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How Our Overly Restrictive Rules of Engagement Keep Us from Winning Wars
National Review ^ | 12/21/2015 | David French

Posted on 12/21/2015 6:53:21 AM PST by SeekAndFind

The car was moving at high speed. It had just broken a blockade of American and Iraqi forces and was trying to escape into the gathering dusk. American soldiers, driving larger and slower armored vehicles, mostly the large and unwieldy MRAPs (mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles), gave chase.

They were intensely interested in the target. Acting on intelligence that high-value al-Qaeda leaders might be present, a cavalry troop -- working with Iraqi allies -- surrounded an isolated village near the Iranian border. The mission was simple: to search the village and kill or capture identified members of al-Qaeda. It was the kind of mission that the troopers had executed countless times before.

It wasn't uncommon to encounter "squirters" -- small groups of insurgents who try to sneak or race through American lines and disappear into the desert. Sometimes they were on motorcycles, sometimes on foot, but often they were in cars, armed to the teeth and ready to fight to the death. On occasion the squirters weren't insurgents at all -- just harmless, terrified civilians trying to escape a deadly war.

This evening, however, our troopers believed that the car ahead wasn't full of civilians. The driver was too skilled, his tactics too knowing for a carload of shepherds. As the car disappeared into the night, the senior officer on the scene radioed for permission to fire.

His request went to the TOC, the tactical operations center, which is the beating heart of command and control in the battlefield environment. There the "battle captain," or the senior officer in the chain of command, would decide -- shoot or don't shoot.

But first there was a call for the battle captain to make, all the way to brigade headquarters, where a JAG officer -- an Army lawyer -- was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. His job was to analyze the request, apply the governing rules of engagement, and make a recommendation to the chain of command. While the commander made the ultimate decision, he rarely contradicted JAG recommendations. After all, if soldiers opened fire after a lawyer had deemed the attack outside the rules, they would risk discipline -- even prosecution -- if the engagement went awry.

Acting on the best available information -- including a description of the suspect vehicle, a description of its tactics, analysis of relevant intelligence, and any available video feeds -- the JAG officer had to determine whether there was sufficient evidence of "hostile intent" to authorize the use of deadly force. He had to make a life-or-death decision in mere minutes.

In this case, the lawyer said no -- insufficient evidence. No deadly force. Move to detain rather than shoot to kill. The commander deferred. No shot. Move to detain.

So the chase continued, across roads and open desert. The suspect vehicle did its best to shake free, but at last it was cornered by converging American forces. There was no escape. Four men emerged from the car. American soldiers dismounted from their MRAPs, and with one man in the lead, weapons raised, they ordered the Iraqis to surrender.

Those who were in the TOC that night initially thought someone had stepped on a land mine. Watching on video feed, they saw the screen go white, then black. For several agonizing minutes, no one knew what had happened.

Then the call came. Suicide bomber. One of the suspects had self-detonated, and Americans were hurt. One badly -- very badly. Despite desperate efforts to save his life, he died just before he arrived at a functioning aid station. Another casualty of the rules of engagement.

Lieutenant Colonel Bryan McCoy (left) during a battle in Baghdad, April 3, 2003 (Getty)

Imagine if the United States had fought World War II with a mandate to avoid any attack when civilians were likely to be present. Imagine Patton's charge through Western Europe constrained by granting the SS safe haven whenever it sheltered among civilians. If you can imagine this reality, then you can also imagine a world without a D-Day, a world where America's greatest generals are war criminals, and where the mighty machinery of Hitler's industrial base produces planes, tanks, and guns unmolested. In other words, you can imagine a world where our Army is a glorified police force and our commanders face prosecution for fighting a real war. That describes our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For more than a decade, complaints about the rules of engagement have bubbled up on soldiers' message boards, in stray comments -- often by soldiers' parents -- on conservative websites, and in the occasional article in the mainstream press. Frequently, this comes in the context of lauding the military for its restraint. Yet despite being such a vital -- and sometimes decisive -- factor in a more than decade-long war, the rules of engagement are still poorly understood, and their impact is largely unknown. As ISIS continues to grow and its reach expands from the Middle East to Europe, the United States, and beyond, it's time to consider the true cost of America's self-imposed constraints.

RELATED: Cultural Sensitivity Does Not Win Wars

Rules of engagement are separate from -- but related to -- the actual law of armed conflict. The law of armed conflict (LOAC) is a comprehensive, complex body of law developed largely by the Western powers in an effort to render war more humane. Its principles are relatively simple -- designed to limit the use of force to military targets and to treat captives with proper care and respect -- but have become almost mind-numbingly complex in application. The Department of Defense's new Law of War Manual stretches to a staggering 1,176 pages and purports not just to define general principles but also to govern specific applications in a granular level of detail. But no soldier, no commander, and indeed few military lawyers can master these rules in all their complexity. And so they learn generalities.

In general, the LOAC is now governed by the principles of necessity, humanity, proportionality, and distinction. The principle of necessity, to quote the Law of War Manual, "justifies certain actions necessary to defeat the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible." Humanity "forbids actions unnecessary to achieve that object." Proportionality requires that even when actions may be justified by military necessity, such actions must not be unreasonable or excessive. Distinction imposes on the parties an obligation to distinguish between military and civilian targets and to facilitate distinctions by clearly marking military personnel and military vehicles.

RELATED: Our Immoral Rules of Engagement

In his introductory letter to the Law of War Manual, Department of Defense general counsel Stephen Preston declares the law of war to be "part of our military heritage" and says that "obeying it is the right thing to do." He further argues that the doctrines are no impediment to "fighting well and prevailing." In other words, these legal doctrines are said to allow American soldiers to fight under the highest of moral standards and still win wars.

These are noble principles, but unfortunately their applicability peaked more than a century ago, when warring states in Europe -- exhausted by the Wars of Religion -- fought battles on open fields between militaries wearing the most distinctive of uniforms. Think of the battle of Waterloo in what is now Belgium or, here in the United States, the battles of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. The United States hasn't fought a conflict governed by the law of war in almost a century. Indeed, just as the law of war is part of America's military heritage, so is the modern concept of "total war" -- a nation mobilizes its full resources to destroy not just the military of an opposing country but also its very capacity to wage war.

America's enemies, moreover, have consistently and flagrantly disregarded the laws of war. Arguably, the United States has not fought a nation that substantially complied with the LOAC since it squared off against the Germans in the trenches of Western Europe in World War I. Instead, both the regular armies (Nazis, Japanese, North Koreans, Chinese, and North Vietnamese) and the insurgencies (Viet Cong, Taliban, and al-Qaeda) have brazenly violated the law at every turn.

The modern result is a military farce. American forces play by the rules while our enemies exploit those same rules to limit our freedom of action, create sanctuaries where they can rest and rearm, and then launch international propaganda campaigns when our painstaking targeting proves to be the least bit imprecise.

Yet -- and here's the crucial point -- through their rules of engagement, American soldiers don't just comply with the law of war. They go beyond the requirements of the LOAC to impose additional and legally unnecessary restrictions on the use of military force. Rules of engagement represent true war-by-wonk, in which a deadly brew of lawyers, politicians, soldiers, and social scientists endeavors to fine-tune the use of military force to somehow kill the enemy while "winning over" the local population even as the local population is in the direct line of fire.

RELATED: Killing Without Due Process: It's Called War

Defenders of the rules of engagement often speak as if they represent nothing more than military common sense -- after all, wouldn't it be better if American soldiers killed only insurgents? Don't civilian deaths inflame the population? General Stanley McChrystal famously told his troops in Afghanistan that they should spend 95 percent of their time "building relationships" and "meeting the needs" of the Afghan people. Only 5 percent should be spent fighting the Taliban.

In establishing these priorities, McChrystal was purporting to apply the counterinsurgency principle of "protecting the population," but it is difficult to protect a population when the rules of engagement grant the enemy enormous freedom of movement and access to civilians and civilian sites. By imposing restrictive rules of engagement, McChrystal (like commanders before and since) was making it more difficult for his troops both to clear the Taliban from towns and villages and to hold territory against inevitable counterattacks. Counterinsurgency is always long and painful, but when troops are unable to clear and hold territory, they can't truly enter the important "build" phase, in which soldiers transition from constant combat to supporting local allies and building local militaries in an environment relatively free of threat.

Thus, rather than learning and applying the true laws of war, soldiers are taught an absurd distortion of them -- rules that have grown more restrictive throughout the War on Terror, culminating most recently in the Obama administration's reported decisions in the air war against ISIS to leave known military targets intact for fear of inflicting even a single civilian death.

RELATED: Where American Boots Are On the Ground, American Justice Must Prevail

While the precise rules of engagement in any given theater of operations tend to be classified, their general parameters are well known and give American soldiers the option of using force only in the face of a "hostile act" or "hostile intent," or when an enemy fighter has been "positively identified." Once the enemy is engaged, the rules then govern the types of weapons that may be used, how they may be used, where they may be used, and the various levels of command that can authorize the use of each kind of weapon. So unless a soldier is using his personal weapons system to engage an enemy who is actively firing on him, there is all too often confusion and delay on the battlefield. Sometimes troops must consult lawyers even during active firefights. The results are often grim. Americans die.

Fourth Infantry Regiment soldiers in Afghanistan, September 2010. (US Army)

The intelligence was solid. Multiple, reliable sources had revealed the time and location for the meeting of an al-Qaeda leader with an operational cell specializing in improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The location was a village in Diyala province, north of the town of Balad Ruz. The time was just after noon on Friday. But there was a problem -- a big problem: The meeting was in a mosque, and the al-Qaeda leader was the imam.

While tribal leaders pleaded for American forces to strike, Army lawyers were writing legal memos, sending requests for permission to raid the mosque (complete with legal arguments) up the chain of command. The clock ticked as the command deliberated. Finally, the word came: Permission denied. The potential secondary effects of a raid -- complete with possible visuals of American soldiers storming a mosque -- outweighed the benefits of an attack.

But there are also effects of not acting. Days later, an American patrol was attacked by a massive, remote-detonated IED. A Humvee reinforced with extra armor was blown into the air. Four Americans died. One soldier miraculously escaped, but with crippling, life-altering injuries. The IED cell had struck again.

The effects continued. Within weeks of the IED strike, the cell ambushed another American patrol -- this time with elements of the al-Qaeda group firing from, yes, a mosque. One American was seriously injured, and the resulting firefight lasted 36 hours, inflicting massive damage. Much of the village was destroyed as American and al-Qaeda troops traded fire, locked in house-to-house combat. The rules of engagement saved a mosque but destroyed a village -- and likely four more American lives.

101st Airborne soldiers deploy in Parwan Province, Afghanistan, February 2011. (US Army)

Talk to combat veterans and the stories like this will come pouring out, often variations on the same theme: We knew where the enemy was, but we couldn't pursue him. And when we fought him, we couldn't kill him.

Bing West, a retired Marine infantry officer, the author of multiple books on the War on Terror, and a journalist who has embedded over two dozen times with troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, believes the rules of engagement often rob American soldiers of their military advantage. With body armor, ammunition, and other gear weighing in excess of 90 pounds, infantry can't "press home attacks," West says. "Fire and maneuver does not exist, so troops have to apply massive firepower." Yet the rules block access to the firepower needed to win engagements.

RELATED: The Pentagon's ISIS Strategy, By Its Own Accounting, Is a Mess

Few engagements show this reality more starkly than the battle of Ganjgal, featured in the book West co-authored with Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer, Into the Fire. Members of Meyer's small team of Marine advisers to an Afghan-army unit walked into a Taliban ambush and soon found themselves pinned down, unable to effectively return fire or safely retreat. In prior wars -- indeed, earlier in the Afghan War -- this was exactly the time when Marines could call for artillery support or an air strike and use the American military's immense firepower advantage not only to save their own lives but to destroy the attacking enemy force.

But not this time. Under the rules of engagement, the directive was clear: "Do not employ ‘air-to-ground or indirect fires against residential compounds, defined as any structure or building known or likely to contain civilians, unless the ground force commander has verified that no civilians are present.'" Marines watched F-15E Eagles circle, impotently. Artillery was silent. In the meantime, Meyer launched a desperate effort -- with Army captain Will Swenson -- to find and rescue his lost comrades. Meyer rescued Afghan allies and fought -- sometimes hand to hand -- to reach his team, only to find it was too late. His friends, his brothers, were dead.

RELATED: To Defeat ISIS, Put Boots on the Ground

As West notes, "you cannot fight a major battle with the current rules of engagement." Some units were so paralyzed in their ability to mount offensive operations that they were reduced to rolling outside of their base and waiting to be fired upon. Only then was it truly clear that they could respond, though not with the full power at their disposal, and so long as civilians were likely present, they were often prohibited from responding even with the precision-guided weapons that make the American military theoretically the deadliest in the world.

In Iraq and Syria, American pilots have watched as ISIS fighters moved freely among civilians, and they've held fire rather than bomb ISIS oil trucks that are funding the jihadist war, out of concern that some of the truck drivers might not be jihadists. In one notorious incident, pilots dropped leaflets to warn of an imminent attack and made fake bombing runs to try to clear the area of civilians. Indeed, the fake bombing run is common enough that insurgents now understand that "fly-bys" can be a signal not of imminent doom but rather of safety. After all, if they were in real danger, the bomb would have already dropped. By some reports, up to 75 percent of sorties end without dropping bombs, and West reports that some pilots fear court-martial if they don't adequately question a ground controller's request for a strike.

Here's the final irony of our concern for the laws of war and civilian casualties: Our rules of engagement not only create an additional incentive for enemy law-breaking, they ultimately lead to mass-scale civilian casualties at the hands of unconstrained jihadists.

RELATED: Vietnam and the Legacy of Limited War

Fully aware of American restrictions, enemy fighters not only refuse to wear uniforms, they often do their best to blend in with the civilian population, eschewing distinctive dress, armbands, or any other insignia that brands them as members of a terrorist militia. Rather than congregate in isolated outposts, they cluster in mosques, around hospitals, and even in private homes. While such tactics are frequent in guerrilla warfare, they are neither legal nor moral, and our jihadist opponents have reached appalling lows even by the rough and brutal standards of insurgencies. During my deployment in Iraq, I watched on live feed as a fleeing insurgent picked up a small child and carried him as a human shield to escape pursuing forces. I've seen al-Qaeda cells hold meetings in the courtyards of farmhouses while surrounded by young children. And so they live to fight -- and kill -- again.

Civilians in jihadist-held areas are shot, stabbed, crucified, burned alive, beheaded, and thrown from tall buildings. When they take new cities, jihadists fire indiscriminately in civilian areas, often killing anything that moves. To keep their oppressive peace, they sometimes massacre entire villages. As a result, in its own military campaigns, America often saves the few only to watch the many die horrific deaths.

RELATED: Why America Has Lost the Will to Win Wars

American military success has been tied to looser rules of engagement. From the initial lightning march through Iraq to Baghdad, to the decisive battles of the Iraq troop surge, American forces win when they take the gloves off. Though most "routine" operations during the Surge were covered by the now-standard rules of engagement, resulting in the tragic incidents described above, during key battles, commanders often loosened the rules, granting greater discretion to leaders in the field and more freedom of action to soldiers to identify and engage the enemy.

For example, soldiers were empowered to engage the enemy whenever they encountered known enemy tactics, techniques, and procedures (known as "TTPs"), even when no weapons were evident. And the number and nature of identified TTPs was expanded to encompass the latest intelligence.

Indeed, as the Surge indicates, the choice isn't between the mass destruction of total war and the purported surgical precision and humanity of wonk war. Seasoned American veterans can and do make good decisions under pressure. They can distinguish friend from foe in a complex battlefield. They wield their weapons with precision and skill. Intentional killing of civilians is exceedingly rare. Of course war is never easy, and choices are always fraught with danger. Loosening the rules of engagement and delegating greater authority to the troops in the field will likely lead to increased civilian casualties, but granting warriors the ability to close with, and destroy, opposing forces has proven to diminish enemy combat power, clear civilian areas of enemy influence, and enable soldiers to hold on to hard-fought gains.

While JAG officers' concern with the terrible consequences of poor decision-making under pressure is well meaning and understandable, the current rules have effectively taken combat decision-making away from experienced warriors and put it in the hands of far less experienced lawyers. Again and again, lawyers prevent warriors from engaging targets the warriors know are hostile but cannot prove to the standards required by the relevant rules.

EDITORIAL: A Serious War Calls for a Serious Strategy

Moreover, no true oversight exists. Political leaders increasingly don't understand the military, much less the weapons and tactics needed to prevail on the battlefield. Every branch of government blanches in the face of left-wing critics who speak as if by reflex of "war crimes" any time civilians die.

Eighth Marine Regiment troops in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, July 2009 (USMC)

To be sure, reforming the rules of engagement will not by itself lead to American victory in the War on Terror, particularly because it confronts an amorphous group of violent religious ideologues rather than a fixed set of powers. But reforming the rules of engagement will make the American military more effective wherever and however that happens.

The Left is fond of claiming that the outcome of American military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan reveals the "profound limitations" of American military power. In reality, however, they reveal only the profound limitations of a military so lawyered up that it can't drop a bomb or fire an artillery round without a J.D. on the line. Our enemies -- who disregard every limit in their quest to kill, destroy, and expand the scope of their striking power -- benefit, and are delighted. ISIS is seeking to deploy chemical weapons. America is looking for excuses not to drop bombs.

In this circumstance, soldiers and families suffer. Mothers lose their children. Wives lose their husbands. Soldiers lose their brothers. The holes in our hearts are gaping, and the psychic wounds are made rawer by the fact that so many of those losses were unnecessary. I knew men who died because lawyers and politicians failed them. Those who served, and their loved ones, are left to pick up the pieces, visiting graves, comforting families, and feeling a deep and lasting sorrow. Our nation doesn't trust its warriors, and its warriors are paying the price.

-- David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review, and a veteran of the Iraq War. This article originally appeared in the December 21, 2015, issue of National Review.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: military; rulesofengagement; wars

1 posted on 12/21/2015 6:53:21 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

When you have to clear a kill shot all the way to Obama, you have lost the battle before it is joined.


2 posted on 12/21/2015 6:54:32 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: All

Since Vietnam the democrats favorite and most successful campaign strategy is to lose a war and blame it on anyone but themselves.


3 posted on 12/21/2015 6:58:13 AM PST by uncle fenders
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To: SeekAndFind
Obama is only pretending to fight ISIS.


4 posted on 12/21/2015 6:58:30 AM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: SeekAndFind

Like I always say, Washington politicians, lawyers and judges have killed more American military personnel than all of our enemies put together. You can take that to the bank.


5 posted on 12/21/2015 6:58:45 AM PST by FlingWingFlyer (The biggest liars in the liberal media have started referring to themselves as fact checkers. Sad.)
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To: SeekAndFind
Our insane ROE cost American lives. Period.

I know this doesn't matter to Obama but it sure as hell matters to anyone who loves this country.

6 posted on 12/21/2015 6:59:35 AM PST by skeeter
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To: SeekAndFind

Republican debate
SANTORUM: The enemy is a theocracy and their allure is their theocracy.

-Give the objective to defeat the enemy to the Military and let them determine the strategy.


7 posted on 12/21/2015 7:01:38 AM PST by Son House (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; the Original Legislative Fraud.)
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To: SeekAndFind

In Vietnam we could not fire first. This meant that we had to wait until someone shot at us.
How stupid is this?
The only rule a person in combat should need is to kill the enemy by any means available without getting permission and without waiting for the enemy to shoot first.

We will never win a war if the soldier is more afraid of lawyers than the enemy.


8 posted on 12/21/2015 7:06:51 AM PST by BuffaloJack (ISLAM is the ENEMY.)
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To: BuffaloJack

The JAG Officers are just political officers. They don’t care about American lives.


9 posted on 12/21/2015 7:16:11 AM PST by Oldexpat
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To: SeekAndFind

the rules are tacis prevention of war

if there must be war, it must not be war


10 posted on 12/21/2015 7:17:46 AM PST by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc;+12, 73, ....carson is the kinder gentler trump.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Repeating what I posted on another thread:

It would really be nice if our next President (Hopefully, one of the good guys) would say, “We’re going after ISIS today. There will be no video footage or embedded journalists due to maintenance of OPSEC. The public will learn of our progress through daily briefings in writing, and no questions will be answered by military personnel because they’ll be too busy doing what they do: Killing people and breaking things.”

And it would be called, “Operation Pig’s Blood.”


11 posted on 12/21/2015 7:22:16 AM PST by RandallFlagg ("Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -Charlton Heston)
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To: bert

ANYTIME we send our troops into harms way, they should be given the opportunity to do what they were sent there to do.......Kill those who would oppose them. Tying the hands of our troops only gets them killed. War is KILL OR BE KILLED, no exceptions.


12 posted on 12/21/2015 7:22:23 AM PST by DaveA37
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To: SeekAndFind; Travis McGee
After all, if soldiers opened fire after a lawyer had deemed the attack outside the rules, they would risk discipline -- even prosecution -- if the engagement went awry.

On the day in 2001, when we had Mullah Omar in our sights as he was fleeing Afghanistan in an ambulance - POSITIVE ID on the target - and a JAG O-5 at CENTCOM overruled the combat commander and left a High-Value Target get away - on that day, I knew we were not serious about prosecuting the War on Terror.

13 posted on 12/21/2015 7:28:53 AM PST by Old Sarge
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To: Old Sarge

I believe we just lost six troops in Afghanistan.


14 posted on 12/21/2015 8:03:36 AM PST by angcat
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To: Oldexpat

JAG officers are trained in the law and are usually well aware of the political aspects of war. But, they are not combat leaders and they have little or no actual combat experience. In this role, they are staff officers, but they have become the defacto tactical commander without the responsibilities of a tactical commander. This is insane.

The unfortunate fact is that the scenario described in this article is the simplest case. Very often, the decisions are deferred to some staff level general officer in another continent looking at a video stream over a satellite link. That general officer is often superceded by a political hack in the White House (Valerie Jarrett or Susan Rice). This is not war, it is an element of a political campaign.


15 posted on 12/21/2015 8:03:51 AM PST by centurion316 (,)
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To: SeekAndFind

ROEs for winners:

If it moves... kill it.
You didn’t get them all? Get a bigger bomb.
I don’t care. Level it, in fact level everything.


16 posted on 12/21/2015 8:06:51 AM PST by maddog55 (America Rising a new Civil War needs to happen.)
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To: Oldexpat

That is an ignorant statement. I just retired after 30 years as an Air Force JAG (active and reserve), and Air Force JAGs are some of the most patriotic and concerned LINE OFFICERS out there. Many have gone outside the wire to get a clearer feel for what the boots on the ground have to content with.

Colonel, USAFR (Ret)


17 posted on 12/21/2015 9:00:24 AM PST by jagusafr
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To: jagusafr; Oldexpat; centurion316

It is not a question of patriotism. JAGs, like all military officers are as good as their training and experience. They are generally great lawyers, a few out there are great staff officers as well. However most are are not combat arms officers nor are any of them commanders.

Current policy places them in positions to make judgements they are not competent, nor trained, to make. Ultimately the current restrictive ROE do not allow for, nor provide the ability to forgive honest mistakes. Forcing commanders, Lt. Colonels, Colonels and Generals to rely upon JAGs, officers two to three ranks junior and with much less experience to filter their decisions.

ROE are a critical tool that provide the left and right limits for commanders, but those current limits are progressively narrower and narrower as political leaders are unwilling to provide top cover for the natural friction and fog of armed combat. Precision weapons eliminate the need to target cities, we can hit buildings and leave nearby structures unharmed. Senior political leaders see “Pred porn” video feeds and think war can be clean and neat.

However, technology can only reduce, not eliminate civilian casualties. No weapon in the world exists, nor will ever likely ever exists that will only kill enemy combatants. Nor in reality can we ever have perfect information on who is and is not a combatant. The President and his advisers do not, nor are willing to understand that.

President Obama, much like President Johnson, never wanted to fight the war he was presented with. He, like Johnson is not fighting to win, but to not lose while he is in office. The strategic, operational and tactical constraints the ROE place on strategic, operational and tactical commanders make it impossible for them to effective accomplish the stated mission.


18 posted on 12/21/2015 2:00:53 PM PST by drop 50 and fire for effect ("Work relentlessly, accomplish much, remain in the background, and be more then you seem.")
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To: drop 50 and fire for effect

Very well said. One of my War College classmates was a Marine JAG Officer. He was detailed to command a rifle company, something that was common at least in our day. Army JAG officers don’t get that opportunity unless they start out in a combat branch before they go to Law School.

A good friend just spoke to his son from Afghanistan today. His son was wounded this morning in the attack near Bagram. 3 of his team members were KIA today and one other seriously wounded and evacuated to Landstuhl. 3 others from another unit were KIA. This can been largely attributed to defects in ROE. Read the story of CPT Flo Groberg, MOH, if you want to understand the scenario for today’s attack. We know how they are staging these attacks and how to defend against it, but their hands are tied by ROE restrictions.

Pray for the six who died today.


19 posted on 12/21/2015 3:22:01 PM PST by centurion316 (,)
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To: drop 50 and fire for effect

Very well stated, and as much a frustration to most JAGs as it is to the commander in the field. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the ROE decisions are made at the policy level, not within the Departments, and we’re stuck interpreting what we’ve been given to the best of our ability. Don’t GET me started about concealed carry on military installations.

jagusafr


20 posted on 12/22/2015 1:59:50 PM PST by jagusafr
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