Posted on 08/31/2006 6:51:35 AM PDT by slowhand520
He was hunting down guerrillas in a hostile urban area.
That's not same as an infantry engagement with uniformed troops on an open battlefield.
He was likely there because his special skills would prove useful in ferreting out high-value targets in that confusing and challenging environment.
Had he been killed by an IED while on a routine infantry patrol on the streets of Baghdad, your claims would make perfect sense to me.
But he was fighting in a very challenging situation where his special skills could well have made a very big difference.
more like using your quarterback, wide reiciever, and offensive coordinator as a blocking dummy...you are right on a lot of levels..
lack of cohesive plan on attacking guerrillas, ..so the commanders are "looking" for a justification and looking for assignments....
this is just getting to be a cluster f#ck... Marines getting charged by PC jag offs, SEALs doing "come along" missions...
the Spec op guys (or so I've heard) are carnivores and will never turn down a request to get in a fight.... that's what they do... it's in their "nature". Smart command decision isn't necessarily when to pull the trigger, but when to look at the big pic and just pass.
The flip side is for line troops to see the professionalism of the SEAL, Green Beret, Recon, SAS or even Task Force 121 is inspiring and makes guys take note of methods and tactics....
Like they say, "If you want to be a good golfer, go out to dinner with the best putters"
"He was hunting down guerrillas in a hostile urban area."
That is what infantry do.
I think part of the problem here is you think of Spec ops as being great shooters, and good at kicking in doors.
Believe me the years of training and expensive schools spec ops go to that the regular army never sees, are about things far beyond shooting and conducting raids.
Eh. This article is very strange indeed.
For decades, we in the SOF community bitched that the mainstream, conventional military did not value and respect us.
In this war that has all changed. Yes, conventional commanders want SF, SEAL and Ranger (among other SOF) assets in their operations, but they want them because they know that these men can make the operations with which the commander's unit is tasked more successful.
At the same time, the conventional military brings some things that the SOF do not have, to the table: numbers, firepower, and logistics to name three key factors the conventional military does better than we do.
They can fight a harder, more sustained, fight, in a more lethal combat area, because they have armour, crew-served and supporting weapons, and supply lines.
I will second 2banana on the risks of normal SOF training. SOF conducts high-risk operations and training activities around the world and around the clock. I have lost more friends, teammates and classmates in accidents than in combat; that's just the way it is. My career was over 26 years, and all but time in training, a year in language school, and a couple years in a non-SOF classified assignment, was spent on an SF ODA or ODB. Damn straight the training is scarier than the combat!
Back to my point: the military today does a much better job of integrating SOF capability into its ongoing operations today, as it did in the European campaign of 1944-45, than it did for all the intervening years.
Marcinko (a very controversial guy) belongs to a way of thinking where SOF are not "wasted" just fighting the war but are held in reserve for "super strategic" missions. This is what has led to the current situation where the JSOC consumes 90% of the special operations money to produce 10% of the special operations results. Most of that extra money goes to staffs, HQs, and assets that don't operate.
Waiting for the perfect shot to employ your asset means your assets get rusty. This is the only war we've got right now, of course the young guys want to get into it. And of course, their commanders will release them to do it when they can add to the success of an operation.
By the way, this might have been the first SEAL whacked in Iraq, but they've surely bled in Afghanistan. And nobody's talking about the wounded. The paradox is, the author seems to be using the death of the SEAL to argue against risking SEALS... that makes me wonder if he understands SEALs or warriors at all.
This isn't a chess match. Even when you do everything right, you may just lose somebody, and the worst guy in our ranks is a better human being than any number of jihadis you might whack to avenge him. But while history is replete with stories of very successful special operations, wherein no one on the assault side was killed (Eben Emael, Son Tay, Entebbe - almost), that's hindsight speaking. Every one of those operations was a colossal risk and might have had a long casualty count (complete with second-guessing in the papers, from reserve staff officers no less).
Just my opinion, of course, but my opinion is that his opinion is fulla you-know-what.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
This has happened in history, for instance with the Ranger Companies in Korea, or the expenditure of SF recon teams from the Delta Project by the 1st Cav and other conventional units that had them OPCON in 65-66. This latter was largely a failing of the Delta commander, IMHO.
Look at all the ground combat troops that die to save pilots, it is simply because it takes so long, and costs so much to replace the pilot.
I must respectfully disagree with you there. I do not believe that this economic/comparative-advantage argument is really what's behind these actions, even though we have often articulated such a rationale to sell CSAR to Congress and the public. I think it's simpler than that: we have a bond with our fellow Americans. That is especially true in this war, with the satanic, bestial conduct of our enemies. You may recall the extensive efforts to find the two young riflemen who were reportedly captured (actually, killed) in Iraq recently. We didn't do it because of the training we invest in a PFC ammo bearer -- we do it because he's an American and a human being.
For the same reason, you may be sure that American SOF were standing by to rescue the journalists who have been taken captive, regardless of the low opinion we have of them and their profession. It is a human duty to use your skills to protect your own kind -- and like them or not, they are ours.
By the way, CSAR and the more general PR (Personnel Recovery) are by definition SOF missions. However, conventional forces have the flexibility to execute them where able. Would you use your linguists interchangeably with your other troops in a combat situation?
Depends on the situation.
As in all aspects of life you have to use your assets in a wise way, like the article said, it will take two years to supply a replacement for that SEAL.
Soldiers get hurt in wartime (operators get hurt in peacetime, too). It happens and while you take measures to control it, I cannot fault the actions of the slain SEAL, nor of his commander, nor of the conventional force commander who asked the SEALs for help. If you were in any of their shoes, what would you have done differently?
The article itself was written by a marine infantryman.
Yeah, an expert on special operations, since 2004.
Look, if we want to preserve the SEALs for what they do best and that no one else can do as well, we need to get them back in Little Creek and Coronado swimming. Ain't no littorals where they're playing now. Even drinking water has to be shipped in. (And yes, there are actual and potential operational areas in this war where the SEALS' maritime specialities CAN be put to best use). Indeed, after Panama, the then-Commander of the SEALs vowed that they would never again be employed on missions without "a maritime nexus." (Since then, I've crossed paths with them in landlocked Bolivia -- where one died scaling a cathedral spire on a dare, or was that Ecuador? -- and in Afghanistan, 600 nautical miles from the nearest navigable water).
The fact is, we have a non-trivial number of SEALs, and we can cover contingencies, keep SEALs assigned to JSOC for national-level strategic missions, maintain SEAL individual and collective training standards, AND supply SEAL elements to the theater combatant commanders. Would we do better to have more SEALs? Of course we would. And responsible people are working on that, in a responsible way.
This kind of in-the-press whinging is not responsible. It's a junior officer saying his commanders are all soup. That is a typical JO point of view, which will change if and when he ascends to command.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
"Look at all the ground combat troops that die to save pilots, it is simply because it takes so long, and costs so much to replace the pilot."
"I must respectfully disagree with you there. I do not believe that this economic/comparative-advantage argument is really what's behind these actions,"
I didn't take the time to go through the, every body is just as important thing, because I think everybody interested in the US military knows that, but at least since WWII special efforts and resources are devoted to recovering pilots.
Even in large sloppy wars where soldiers are lost to reasons unknown, downed pilots are tracked and sought more carefully.
The people that are loose behind enemy lines, are, in order or frequency, downed aviators, special ops elements who had extraction problems, and individuals and small elements that strayed from conventional patrols.
Of these, the whereabouts of aviation personnel are usually best-known. Artillerymen or maintenance technicians get less opportunity (if that's the word) to be evaders. But we go after them just the same (recall J. Lynch and the other survivors of that ill-led and ill-fated missile maintenance company).
Doctrine is still overloaded with the lessons of SEA and needs updating, six or seven years from now the proponents will have manuals that sort of describe what's really being done today.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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