Posted on 05/27/2007 7:24:50 PM PDT by radar101
Faced with a series of war crime cases and a recent survey finding that a majority of troops would not report the slaying of an innocent civilian, the Marines are getting a renewed lesson in battlefield ethics.
In the wake of that survey, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway set up a values and ethics panel this month and has ordered new ethics lessons for troops.
"I have put out guidance to my commanders that we need to go back to the basics, and we need to make sure every Marine understands the importance of ethics as an American trooper and the importance of maintaining these core values as we go about a counterinsurgency fight," Conway said in remarks to reporters in Washington on May 17.
The directive comes as a hearing gets under way at Camp Pendleton on Wednesday for a Marine officer accused of failing to order an investigation into the largest civilian killing case arising out of the conflict in Iraq.
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani was commander of the base's 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment when 24 civilians were killed in the city of Haditha on Nov. 19, 2005. Chessani and three other officers face dereliction charges for not ordering a probe of the incident. Three enlisted men from the battalion face murder charges.
Court proceedings are also scheduled to continue soon for two of three remaining defendants in the April 2006 abduction and slaying of a retired Iraqi policeman in the village of Hamdania. Five of eight Camp Pendleton troops charged in that incident have pleaded guilty.
Those two high-profile cases were joined by a third earlier this year, causing more angst for Marine Corps leaders. In the third case, members of a Marine Corps special operations unit based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., are under investigation for possible criminal wrongdoing in the deaths of 12 civilians in Afghanistan on March 3.
Civilian killings and detainee abuse cases have put a tarnish on the U.S. involvement in Iraq in Afghanistan. Some of the cases have been blamed on frustrations coming from confronting a nontraditional enemy ---- one that doesn't wear a uniform and mixes in with the civilian population.
Survey raises concerns
When he issued the new directives on ethics training, Conway did not cite those cases but did make reference to a survey released two weeks ago that found 40 percent of more than 400 Marines questioned would not report a fellow Marine for killing or wounding an innocent civilian.
Seen as equally troubling from commanders was a finding that 39 percent of the respondents said torture should be allowed to gather information from an insurgent despite it being against the law in the handling of enemy combatants and detainees. The survey was conducted by U.S. Army researchers last fall and released May 4.
Gary Solis, a former Marine lawyer who teaches military law at Georgetown University, said he was encouraged by Conway's edicts.
"The survey results require some kind of response and as a Law of Armed Conflict teacher, I'm glad to see it," Solis said. "Although we are not a nation that shoots unarmed people and we are not a nation that tortures, our recent history demonstrates there is reason for concern."
Conway's directive calls for combat-experienced, noncommissioned officers to teach the rules of engagement and battlefield ethics. The rules allow troops to respond with appropriate force when under attack or threat, but require steps to identify the enemy before an attack to limit civilian deaths or injuries. The rules forbid assaults of any kind against noncombatants.
His memo also called for re-emphasizing what he termed the "essence of the Marine Corps warrior ethos."
"Our core values do not diminish our ability to fight and win," he wrote, adding that ethical conduct can win over the civilian population.
Initiatives include reviewing the entry-level ethics training recruits now receive and improving the service's ability to measure the effectiveness of its laws-of-war training.
In the end, the general said, it is each Marine who is ultimately accountable for his or her own actions. And in a line seemingly applicable to the ongoing Haditha prosecutions against officers for dereliction, Conway wrote: "Accountability for a unit's performance rests with its leaders."
Balance elusive in combat
Thad Coakley, an Iraq war veteran and former Marine Corps lawyer now working in private practice, said the new emphasis on ethics strikes him as a "muscle" exercise.
"In a firefight, they're certainly not going to be thinking about ethics," Coakley said last week. "But this is about how you translate thought into action. The purpose of all this reinforcement is not to pull out a rules of engagement card and write 'justified' and 'ethical' in each action. The purpose is because combat happens so quickly and this is to imbue a sense of muscle memory to support all the other training."
The law-of-war doctrine holds that warring parties will do their best to prevent unnecessary suffering and destruction and establishes guidelines for protecting civilians and treatment of prisoners and the wounded. The Defense Department requires the instruction for all service members.
Marines first get the training at boot camp and each unit sent to Iraq or Afghanistan receives additional training as they prepare to deploy.
An adviser to commanders on legal issues during his time in Iraq, Coakley said that using combat-experienced officers makes sense.
"Marines are big believers in training by personal example, so a key will be making sure the NCOs are correctly trained themselves and can transfer that knowledge," he said. "The fact they have combat experience gives them instant credibility because they can talk about what they did in certain situations.
"The flip side is they have to know the rules and be very clear in what they are teaching.
'You're going to be tested'
Solis said that despite what Americans may think, all is not fair in war and the rules are intended to minimize any unnecessary suffering.
"There are limits on the battlefield and as time goes on and the world becomes more civilized, the rules become more exacting," he said.
Lt. Gen. James Mattis recently told Marines in Iraq's dangerous Anbar province to make contact and wave at civilians even if a fellow Marine has just been killed or injured.
Mattis and other commanders stress that mistreatment of civilians helps the insurgency.
"They want us to become racist and to hate every Iraqi," Mattis told Marines, according to a dispatch from a Los Angeles Times reporter traveling with the general. "You're going to be tested, and there are going to be some tough times. We're defined by those who keep their cool."
The Times story also quoted Mattis as telling his Marines to "kill the right people and protect everybody else. Protect, protect, protect."
Ethics issues confront Mattis on a regular basis as head of Marine Corps forces in the Middle East and commander of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force.
He also is the convening authority over the Hamdania and Haditha cases under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and must review and approve all case results as well as decide whether Marines charged with a crime should stand trial.
Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com
It's good to see that everybody in Iraq understands who Bush has left in charge of the war - - the scumbag ACLU lawyers of JAG. Thank you, Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush.
I'm sure the dead Marine's (or soldier's) family feels better now that the lawyers running the war have given their permission to fight it correctly. Thank you, George W. Bush. Can I go throw up now?
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