presumed non-combatants" has not come up in training or mission planning. I was never in Special Forces of any kind, but that's my presumption.
Now, if your immediate superior tells you 'your call, buddy', then first of all I don't like that, but I know what I'd do. If he says 'do whatcha gotta do', then I know exactly what he's telling me.
My answer, if forced to decide on the ground, is this: those civilians will be neutralized. If there's any way to bind them up and hide them so that you can feel certain of 16 hours of lead time, then maybe I do that. [and if they end up dying of exposure or thirst, sorry, that's bad but that's tough]
Otherwise, I kill them. I hate it, but the mission and my men come first. It's war, and people die, including civilians. Sure, maybe that's easy to say since (1) I'm sitting in an office in Dallas right now, and (2) we know what they outcome was. But is it not nevertheless the right thing to do?
It's war -- so when can we start shooting back at the enemy Democrats?
I think it's also more about saving lives vs. taking them.
2005 and in a war with people that have already struck first....
" in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Abe Lincoln
at the moment you are discovered and your ROEs do not allow you to remove the compromising element. Back away, retool, and try again another day. Bad guys don't stop being bad guys because you missed them on a certain date; they'll be somewhere that you can reach out and touch them on another day. It isn't worth the moral compromise to do anything else. And, yes, I know that the civilians might indeed be bad guys and that the bad guys might kill innocents or even your comrades before you get another whack at them, but facially innocent civilians who are murdered for mission security are NOT collateral damage.
I don't think it is a quandary at all unless the contact also compromises your line of retreat; now that IS a decision I'd hate to have to make.
In Vino Veritas
One: Note that in three examples of the "best of the best" (namely US SEALS, US Special Forces, and UK SAS) the choice was made to spare the detainees. These decisions were made by highly trained men in combat, not armchair quarterbacks like myself or anyone else who might make a passing comment.
Two: In my time serving with a special operations unit (though not a special operator myself) this hypothetical came up a few times in conversation. The men I spoke to affirmed the decision to spare such detainees.
Three: One can question the decisions made in hindsight as they led to attacks by the enemy. But the decision to be Americans and to fight like Americans do these men justice. There is a time to play dirty (I feel torture is justified in extreme circumstances, and I also feel that captured terrorists are not afforded Geneva protections since the Geneva conventions affirm my view on this). But given the three examples listed above the civilians are presumed innocent until something changes that. A 12 year old pointing a gun my way gets no or little mercy. A 12 year old that stumbles on my team's patrol aborts my mission.
I respect other views, but that's how I see it. However, I especially respect the views of the three elite team leaders that saw it the same way.
"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe
De Opresso Liber
. . . I'm afraid the 'witnesses' would have to be silenced - permanently.
THE REASON: Not necessarily the mission though the mission is normally sufficient reason per my view. No. The reason is MY men; then my mission.
I see neither moral nor ethical dissonance in my view. Among the millions of unfortunate realities of modern war is that innocent civilians will be killed.
The moral/ethical shimmying derives from the manner in which the killing is done: An American soldier releasing a young and innocent life from its miseries for tactical reasons by personally, and simply pulling a trigger, should generate no more a quadry than sorties of B-17s melting Hamburg and most of its citizens for reasons of much less clarity or immediate urgency.
The pain of the act radiates from the proximity of the soon-to-be-deceased, and the intimate, personal nature of the killing.
- Merely an opinion.
GB
I might make the distinction that bombing Hamburg results in collatoral damage versus the direct and purposeful killing of a captured innocent. But it is easy to make the philisophical distinction when I'm sitting comfortably at my pc.
I respect views either way on this matter. It really is a tough call. Either of us might, during a tense moment during an op, follow our own advice or dicard it depending on the situation. All things aren't equal. Are we talking about a situation where a quick extraction is feasable, are we talking about a mission that is of strategic importance, etc.
Where I give you extra respect (in addition to your record) is your concern for your men. Many people would only consider the mission. I'm sure your men gave you more loyalty and accomplished their missions better because you didn't consider them to be numbers.
In any event, I think the men who placed themselves in danger by making the merciful choice had a consideration other than just being "humane". The "hearts and minds" we are trying to win by avoiding such killings seems a good rationale. As you point out though, such a killing may be neccassary.
Perhaps the easy answer (if cowardly on my part) would be to say that the answer depends on the situation. I believe (as an armchair quarterback who never faced this situation) that my inclination would be merciful, but under the right circumstances I could be lead to change my view. I might be better off with this view as opposed to leaning towards termination unless otherwise persuaded.
Praise God that we have men willing to make these tough decisions and to live with them.
Best to you,
HT
"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe
Throughout history wars were fought with a Realist approach -- total warfare -- to the victor go the spoils. The Christian Just approach to warfare started in Europe and America.
The Christian Just War theory, which evolved in Europe and America, presupposes that uniformed armies will set out upon a field of battle, facing each other in combat. Civilians are not involved, and indeed, are protected from harm.
I wrote a piece on this a while ago over at The HinzSight Report-- We Cannot Defeat Radical Islam
We protect civilians, while our enemies think nothing of killing everyone: man, woman and child. We take prisoners, care for their wounds and DO NOT torture them. Our enemies think nothing of torturing and mutilating our soldiers when captured.
While this story poses a moral dilemma to us, our enemies would not have to think twice about it. The enemies we face would willingly kill their OWN people if there was the slightest chance their mission might be compromised.
My thinking is that if we fight a "total war" in the GWOT (as we did in WW2) the radical Islam concept will go the way of nazism and communism did before. Radical ideologies CAN be defeated.
"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe
De Opresso Liber
". . . It depends upon the situation" . . . is anything BUT cowardly; it is real!
My response is in accordance with my understanding of the scenarios as given by our military oracle: Streif.
Of course, any decent human being would try to find another way - and I am certain that there are scenarios that would support, if not demand, mercy (or a less-than-deadly solution).
However, in the end if there are no other reasonable and decidedly safe alternatives - the unthinkable becomes the only viable alternative.
When is killing in close combat, or for unsurmountable operational reasons, NOT murder?
I don't know - and do not pretend to know.
To acceptably function in combat or other operational situations - and especially in leading others whose lives depend upon you, and with responsibility for conducting a mission or missions with importance far beyond one's own horizon - one must in the end be prepared to do the unthinkable.
I might continue - but will not. I sense that you have a perfect understanding of my position on this - but your humaness is repelled at the thought of this type of conduct.
In the end, if it were up to you - I feel certain you would do 'the right thing' - according to the circumstances.
GB
Meant to reply to you, but accidently posted reply under the story in general. Reply is "That's why we're the good guys". As always your comments educate me immensly. Thank you.
"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe
We do everything we can to avoid the unthinkable. When forced to do such, we lose sleep and wrestle with wondering if we did the right thing.
Our present day enemy delights in killing civilians, torturing them, and gloating.
Our attitude is why I believe that God is with us in the GWOT. That and the fact that the left is against us. Thanks again for educating me, and peace be with you and yours.
"Greater is an army of sheep led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a sheep" - Defoe
This is the place where pragmatism and morality cross. Do you do the right thing, or the thing that makes the most logical and practical sense? The two often do not correspond, as illustrated in the story. If one were to make the practical decision, rules notwithstanding, one would shoot the kids and move on. But that is neither moral nor conforming to the military rules of engagement (which I believe are based on some bit of morality/ethics).
I personally would pursue the moral path. And this is right in line with an argument on another thread about voting for the "lesser of two evils". Do you make a decision based on pragmatism, or do you follow your morals? Sometimes a moral/ethical approach doesn't make sense to others who don't share your values.