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On Killing Civilians
While in Afghanistan over the past month, I found myself reading a lot of U.S. Civil War history. Despite the fact that I am from Chattanooga, Tennessee, I have never really been too interested in the U.S. Civil War. (And when I have read U.S. Civil War history, I have often found myself more drawn to heroes of the North like Buford and Grant and Reynolds -- and the more skeptical Southern generals like Longstreet. I am 100% East Tennessean in that way, I guess.) But I had been meaning to read Grant's memoirs
I was intrigued, though, to read what Lee had ordered of his army in terms of civilians on the battlefield in advance of the Gettysburg Campaign:
It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain.
The commanding general therefore earnestly exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject.
Now there existed good moral reasons for Lee to have ordered his troops to behave in the way he ordered them to behave. But there was also some strategic shrewdness there. Lee, as Foote notes, had one eye on encouraging the northern peace movement when he told his troops not to harm civilians or their property.
In the same way, General McChrystal's directions to allied troops with respect to civilian casualties are both morally correct and operationally wise. My friend Erica Gaston has laboriously catalogued the way in which rising civilian casualties have harmed U.S. and allied objectives in Afghanistan (.pdf). McChrystal understands that the rule of law and principles of proportionality allow you to do a lot on the battlefield. But you might be technically correct and operationally stupid. The reason we do not drop compounds in Afghanistan has more to do with operational considerations than it does with some high-minded moral code or the laws of land warfare. Opponents of COIN doctrine who claim the U.S. Army has gone "soft" would best remember that. If dropping compounds helped us to advance the ball down the field in terms of mission success, we might be more tolerant of civilian casualties and "collateral damage." But the evidence suggests that killing civilians and destroying their property actually harms the mission more than it helps.
I wouldn't get too worked up
I wouldn't get too worked up about Peters; in that same article, he advocates killing journalists.
It is the typical Peters.
It is the typical Peters.
All these crazies with the Islam! Forget trying to examine historical context and rational motivations for violence. It is much easier to just call 'em crazy and blame it on their whacko religion.
One of my favorite 'obscure'
One of my favorite 'obscure' books about Gettysburg is "Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics, and the Pennsylvania Campaign " by Kent Brown. He makes a convincing argument that while Gettysburg was a military defeat for Lee, the campaign as a whole succeeded in the larger goal of obtaining the logistical means for Lee's army to continue the war, and was basically designed as a huge raid on the North's breadbasket. Brown's book also goes into detail on how extensive the expropriation of supplies by the Confederates was; I think in a lot of cases, the chosen alternative by Lee's troops to destroying property was confiscation and sending it on its way South, and they were quite thorough at it. Add to that incidents like Jubal Early holding the city of York for ransom until the residents coughed up his price, and it doesn't become quite as much of a noble campaign to win over Northern opinion. To be sure, the people of central PA suffered nothing during the Gettysburg campaign compared to what Sherman inflicted on Georgia during the March to the Sea, but neither were they treated entirely with kid gloves, either.
Lee really was one of the
Lee really was one of the best generals the nation had at the time, if he had been more loyal to the country rather than his state I imagine that the war would have ended in two or three years with far fewer casualties. As for the American Civil War and insurgencies I understand that most of the action in Missouri at the time could be classified as more of an insurgency rather than a conventional civil war, though it's incredibly hard to find books on it when most authors prefer the battles of Gettysburg and Antietam. It's much easier to sell a book on great battles and the goodness of the North (something I won't disagree with given the context) than it is with one on massacres and forced resettlement.
@Tagryn, it's true that the main point of the incursion into the North was primarily logistical and political. Lee's army was short on all supplies including shoes and Lee needed to be able to threaten the North instead of just fighting in the South. However, Gettysburg was a serious defeat for Lee for two reasons: the first was that he lost a large number of soldiers that the South couldn't replace, and the second is that he was forced to quit the field and the campaign much sooner than he otherwise would have.
Didn't Lee send blacks, free
Didn't Lee send blacks, free blacks, his troops captured in the North south into slaver?
@Granten - I'm not quite
@Granten -
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "logistical and political." Conventional history treats the move North that led to Gettysburg to be strategic - an attempt to crush the Union Army near Washington and then sue for peace.
My plan for the campaign into Pennsylvania was for the strategy to be offensive, but the tactics defensive. At Gettysburg, Lee disagreed and we paid a heavy price.
Regardless, I'm not sure that any of this Civil War stuff has anything to do with Afghanistan. Civilian collateral damage on the battlefield is certainly an issue now, but didn't really become one until after World War I.
@Abu Muq -
The reason we do not drop compounds in Afghanistan has more to do with operational considerations than it does with some high-minded moral code or the laws of land warfare.
I was under the impression that we did as soon as the first AK-47 came out of a window. Then we say the "Taliban" was using any civilians as human shields. Then we say all the civilians including the children were "insurgents." Then we say we are launching an investigation. Then three months later when nobody is paying attention any more, we admit that we killed 30 innocent villagers and 2 Taliban because of a lieutenant's mistakes, pay surviving family members $500 or a couple of goats for each of the dead, and move on.
At least, that was my understanding from reading the newspaper for the last 8 years. COIN hasn't exactly changed anything.
http://occident.blogspot.com/
http://occident.blogspot.com/2009/07/video-of-american-pow-in-afghanista...
The 4 May incident in Farah
The 4 May incident in Farah province Afghanistan seems like an example of the type of "technically correct and operationally stupid" results that General McChrystal is keen to avoid. Despite a U.S. military history of friction in air to ground tactical integration, this case appears to relatively free of this friction. However, if the tactical air integration was not the issue, then how do we adapt our thinking to make General McChrystal’s vision a reality?
"We must avoid the trap of winning tactical victories — but suffering strategic defeats — by causing civilian casualties or excessive damage and thus alienating the people."
@Gen. Longstreet, in re to
@Gen. Longstreet, in re to your comment on civilian casualties and the like being irrelevant to warfare prior to World War I may I suggest that you look at the policies of the British government during the American Revolution. While their occupation of cities could be harsh they deliberately avoided serious economic consequences for the colonies outside of the New England region (where the rebellion was strongest) and did amazingly little in the way of burning villages or massacring civilians. The reasons given by politicians and generals for this is interestingly similar to reasons for modern counterinsurgency, such as 'reconciliation'. That might sound like the actions of a weak willed government, but when you consider that the rebellion probably never had more at most half of the population on its side it's understandable why Britain would be hesitant to strengthen the appeal of the rebels.
@Granten- You make an
@Granten-
You make an excellent point regarding the American war of Independence, and I didn't mean to imply that the issue was irrelevant before WWI, but simply that it wasn't really an issue that was held to be important in contemporary military and political science discussion prior to that point. Or, more correctly, prior to WWII.
Think about it. Can you name and source discussion of civilian casualties in WWI? I just read a related passage regarding the Civil War. It involved Northern/Pennsylvanian civilians attempting to massacre retreating/WOUNDED Confederate soldiers on July 4th, after Gettysburg. Interesting.
It is also interesting that you mention the British. In the 1870s and afterwards, the British on the Northwest Frontier (AfPak) and later in Iraq were absolutely brutal, using Nazi-on-the-Eastern Front tactics. Churchill served on the Northwest Frontier as a young cavalry officer.
So what happened between the Revolutionary war and the latter period to change British doctrine from COIN to McNamara/Heydrich pragmatism? Certainly Lee wasn't the example.
For WWI I admit that there
For WWI I admit that there doesn't seem to be much (if any) focus on civilian suffering. As an outsider to discussions on it I can't say if that is more to social beliefs at the time or a consequence of the sheer scale of the war.
On the matter of British policy towards the Northwest Frontier that is actually to be expected. When one compares the treatment of American colonists in pro-Congress states during the Revolution period and the treatment of the entire populace of the 19th century British empire we see an incredible difference. Some of the measures the British used such as requiring all of the populace to carry identification papers would never have been dared in the American colonies. Part of this was probably ethnic/racial prejudices of the time, this was the time period when it was accepted as scientific fact that certain races were less intelligent, less courageous, and less able to govern themselves than others. It isn't as though this suddenly stopped after WWI, I understand that the British were the first to use airplanes to bomb civilians (Kurds in Iraq in the 20s), just that it slowly grew less legally and socially acceptable.
However we shouldn't assume that such measures wouldn't have been taken in other times, during the 30 Years War in the early 17th century entire cities were razed along with the inhabitants. I'd guess that British restraint also stemmed from three facts. The first was that the population was seen as British subjects and the rebels as not representing the entire group. The second was that Britain probably had memorized the lessons of the English Civil War, and didn't want to go through something like that again. The third was that one of Britain's major reasons for continuing the American war (aside from the fact that it considered the colonies to part of its empire) was mercantilist as it wanted to continue to protect its American markets, so there was little point in destroying them. In contrast to this there wasn't much in the way of markets among the Pashtun groups to devastate.
@Granten- Excellent
@Granten-
Excellent responses. I hadn't looked at those situations from that perspective before. Thank You. I'll have to look you up again the next time I check in on this blog.
I remember Gen. Petreus
I remember Gen. Petreus saying something to the effect of, '' when you disrespect a civilian you are working for the enemy''.
@Abu Squiggles (I haven't
@Abu Squiggles (I haven't figured out how to post the Arabic yet... I will)
I Wikipedia-d Metheson's The Beardless Warriors. Google Books has a limited preview, and it was made into the 1967 made-fo- tv-movie The Young Warriors.
My summer zombie movie recommendation: Bubba Ho-tep, which doesn't actually feature any zombies, but does star Bruce Campbell as a post-fame Elvis Presley who joins forces with a black Jack Kennedy to defeat (and burn) a rampaging mummy.
Thanks. "The Young Warriors" must suck. I mean, 1967?, pretty lame, but thanks for the tip, I'm looking it up right now. I'm a movie freak and I will not rest until I see it. Maybe blockbuster has it. If not, I have ways. If I remember correctly LMOE was 1965.
Bubbu Ho-Tep. Ehh. I had a buddy reccomend this to me like 3 years ago. I've seen parts of it on cable about 6 times. i can never get into it. Maybe I just need to start from the beginning.
Ho bout "The Hurt Locker"? Easily the best Iraq movie so far. Easily one of the 10 best movies of the year. Tom Ricks on FP/Slate is a douche for his review. This movie is brilliant.
Tom Ricks is not a movie reviewer and it is obvious. His wife dragged him to the movie. Tom Ricks is a war journalist. That his wife had to drag him to "The Hurt Locker" is proof positive that he is the world's biggest douche.
I knew about this movie 8 months ago. I saw it three times in the last month. I've shown it to at least 20 people. My only failure was not meeting the director, Katherine Bigelow when she screened it at the Harvard Film archives two weeks ago.
Now the connection: Bigelow directed "Near Dark" back in 1987. That's my Zombie recommendation for the summer.
If you want another war movie: K-19:The Widomaker - starring Harrison Ford about a soviet nuke sub, true story in 1962. Directed by Bigelow.
You want action/cops: Point Break (1991) -Starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. Pretty Fucking Great. Directed by Katherine Bigelow.
The Hurt Locker is about an EOD team in Iraq. Very realistic. Problems? Watch Waterloo (1972) and tell me it didn't have problems with filming tactics.
The Hurt Locker is about as good as you are going to get with four hand-held cameras in Jordan. This is just an awesome movie made by an awesome director who knows what she is doing. The only man that can film like this is Stanley Kubrick. Fuck Tom Ricks.
....Oh. And it's about killing civilians.
@Longstreet, careful or my
@Longstreet, careful or my ego is going to grow beyond my daily does of arrogance.
@Johnny Rico, I'm not quite sure what your point is but thanks for bringing up the Hurt Locker. It's always a struggle finding a war movie that accurately portrays events without making one side paladins or making every side genocidal. Three movies I would like to see from the insurgents eyes in Battle for Algiers style would be Vietnam, Afghanistan (Soviet), and current Iraq.
@Granten- I'm never sure
@Granten-
I'm never sure what my point is. You've got some good ones. Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq from the (other) POV. Nice. I'm thinking. Oh, and Algiers.
The best I can recommend is "The Last Valley" about Dien Bien Phu (Winston, I think, was the author's name)- unfortunately it's a book. It is really a great book for its analysis of the weaponry alone. I totally recommend it. On my top 5 list.
the Hurt Locker is a great movie and it is politically neutral. I take that back. It is politically non-existant. It just tries to show the deal within a very narrow framework of a tactical "jobset." Tom Ricks is not a movie reviewer. He had no business saying what he said. He did. But he knew it was gonna be picked up by Slate. And they didn't give equal time to the counterarguments where he was obviously wrong.
He was also three weeks late to the party.
Doesn't matter. I challenge Tom Ricks to see the next war movie that opens in Boston with me. We will do a duel-report like Siskell and Ebert or "At the Movies". That's the only way this is gonna get resolved.
The whole movie thing is about Hollywood. It cannot be political.
"Where I think that Johnny
"Where I think that Johnny Rico is incorrect is to claim that the F22 isn't all that capable, as he did in his first comment. Kidding aside, that's just ignorant. The F22 is a dramatic leap forward in terms of fighter capability. Don't take my word for it though, ask the Japanese who are desperate to buy the F22 -- even a dumbed down export version -- despite the ridiculous price. Ask the Australians, who are buying the F18E/F and F35 but have said repeatedly that they prefer the F22. And ask the guys who fly Red Flag every year. None of this is "physics," Johnny Rico, but it is amply confirmed by the public record. The F22 really is the best fighter in the world, both existing and planned. Of course, even with that awesome capability, it's a legitimate view to conclude the F22 is not worth the money. If you review all of my posts, I have never suggested otherwise."
-sez Anon at 3:35pm July 11th
whuuuh? The F-22 is the best fighter. It's just incredibly stupid. I will never review your posts. All young defense writers simply copy my ideas. bad strategy.
Dude. I think between me and you, we know who the fuck knows about fighter planes and shit. But anytime you wanna have this argument again, you know where I am. JR
Hey, Roger Carstens, how
Hey, Roger Carstens, how does it feel to be a joke?
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/zontv/2009/07/the_wanted_n...
Thankfully, the program was so obviously biased that the political fallout seems minimal. Arguing against freedom of expression doesnt go over well here.
Interesting thread. I
Interesting thread. I finally got around to Grant's Memoirs, and it lived up to its billing. Grant comes across as intelligent and dogged, and also as highly principled. (He joined then-Congressman Lincoln in opposing the Mexican War, although he served there with distinction.) The book seems a bit rushed in the second half, when he knew he was racing against time to finish it before his jaw cancer bore him away. It appeared after his death, although he signed a number of title pages printed up early and bound into the volume later. He also knew from advance sales (by traveling salesmen Union veterans) that the book would be a success and ensure the financial future of his familly. I'm not a Civil War buff, but still enjoyed the book immensely. It also helped me put into context my visits to AM's hometown and the Battle of Chickamauga. jwillia@luc.edu
How' bout detaining them?
How' bout detaining them?
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/07/23/horowitz/index1....
"McChrystal understands that
"McChrystal understands that the rule of law and principles of proportionality allow you to do a lot on the battlefield. "
Or as was the case in my unit, it causes moral and physical paralysis and moral cowardice, Command gives up, and the troops go into ARVN mode (hide and wait it out) or worse start acting like rogue cop movies.
CID, NCIS play the backstabbing nerds from Internal Affairs in this scenario, and every CP/TOC will have it's own resident Al Sharpton constantly claiming "war crimes" and "excessive force". Not to mention the ROE, and your precious rules of law are constantly shifting - logical as they are usually coming from a legal positivist grounding, and are of course 50% "gotcha" for the above mentioned CPT Sharpton. And the rather vague principles of proportionality are never quite properly explained or thought out, not down at the squad leader/trigger puller level.
In other words, the leadership above mine needed to do it's homework. And I am gathering it's happening again. I hope to be wrong.
The actual training we got on your precious ROE consisted BTW of basically being threatened by JAG, although some interesting anecdotes did come out from the trigger pullers...oh excuse me, the ACU case workers.
Having aired some concerns, let me characteristically contradict meeself.
I don't want Triage to fail, I don't want the Pope to fail, or the 75th Social Worker Regiment (S.J) to fail, etc. I really, really think there's something to this track. But understand if you don't really think this out, come up with a set of solid principles that fits in a cargo pocket with ease, and for God's sake don't give it to the lawyers then they will be self defeating and discredited. By solid principles - they work in real life, we don't all have to all get litigation insurance, and they don't change, especially based on political or media pressure.
See the Haditha show trials for a good example.
When in doubt, consult the enemy. In particular when he's winning. The Taliban seem to have come up with a pretty good set of rules for handling the locals. Of course they have better HUMINT, and are less burdened by firepower.
Plus, butchering heaps of
Plus, butchering heaps of people just because you CAN is wrong. Right, fellas?
Everything else is embroidery.
Since all the internet and
Since all the internet and TV show lawyers wanna have us play like the Cops, how about this? How about we get the protections the Cops get? Call it the principle of proportional reciprocity.
1) We get a legal PBA type organization for legal advice and a pool of litigation insurance for anyone in the trigger puller&intelligence fields. Our troops being ignorant of their rights, Command willing to sacrifice subordinates to protect the system, and the costs of litigation ruinous. Makes sound moral, economic and legal sense. Might tend to undermine the relationship between CDR and troops. But troops come first. You want the law? This is the law.
2) When a cop is under investigation, he basically gets grounded on a desk, and counseling. Let's apply the same rules to soldiers under more than prefunctory investigation. The Red Lines for which are simple - anything being looked into by CID, NCIS, OSI or JAG - and Johnny rides a desk. It's fair, just, and sound operationally as Johnny's mind will be distracted as he senses he may be sold out. Might distract his comrades as well.
3) A unit's personnel readiness category rating - once known as USR for Unit Status Report - will be directly impacted by the number of investigations. Any troop under investigation will not be considered ready for duty in line with principle #2 above, and hence your readiness reporting will reflect your true readiness. So if 25% of your personnel are under investigation, you are starting with 75% personnel readiness.
3) Since this will impact readiness*, Commanders need to have the option of electing to send troops grounded for investigation out anyway. Fine. Because I support the Commander. Commanders will have the option of evaluating and sending investigation case soldiers out the wire. There just needs to be a formal mechanism for tracking and auditing (paper trail) such decisions. Just in case something goes wrong. Gotta have accountablity, ya know. Rule of Law and all that.
You may want to also consider - organizations going through a witch hunt have their effectiveness greatly reduced in peace or war. That's been my experience anyway.
You might get the impression that I think the troops will continue to be ill served until the pain starts going up instead of down. You'd be right.
Anyone here read "The Sword and the Olive" by Van Crevald? All the dysfunctions and gyrations we're going through the Israeli's went through in the occupied terroritories, in particular once the first intifada started. I particularly like the part about LIC - "Lawyer Infested Conflict". Har de Har Har.
*Because until the Officer Corps has to start answering questions about all these investigations at meetings, GI Joe will keep getting sold out.
I think that COIN and
I think that COIN and dealing with "civilians"operates on two levels, tactical and strategic, but is mostly based on how you intend to deal with the after math of the war.
Commentators on the British approach to the American Revolution have only looked at the New England area of operations. In the American Revolution, the English saw the colonists as fellow british, who needed some chastizement to be brought back into the fold. The English fully expected to be back in business with the new englanders after the war. indeed, the war ca,e to be loked on as a nuisance kept alive by hot heads on both sides. The British Army did not face attacks by partisans and as such there were no reprisals.
In the South, raiders like Francis Marion harried the English troops, leading to brutal treatment of the civial opoulation in return by forces under Bannister Tarleton. Unforntunately for the British, when the southern campaign tht eventually lead to Yorktown began, Tarleton and his actions had so alienated the civilan population, that there were few loyalists to assist Cornwallis, with intel, supplies, or as militia, leading to a desperate march thru the Carolina's to final defeat at Yorktown.
The French were very hard on civilan populations in Spain and paid a dear price. Once the English and their allies had a credible army in the field under Arthur Wellesly, the brutality of the French toward the civilan population left them no support or protection for their supply lines. Ditto for their Rusian campaign.
I think that if you are trying to leave a freindly governement behind, you must restrain your use of power or use it in a way that leaves the civilians neutral, if not friendly to you. Treat people decently and show that you can provide a safer, better future for them and you will win them to your side. If your cruel or even coarse to them, and they will turn and hurt you as soon as they have the opportunity.
http://www.counterpunch.org/s
http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney07142009.html
Not enough guys. Not enough reason. Not enough time.
Yet another friggin disaster.
Killing civilians.. Amazing
Killing civilians.. Amazing :)
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