Haiti (Catch all)

[Rex Brynen]

If we compare that with the admin overheads from some of the other groups, you have to wonder. I believe that one of the most egregious examples, since corrected to some degree, was UNICEF with an 80% overhead (or somewhere in that area) and who, by the 1990's, appear to have been spending the vast majority of their money on conferences and symposia (cf. Chattering International: How UNICEF Fails the World’s Poorest Children, James Le Fenu, 1993).

Part of the confusion here was the way in which UNICEF structured its budget, which made it look like less money than was going into programming than was actually the case. Moreover, the egregious cases no more justify giving up on development agencies and NGOs as instruments of policy than do bloated weapon acquisitions budgets and $640 toilet seats mean that we jettison the military. Rather, they are reasons for reforms.

To take a few more typical cases. UNRWA--the largest UN agency in terms of staff--spends 11% of its budget on program support, and 89% on programmes. MSF--a fairly typical humanitarian NGO--spends 13% of its budget on support and fund-raising, and 87% on programme delivery. Those, I would suggest, are more typical numbers these days.

[Rex Brynen]

I can't help but notice a certain irony to this entire "harsh in Haiti" thread. While much of the discussion has focused on overblown coercive measures for dealing with problems of looting and public order, what I'm hearing from diplomats, aid officials and journalists on the ground is that the looting and public order issues have been much smaller than expected, and have not been the primary constraint (which has tended to be access, logistics, communication, and coordination). Many have actually been rather positively impressed by the degree of community self-help and organization among the affected population. The most recent OCHA sitrep devotes only one sentence (in a six page report) to security problems--and even this is the potential for criminal violence due to prison escapes, and potential future instability, rather than serious looting affecting current UN and NGO activities on the ground.

Part of this, of course, is because MINUSTAH and the US military integrated convoy, perimeter control, and other security measures into relief planning. It is also not to say that looting hasn't happened--obviously it has, as have problems in orderly distribution of supplies.

It is to suggest, however, that this sometimes testosterone-laden discussion might be a bit removed from the actual challenges on the ground at the moment.

[Tom Kratman]

I can't help but notice a certain irony to this entire "harsh in Haiti" thread. While much of the discussion has focused on overblown coercive measures for dealing with problems of looting and public order, what I'm hearing from diplomats, aid officials and journalists on the ground is that the looting and public order issues have been much smaller than expected, and have not been the primary constraint (which has tended to be access, logistics, communication, and coordination). Many have actually been rather positively impressed by the degree of community self-help and organization among the affected population. The most recent OCHA sitrep devotes only one sentence (in a six page report) to security problems--and even this is the potential for criminal violence due to prison escapes, and potential future instability, rather than serious looting affecting current UN and NGO activities on the ground.

Part of this, of course, is because MINUSTAH and the US military integrated convoy, perimeter control, and other security measures into relief planning. It is also not to say that looting hasn't happened--obviously it has, as have problems in orderly distribution of supplies.

It is to suggest, however, that this sometimes testosterone-laden discussion might be a bit removed from the actual challenges on the ground at the moment.

Couple of qualitative queries:

Does "smaller than expected" necessarily mean small and / or insignificant?

If they have not been the primary constraint have they been a negligable constraint? Consistently and completely?

Does something in the "most recent report" mean that there were no or negligable problems several weeks ago?

How much do you think that "the actual challenges on the ground at the moment" have to do with the actual challenges on the ground several weeks ago?

What measures are observers using for "community self help" and "better than expected"? Did they expect anything at all to begin with?

Just curious.

[Tom Kratman]

Part of the confusion here was the way in which UNICEF structured its budget, which made it look like less money than was going into programming than was actually the case. Moreover, the egregious cases no more justify giving up on development agencies and NGOs as instruments of policy than do bloated weapon acquisitions budgets and $640 toilet seats mean that we jettison the military. Rather, they are reasons for reforms.

To take a few more typical cases. UNRWA--the largest UN agency in terms of staff--spends 11% of its budget on program support, and 89% on programmes. MSF--a fairly typical humanitarian NGO--spends 13% of its budget on support and fund-raising, and 87% on programme delivery. Those, I would suggest, are more typical numbers these days.

I smell creative accounting, frankly. No, not yours; the UN's.

[Rex Brynen]

I smell creative accounting, frankly. No, not yours; the UN's.

Well, it could have been mine, had there been any--I was on the international advisory committee for the last UN internal oversight report on UNRWA. Certainly in that case there was no creative accounting involved.

[Tom Kratman]

Well, it could have been mine, had there been any--I was on the international advisory committee for the last UN internal oversight report on UNRWA. Certainly in that case there was no creative accounting involved.

Creative accounting is not limited to outright dishonesty. For example, if Trip X to A conference for R members of UNRWA was paid for by a different agency of the UN, it would distort the overhead figures. If there are realty and utility costs that are paid for by a different department, that, too would distort the overhead figures. If pensions, which are not ungenerous in the UN, are paid out of some other pot of funds (and I'm pretty sure they are) that would distort the figures. If the rather generous funding for schooling for the children of UN workers comes out of a different pot, that distorts the figures. If the also quite generous housing allowances for UN workers come out of a different pot...you get the idea.

And you might just find, if you count all of those costs in, that the UN doesn't compare especially favorably to even the most corrupt and mismanaged charities out there.

[Rex Brynen]

Creative accounting is not limited to outright dishonesty. For example, if Trip X to A conference for R members of UNRWA was paid for by a different agency of the UN, it would distort the overhead figures. If there are realty and utility costs that are paid for by a different department, that, too would distort the overhead figures. If pensions, which are not ungenerous in the UN, are paid out of some other pot of funds (and I'm pretty sure they are) that would distort the figures. If the rather generous funding for schooling for the children of UN workers comes out of a different pot, that distorts the figures. If the also quite generous housing allowances for UN workers come out of a different pot...you get the idea.

Yes--but as it happens, none of those things apply to this case.

As for whether the aid community may overpay staff and (even more so) consultants, yes it can be a problem. However, having done work for both the USG and the UN system, the former typically pays more generously

[Tom Kratman]

Yes--but as it happens, none of those things apply to this case.

As for whether the aid community may overpay staff and (even more so) consultants, yes it can be a problem. However, having done work for both the USG and the UN system, the former typically pays more generously

None? You mean UNRWA has its own retirement pension and dependent schooling accounts and departments?

I'm not clear how, given the Noblemaire Principle, your second statement can be true? see: http://users.ictp.it/~staff/psalarie...#salary_system

Further, note the following from the orgnization's site, http://www.un.org/unrwa/overview/qa.html, "The United Nations Secretariat finances over one hundred international staff posts from its regular budget and UNESCO and WHO provide assistance in the staffing of the education and health programmes."

[Rex Brynen]

Further, note the following from the orgnization's site, http://www.un.org/unrwa/overview/qa.html, "The United Nations Secretariat finances over one hundred international staff posts from its regular budget and UNESCO and WHO provide assistance in the staffing of the education and health programmes."

I don't want to continue diverting the discussion away from Haiti, but yes I'm aware of how the Secretariat finances the international staff positions (which account for only 0.4% of all UNRWA staff, so even allowing for higher salary and benefits the effect is rather marginal). Indeed, the effect is arguably smaller than the number of programme-critical commons services that I included in figures on administrative overhead, so if anything I might have erred on the side of caution.

[Tom Kratman]

I don't want to continue diverting the discussion away from Haiti, but yes I'm aware of how the Secretariat finances the international staff positions (which account for only 0.4% of all UNRWA staff, so even allowing for higher salary and benefits the effect is rather marginal). Indeed, the effect is arguably smaller than the number of programme-critical commons services that I included in figures on administrative overhead, so if anything I might have erred on the side of caution.

Couple of objections/caveats:

Apples and oranges. Are the locally recruited workers paid on the Nobelmaire Principle, to include their retirements and children's schooling benefits? They apparently are not. If there are 29000 employees, most of them Palestinian refugees, and by your count only 13% of the UNRWA's 1.2 billion dollar budget is overhead, then those employees are only sucking up a maximum of about 5K each, per annum. (And, assuming some or much of that overhead is for things like fuel and transportation, rather less.) That's about a quarter of what the UN pays merely for tuition for any given child (or each child, in multi-children families) of one of it's regular people. If we take the typical non-Palestinian UN worker there, assuming he's a P-3, Step V (probably lowballed), his annual salary is about 88k per year. In addition, if I am reading the ICSC's charts properly, there is a roughly 108k per year "post allowance" for that area. If he has two children, their tuition (and how often do we expect them to go low, really?) would be about 36k. So, the typical UN worker, in that rough hundred+, takes up about 230k per year. Times 100 is 23 million, 2%, which is considerably more than .4%, no? And that's not counting WHO and UNESCO. Nor the amortized value of the pensions. Nor whatever work is done on behalf of UNRWA in New York or Geneva.

2% (a low balled figure) is not huge, measured against the overall budget (though it is non-trivial, measured against the 13% claimed as overhead) but it is enough to illustrate precisely what I claimed: creative accounting and the presentation of effectively false data.

Oh, and it appears that some of those things that don't apply _do_ apply.

Addendum: By the way, I _don't_ think for a minute you were lying above. I'm certain you believed what you wrote. What I have trouble with is _why_ someone would accept such an optimistic figure.

[Rex Brynen]

Couple of objections/caveats

I think you're rather making my point for me, Tom--which, as you'll remember, had to do with Marc's understandable concerns about the cost-effectiveness of front-line humanitarian agencies and NGOs. Specifically, after crunching the numbers for one agency's international staff costs (UNRWA), you're suggesting that the might be an extra 2% in staff costs that don't show up in the General Fund budget.

First, I would argue that this hardly changes the big picture. Second, we can hardly assume that international staff are irrelevant to programme delivery (the focus of my initial comment), any more that we can assume that everyone above 03 is irrelevant to the combat operations of the US Army. Third, as I noted before, in giving a quick picture of programme/administrative costs in one UN agency, I lumped a whole series of costs into the administrative side that are actually mission-critical to programme delivery: the transportation pool, comms, security, negotiating supplies of food/medicine/school supplies past the Israelis into Gaza, and so forth.

I would also add that the funding of international staff positions through the Secretariat isn't really creative accounting, since donors are fully aware of it, and it is taken into account in assessment of cost-effectiveness. Moreover, the tendency among donors has been to argue that UNRWA doesn't spend enough on management, and to push for more--not fewer--staff resources in that area.

Now the irony of this discussion (for those who have just joined us!) is that it has nothing to do with Haiti, since UNRWA is the only UN humanitarian agency not active there

Having worked with the military, other national security agencies, and international organizations, I would be hard-pressed to argue that the latter is the most spendthrift of the three. Certainly there are serious problems, which I've argued before in other contexts, and certainly I've encountered wasteful spending and poor programme designs. However, some level of background clutter is inevitable in large institutions, and ought be systematically addressed rather than throwing the humanitarian baby out with the anecdotal bathwater.

Moreover, in the case of humanitarian crisis, I think it is undeniably the case that the lead UN and humanitarian agencies are more cost-effective in delivering assistance than is the military, if one properly costs out the price-per-client or price-per-ton (a point that more than one NGO has made, as they watch $200-800 million C-17s land at PAP). Indeed, there was an OECD study a few years back that looked at the issue in some detail, and came to similar conclusions.. I'll see if I can dig it up.

This, incidentally, is absolutely NOT a criticism of US and Canadian military relief operations in Haiti--as you know, the reason why the military is so costly is precisely because it has the standby ability to do rapid airlift, to move transport in country, has embedded comms, security, logistics, and ISR, etc. There was simply no alternative after the earthquake, and the military has shown speed, dedication, flexibility, and even appropriate amounts of political sensitivity and humility in conducting the mission (as one member of the 82nd comment in the WaPo the other day, "we're like a football team being put in front of a Ping-Pong table. It's a learning curve")

It is inevitably the case that the post-earthquake development of Haiti will be undertaken by the Haitians, in collaboration with international organizations, NGOs, and donors. If there are legitimate concerns about the ineffective use of reconstruction funds--and there certainly are, both in terms of agency inefficiencies and local corruption--let us think about how those can be practically minimized in the timeframes available to us. Those timeframes are pressing: we currently still have hundreds of thousands with inadequate water, sanitation, and shelter (on top of the many Haitians who already lacked these things before the earthquake). We also have the hurricane/flooding season fast approaching. To paraphrase that great sage, Dick Cheney: you go to reconstruction with the aid community you've got.

[Rex Brynen]

An interesting piece in the NYT on the communal dynamics at work among Haitian IDPs:

Fighting Starvation, Haitians Share Portions

By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 25, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Maxi Extralien, a twig-thin 10-year-old in a SpongeBob pajama top, ate only a single bean from the heavy plate of food he received recently from a Haitian civic group. He had to make it last.

“My mother has 12 kids but a lot of them died,” he said, covering his meal so he could carry it to his family. “There are six of us now and my mom.”

For Maxi and countless others here in Haiti’s pulverized capital, new rules of hunger etiquette are emerging. Stealing food, it is widely known, might get you killed. Children are most likely to return with something to eat, but no matter what is found, or how hungry the forager, everything must be shared.

...

A few doors down, Elsie Perdriel cooked up what little she could. Her one-story home with maroon trim survived the earthquake, making her one of the lucky ones. But now she has 20 mouths to feed instead of four: seven children, including her grandson, a few extended relatives, and neighbors who lost their own homes.

It is a miniature civilization focused on food. Every day, one or two people are given the task of buying a single meal for the lot, but the purchases are small because money is tight. Work, a paycheck and disposable income all look a long way off.

Ms. Perdriel, an administrator with the national electric utility, has not heard from her bosses since the earthquake. Her son, Jean Sebastian Perdriel, 30, said his office by the port, where he worked for an import-export company, no longer stood.

“Nobody knows when they’re going to get started again,” he said. “Food, oil, rice, beans, it’s all expensive.”

Ms. Perdriel, a no-nonsense cook with her hair pulled back, displayed a pot with half of a chicken cut into pieces. “This should be for two people,” she said. “Now it will have to do for 20.”

Many other Haitians, while shouting for help in ever louder voices, are finding ways to share. In several neighborhoods of Carrefour, a poor area closer to the epicenter, small soup kitchens have sprung up with discounted meals, subsidized by Haitians with a little extra money. At 59 Impasse Eddy on Monday, three women behind a blue house stirred a pot of beans and rice, flavored with coconut, spices and lime juice.

They started cooking for their neighbors the day after the earthquake. On many mornings, they serve 100 people before 10 a.m.

“Everyone pays a small amount, 15 gourd,” or a little less than 50 cents, said Guerline Dorleen, 30, sitting on a small chair near the bubbling pot. “Before, this kind of meal would cost 50.”

Smiling and proud, the women said they did not have the luxury of waiting for aid groups to reach them in their hilly neighborhood. The trouble was, they were running out of food. They used their last bit of rice and beans on Monday.

...

[Rex Brynen]

To paraphrase that great sage, Dick Cheney: you go to reconstruction with the aid community you've got.

Rumsfeld, not Cheney. What can I say--I hadn't had my coffee yet.

Of course, that should read "To paraphrase that great sage, Donald Rumsfeld" ... and how often to you get to say that?

[Tom Kratman]

I think you're rather making my point for me, Tom--which, as you'll remember, had to do with Marc's understandable concerns about the cost-effectiveness of front-line humanitarian agencies and NGOs. Specifically, after crunching the numbers for one agency's international staff costs (UNRWA), you're suggesting that the might be an extra 2% in staff costs that don't show up in the General Fund budget.

First, I would argue that this hardly changes the big picture. Second, we can hardly assume that international staff are irrelevant to programme delivery (the focus of my initial comment), any more that we can assume that everyone above 03 is irrelevant to the combat operations of the US Army. Third, as I noted before, in giving a quick picture of programme/administrative costs in one UN agency, I lumped a whole series of costs into the administrative side that are actually mission-critical to programme delivery: the transportation pool, comms, security, negotiating supplies of food/medicine/school supplies past the Israelis into Gaza, and so forth.

I would also add that the funding of international staff positions through the Secretariat isn't really creative accounting, since donors are fully aware of it, and it is taken into account in assessment of cost-effectiveness. Moreover, the tendency among donors has been to argue that UNRWA doesn't spend enough on management, and to push for more--not fewer--staff resources in that area.

Now the irony of this discussion (for those who have just joined us!) is that it has nothing to do with Haiti, since UNRWA is the only UN humanitarian agency not active there

Having worked with the military, other national security agencies, and international organizations, I would be hard-pressed to argue that the latter is the most spendthrift of the three. Certainly there are serious problems, which I've argued before in other contexts, and certainly I've encountered wasteful spending and poor programme designs. However, some level of background clutter is inevitable in large institutions, and ought be systematically addressed rather than throwing the humanitarian baby out with the anecdotal bathwater.

Moreover, in the case of humanitarian crisis, I think it is undeniably the case that the lead UN and humanitarian agencies are more cost-effective in delivering assistance than is the military, if one properly costs out the price-per-client or price-per-ton (a point that more than one NGO has made, as they watch $200-800 million C-17s land at PAP). Indeed, there was an OECD study a few years back that looked at the issue in some detail, and came to similar conclusions.. I'll see if I can dig it up.

This, incidentally, is absolutely NOT a criticism of US and Canadian military relief operations in Haiti--as you know, the reason why the military is so costly is precisely because it has the standby ability to do rapid airlift, to move transport in country, has embedded comms, security, logistics, and ISR, etc. There was simply no alternative after the earthquake, and the military has shown speed, dedication, flexibility, and even appropriate amounts of political sensitivity and humility in conducting the mission (as one member of the 82nd comment in the WaPo the other day, "we're like a football team being put in front of a Ping-Pong table. It's a learning curve")

It is inevitably the case that the post-earthquake development of Haiti will be undertaken by the Haitians, in collaboration with international organizations, NGOs, and donors. If there are legitimate concerns about the ineffective use of reconstruction funds--and there certainly are, both in terms of agency inefficiencies and local corruption--let us think about how those can be practically minimized in the timeframes available to us. Those timeframes are pressing: we currently still have hundreds of thousands with inadequate water, sanitation, and shelter (on top of the many Haitians who already lacked these things before the earthquake). We also have the hurricane/flooding season fast approaching. To paraphrase that great sage, Dick Cheney: you go to reconstruction with the aid community you've got.

Rex:

What's important about that (again, be it noted, lowballed) 2% isn't the 2%; it's that it shows they were dishonest in this one particular, which suggests that they were something less than fully forthright in others. And there are further gray areas. How, for example, does the UNRWA account for food aid to the families of the Palestinians who work for them. If they can feed those families because they're paying the workers so little, or if they can pay the workers so little because they're feeding their families, that food arguably belongs under overhead, forex.

No matter; back to Haiti.

Cost effectiveness matters in the long term. it's less important in the short/emergency. Someone on my publishers website, Baen's Bar, asked me why the military was so much more effective in emergencies than civilian agencies. I'll edit this a bit because of different rules for different fora. Note that these are based on my experiences and observations and are not necessarily universal.

*****

1. We have vast and redundant (for peacetime purposes) logistic, administrative and medical infrastructure, equippage, and expertise. None of them have anything remotely comparable, nor even all of them combined.

2. We are trained and fully expect to go into harm's way. An uncertain security situation doesn't mean, "Oh, my, we can't risk..." It means, "Pass out the ammunition and here are your ROE."

3. We are not about feelings and especially not about feeling good about ourselves because we're just so caring and sensitive. We need not waste time, dithering, in endless meetings the purpose of which is to make everyone present feel important and good and caring and sensitive. (Rex, I've been to those meetings. Lots of them.) We have a chain of command, backed up by customs, regulations, and laws. We analyze, give orders, and act.

4. We are pretty fair at intelligence analysis, which is not that different, really, in disaster relief than in a movement to contact. We also have the assets to gather intelligence that civilian agencies lack.

5. We are, legitimately and justifiably, field santitation freaks. We have little problem saying, "If we catch you sh***ing someplace but where we've told you to, it will be hard on you." Civilian agency workers are usually too soft for that.

6. We are much less inclined to do for the refugees than to help and make them do for themselves. This attitude is tacit anathema among most civilian agencies because, after all, how can they feel good and kind and caring and sensitive unless they're doing for. This particular one came home to me over the question of rice issue in Kurdestan. The civilians were insisting we pass out rice that was several times the UNHCR requirement. It took me a while to realize that they were judging the amount based on cooked rice while we were passing out dry rice. A few questions, here and there, and I came to the conclusion that at least the ones in my area (rough center of mass, Mangesh, Iraq) simply couldn't imagine refugees cooking their own food. After all, how do you feel good and kind and caring and sensitive if you make people cook for themselves?

7. Some of us, at least, are perfectly capable of saying, "If I have any trouble out of you lot, or you fail to do the work I assign you, I will cut off your food in a heartbeat." Civilian agencies? That would be almost unthinkable. (Note though, that at least one UNHCR type did back me up on that when the Kurds got...difficult.)

8. We have no vested financial interest in dragging disasters out indefinitely. They do.

That's a fairly complete list, but I make no claim that it's exhaustive.

*****


Cost of a C-17 is about 200 million. It's not the item cost; which is fairly irrelevant since we'd have to have them anyway, or something just like them. It's the operational cost. We could give them to the UN and / or NGOs and they couldn't afford to run them nor to keep them ready to run. (Military equipment will break just sitting there.) We could give the C-17s to them and what would they do with them when there was not an emergency justifying costly aerial resupply? As an aside, and it's very nearly a creative accounting issue, the military counts parts, fuel, sometimes a sort of amortized life/use expectency, and civilian labor where applicable. But we typically don't count military labor, because that also has to be there anyway.

I'd be interested in seeing that OECD study, not because I would expect it to have any validity (the measures you mentioned are fairly irrelevant to the question, the situations being vastly different where C-17s or slower, but much cheaper, surface trans are appropriate) but because of the mindset I anticipate that went into the study beforehand. Indeed, other than to keep someone employed, I wonder why they bothered with the study at all.

[jmm99]

Hi Tom,

A brief continuation of our discussion concerning "harsh measures", with the takeoff point being your example:

Back in 89, during the Invasion of Panama, two female truck drivers refused to drive some troops further towards the fighting. Now, I think you can make a straight-faced argument that they simply panicked. Understandable and, while criminal in military terms, NOT mutiny.

But if you put the worst possible face on it, that they talked together to determine that if both refused neither would get in serious trouble (which, as far as I know, they didn't), it was a mutiny.

A. Assume you can and have arrested them. Mutiny's over. Back to work.

B. Assume, for whatever reason, that you can't. As soon as you shoot one, conspiracy has stopped and it is no longer an active mutiny. (Of course, if the other one doesn't know this and assumes, not unreasonably, that you're just a maniac, she'll probably drive. ..... (etc.)

Since I'm not much inclined to put the "worst possible face" on anything via assumptions, I won't address that example.

However, your premise drills down to when should harsh summary measures (shooting) be used to "prevent" (in Article 94's language) such as a mutiny (Article 94), desertion (Article 85) and misbehavior before the enemy (Article 99) - all capital offenses in combat situations.

Back in the mid-60s, I was part of a discussion re: justifications for homicides (as broadly used, the taking of a human life). A guy who was a Marine CPT, commander of a rifle company in the Korean War, took up the question of "bugging out" and what might be done about it. He was very terse (and didn't get into details). "There are things you may have to do in combat that may haunt you for the rest of your life. This is one of them. You'd better think about such things ahead of time." He didn't say what he did or did not do; nor what anyone else should or should not do.

I don't know how many "bugging outs" in Korea were resolved by shootings or courts-martial or were ignored. One finds anecdotal evidence such as this thread (not SWC), mainly concerned with militaries other than US:

gatpr 02-22-2002, 12:30 AM
My Dad a Korean War vet says he witnessed an instance of an NCO shooting a fleeing GI in the midst of a Chinese assault. He says he honestly believed it kept his whole platoon from bugging out. He's also told me of instances of fragging officers. The chain dogs of the Feldgendarmerie did have an old tradition. Their gorgets were holdovers from the 15th century or so, sort of like the Curiassers of the French Army.

and responding:

Ogadai 02-23-2002, 05:16 AM
Originally posted by gatpr:
My Dad a Korean War vet says he witnessed an instance of an NCO shooting a fleeing GI in the midst of a Chinese assault. He says he honestly believed it kept his whole platoon from bugging out. He's also told me of instances of fragging officers.

Interesting. A good contrast with the Australian experience in Korea, where no such episodes occurred. As there is no death penalty under our military law, any NCO who did that would have to be tried for murder. Is there a similar situation under American military law?

I've only ever heard of one incidence of "fragging" in the AMF which occurred during the Vietnam war, just before the end of the tour of one of our infantry battalions. As a consequence, the entire battalion was held back a month, in South Vietnam while the court-martial progressed. Apparently the defendent was placed in close confinement more for his own protection than anything else.

One has to wonder about the discipline of a force where shooting one's own soldiers is apparently commonly accepted and where the soldiers murder their own officers on whim.

What are one man's "exigent circumstances" and "absolute necessity" are not necessarily another man's under the same circumstances.

Let's posit another situation (put it in Vietnam). The platoon made contact with the enemy and was taking fires from what seemed to be bunkered positions several hundred meters to its front. The platoon leader (a 2LT new to that unit with no prior combat) called in a fire mission. The platoon sergeant (who was well into his first tour and had been acting platoon leader) immediately told the LT that he had called in arty on their own position. The LT disagreed. The PSG told him he was ordering the platoon to withdraw; and there was no time to argue. Some stayed with the LT, more withdrew with the PSG. They arty came in on the LT's position, as requested.

So, was the platoon sergeant guilty of mutiny (Article 94), desertion (Article 85) and misbehavior before the enemy (Article 99) ? Should the LT have shot him ?

Regards

Mike

[Tom Kratman]

Rumsfeld, not Cheney. What can I say--I hadn't had my coffee yet.

Of course, that should read "To paraphrase that great sage, Donald Rumsfeld" ... and how often to you get to say that?

That's all right; I inverted UNRWA and MSF.

And, by the way, should you ever read my ADCP series (though for various reasons, mostly health related, I don't think you should) you would find one Ron Campos (go ahead and translate that from Spanish) as one of the morons of the piece.

[Tom Kratman]

The big difference between Article 94 and the others is that the former has it's own capital punishment provisions built into it for failure to stop it. That's legally unique, in effect making successful suppression of the mutiny a matter of self defense. For the other things, yes, summary execution happens and is usually ignored / swept under the rug. Now if you're asking my opinion, more as a grunt than as a lawyer (I don't practice anymore), of whether or not summary shooting should be openly authorized for desertion under fire and misbehavior before the enemy the answer is yes.

We were not always so soft on the matter. When USS Constellation fought the French ship, L'Insurgente, there was precisely one US death. A gunner "flinched from his gun" and his division officer duly shot him, as the law called for at the time.

For the other question, probably not mutiny. The platoon sergeant appears to have consulted with nobody, but acted on his own and gave his own orders. Others followed, yes, but probably with the mindset that they were obeying a lawful order in legally fuzzy circumstances.

Desertion? No, the scenario you painted did not have the PSG fleeing from the enemy, technically, but from friendly fire. Moreover, even had it been enemy fire, it is doctrinally sound, hence legally defensible, to avoid enemy fire where possible and where it does not endanger the mission. Since no part of the mission could include doing the VC's or NVA's jobs for them...

Going down the elements of Article 99, it would be a very hard case for the prosecution to make. Only the first possibility, "runs away," would have any chance of sticking and the scenario you paint doesn't seem to imply running away, but only highly limited and restricted movement to a better position until a particular, avoidable danger had passed.

No, of course not. The LT should have listened to the PSG. If there was any charge to which the PSG would have been subject, and as a practical matter he wouldn't have been, it was probably Article 90. The prosecution would have laughed the LT out of his office, assuming the LT lived.

Hi Tom,

A brief continuation of our discussion concerning "harsh measures", with the takeoff point being your example:



Since I'm not much inclined to put the "worst possible face" on anything via assumptions, I won't address that example.

However, your premise drills down to when should harsh summary measures (shooting) be used to "prevent" (in Article 94's language) such as a mutiny (Article 94), desertion (Article 85) and misbehavior before the enemy (Article 99) - all capital offenses in combat situations.

Back in the mid-60s, I was part of a discussion re: justifications for homicides (as broadly used, the taking of a human life). A guy who was a Marine CPT, commander of a rifle company in the Korean War, took up the question of "bugging out" and what might be done about it. He was very terse (and didn't get into details). "There are things you may have to do in combat that may haunt you for the rest of your life. This is one of them. You'd better think about such things ahead of time." He didn't say what he did or did not do; nor what anyone else should or should not do.

I don't know how many "bugging outs" in Korea were resolved by shootings or courts-martial or were ignored. One finds anecdotal evidence such as this thread (not SWC), mainly concerned with militaries other than US:



and responding:



What are one man's "exigent circumstances" and "absolute necessity" are not necesarily another man's under the same circumstances.

Let's posit another situation (put it in Vietnam). The platoon made contact with the enemy and was taking fires from what seemed to be bunkered positions several hundred meters to its front. The platoon leader (a 2LT new to that unit with no prior combat) called in a fire mission. The platoon sergeant (who was well into his first tour and had been acting platoon leader) immediately told the LT that he had called in arty on their own position. The LT disagreed. The PSG told him he was ordering the platoon to withdraw; and there was no time to argue. Some stayed with the LT, more withdrew with the PSG. They arty came in on the LT's position, as requested.

So, was the platoon sergeant guilty of mutiny (Article 94), desertion (Article 85) and misbehavior before the enemy (Article 99) ? Should the LT have shot him ?

Regards

Mike

[jmm99]

Hi Tom

We could continue the analysis of the PSG, and the other topics; but that really wasn't my purpose in bringing up what are really very gray areas. You might add to positing that the PSG went back to being acting platoon leader until another LT appeared to fill the slot. How the company commander wrote the incident up is outside the ken of my positing.

In combat situations, there are many gray areas where Military Law is not explicit; or, if it provides Black Letter Law, strict application of the "law" does not meet the realities of the situation. If Civilian Law, media coverage and politics are also added to the mix, the problems for the person in the field are compounded.

I've no legalistic solution, for sure. A "blank check" solution has problems. So also, a "straitjacket" solution. Perhaps, in many situations, "benign neglect" would be the better solution; but, where the "eyes of the world" (which initially could be just the military eyes of the higher echelons) are focused on the situation, too many people are in the picture for that to work.

Regards

Mike

PS: decent 2nd Amendment piece - we'll see what the current round will bring. Not an invitation for discussion here.

[Tom Kratman]

Hi Tom

We could continue the analysis of the PSG, and the other topics; but that really wasn't my purpose in bringing up what are really very gray areas. You might add to positing that the PSG went back to being acting platoon leader until another LT appeared to fill the slot. How the company commander wrote the incident up is outside the ken of my positing.

In combat situations, there are many gray areas where Military Law is not explicit; or, if it provides Black Letter Law, strict application of the "law" does not meet the realities of the situation. If Civilian Law, media coverage and politics are also added to the mix, the problems for the person in the field are compounded.

I've no legalistic solution, for sure. A "blank check" solution has problems. So also, a "straitjacket" solution. Perhaps, in many situations, "benign neglect" would be the better solution; but, where the "eyes of the world" (which initially could be just the military eyes of the higher echelons) are focused on the situation, too many people are in the picture for that to work.

Regards

Mike

The difference between explanation and standing on a soap box can sometimes be a fine one. Still, I'll give it a shot.

You recall that scene from the movie, Patton: "An army is a team; it lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team..."

That's...true, but it's something of a half truth. Insofar as specialization and division / apportionment of function goes, it's true enough. However, on the firing line, an armed force is something of a mob, a unusually well-armed mob, to be sure, and hopefully one with well-selected and well-trained rabble rousers. Hopefully, too, it's more cohesive than most mobs. But it's still a mob.

Within that mob, in action, most people are scared half to death. (In the words of a Canadian sergeant whose name escapes me at the moment, "If blood were brown, we'd all be heroes.") They are continuously wavering, most of them, between fight and flight. There are plenty of positive motivators leaders can use to keep them fighting. Sometimes those motivators take. Other times, with other individuals...not so much. At still other, really adverse times, they just aren't enough. And it is borderline impossible to tell in advance who can be relied on, and how much, and who cannot. And everyone knows that some people might run, and that that might make a lot of people run. That factoid enters the continuous unwitting calculation going on in each man's head. _Nobody_ wants to be the last man killed in a rout, because he was too slow in running.

Part of that calculation, again unwitting, is the probability and likely immediacy of punishment of the first man to run. It goes something like this: "I do not want to run and let down my comrades. Others may, however. And we all know they may and start a rout thereby. Those others are less likely to if they know they'll be shot on the spot if they do. Therefore, if they would be, we all - including those who want to stand and fight - will be less likely to. Therefore I can have more confidence and I will stay on the line. Therefore everyone else can, too. Therefore, I can..."

That's accurate enough, if a little simplistic. It's also somewhat circular and implies a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet self-fulfilling prophecies tend to be fulfilled. And people 'reason' circularly, and act on that, all the time.

Now, if your enemy is rabble, this becomes less important. When your side is composed entirely of long-serving, well-trained, well-socialized professionals, it can be less important. When he is not, however, or when you are not; when he is, in fact, about as good as you are, it can become critical.

Given that, I do not see a tacit understanding that, "Oh, well; yes, sometimes leaders may have to shoot deserters on the spot, if they're willing to suffer career death for it, and should that happen we'll sweep it under the rug while ruining their careers," working quite as well as everyone knowing, so their minds can enter it into their quasi-calculations, that the leaders will not hesitate and will not suffer thereby.

Another factor operating against the wisdom of leaving it as a tacit understanding is that those more likely to bolt may not know that even that tacit understanding is there, and may become more likely to bolt, and be shot for it, than if they knew.

Okay, now is where I'm going to get close to standing on a soapbox. There's another old saw: "Military justice is to justice as military music is to music." It's true and false. It's false in the sense that either is necessarily bad, which is what the saying implies. The US Army, for example, had what amounted to Miranda Rights long before the Supreme Court ruled them constitutionally required. It is true, however, in the sense that both serve the collective purpose of the society that fields the military for its defense. Military music may seem awful, but if it serves the needs of war, it is good for its purpose. Similarly, military justice may seem (and is, in theory, anyway) harsh for the individual, but is justice for the society that is paying for that military, it being very unjust for society to pay for X defense, and get less than X defense. It is also unjust to the members of the military, taken as a collective, for their lives to be unnecessarily endangered by being overly solicitous of the lives of those who fail in their duty.

Of course, I am hardly a player in the process or question, and what I think about it has an effective range of about zero meters. Still, you asked.

The Second Amendment piece was better before the ABA edited it. Thanks.

[Ken White]

... They are continuously wavering, most of them, between fight and flight. There are plenty of positive motivators leaders can use to keep them fighting. Sometimes those motivators take. Other times, with other individuals...not so much. At still other, really adverse times, they just aren't enough. And it is borderline impossible to tell in advance who can be relied on, and how much, and who cannot. And everyone knows that some people might run, and that that might make a lot of people run. That factoid enters the continuous unwitting calculation going on in each man's head. _Nobody_ wants to be the last man killed in a rout, because he was too slow in running.

If you believe that to be true, I'm quite happy that I never served in the same units in combat upon which you base that statement. Your generalization applies to very few people in my experience even if it is prevalent thought in a lot of war fiction. I'd also submit that any halfway decent combat experienced NCO -- or Officer -- (that's actual troop leading in combat experience and not just service in the Theater) can look at a roomful of people in peacetime and tell you with ≥90% accuracy which ones will bear watching in combat.

Yes, your generalization does apply to that <10%. Those are the ones who have commitment problems and who bear watching -- and mediocre and better units have fewer than that percentage because they purge them or place them where they cannot damage or infect others (sometimes legally, sometimes not...) -- and yes, there are occasional exceptions to my generalization as well .