Gurkha beheads Taliban...

[Global Scout]

Assuming that beheading dead Taliban was authorized (just exploring an idea here), what good would come out of it?

What would the psychological (if any) impact be on the Taliban? Would they be less hesitant to fight, or more aggressive? I suspect the war would simply get more brutal. While there are exceptions, compared to the Vietnamese, Nazis, North Koreans, or Japanese the Taliban have been relatively gentle with their prisoners (beheading is a form of execution, nothing more, nothing less). I wouldn't want to be a POW period, but if I had a choice of being detained by the Japanese in WWII or the Taliban, I would take the Taliban without a second thought.

My point is that our rules for fighting this conflict are about right. Sending the service member home that committed the beheading is probably appropriate (hopefully no more will come of it). If I recall President Bush literally wanted UBL's head (if you believe what you read).

On the other hand, I don't think we need to over react to this event. Simply say we don't do this, and be done with it. We sure as heck don't need to bend over to kiss the enemy's ass and apologize for offending them. Give it a break.

[Rifleman]

Assuming that beheading dead Taliban was authorized (just exploring an idea here), what good would come out of it?

Point taken.

What would the psychological (if any) impact be on the Taliban? Would they be less hesitant to fight, or more aggressive? I suspect the war would simply get more brutal. While there are exceptions, compared to the Vietnamese, Nazis, North Koreans, or Japanese the Taliban have been relatively gentle with their prisoners (beheading is a form of execution, nothing more, nothing less). I wouldn't want to be a POW period, but if I had a choice of being detained by the Japanese in WWII or the Taliban, I would take the Taliban without a second thought.

No opinion here.

My point is that our rules for fighting this conflict are about right. Sending the service member home that committed the beheading is probably appropriate (hopefully no more will come of it).

Agreed that sending the Gurkha home is a good idea. And agreed that hopefully no more will come of it. Based on the information known, I would not want to see the Gurkha prosecuted criminally or penalized professionally.

If I recall President Bush literally wanted UBL's head (if you believe what you read).

I don't, LOL.

On the other hand, I don't think we need to over react to this event. Simply say we don't do this, and be done with it. We sure as heck don't need to bend over to kiss the enemy's ass and apologize for offending them. Give it a break.

Essentially agreed; but again, my main concern is that the Gurkha will be made an example of, and I don't think that should happen based upon what is known at this point.

I wonder if the young Gurkha is disillusioned right now? He probably had ancestors who did the same thing during the earlier Afghan wars and were revered for it. Okay, so that thought can't be considered in how we conduct ourselves in 2010. I still wonder about it.

[carl]

I of course have zero mil experience and have never met a Gurkha. I have read a number of books by Brits who've served with and commanded Gurkhas though. From that reading, the following story I pulled from Tom Ricks' blog of May 1, 2009 illustrates something about those guys and it might be useful to bear it in mind when evaluating this incident.

" Story goes that during WWII, the British Indian Army planned to drop a company of the toughest Gurkhas behind Japanese lines to help stop the oncoming invaders. A British major explained the plan to the Gurkha sergeant major, saying: "We'll drop you from 600 feet."

"' The sergeant major talked to his troops, then went back to the major: "Sah, the men say 600 feet too high. They want to be dropped lower." The British major said: "All right, sergeant major, we'll make it 500 feet."

The sergeant major spoke to his troops again, and again went back to the major: "Sah, the men say 500 feet is still too high and want to be dropped lower." The major said: "Sergeant major, we could go down to 400 feet to drop you but that wouldn't leave enough time for the parachutes to open."

Sergeant major: "Ooohhh, paraaaachutes???"'"

The story is probably apocryphal but it makes the point well. I have also read the Gurkhas are extremely correct in their dealing with people subject to their authority.

[Entropy]

Let's try putting the shoe on the other foot for a minute. How would any of us feel if, for instance, after killing one of our senior leaders in an ambush, the Taliban cut of his/her head in order to take it back to Pakistan to confirm the identity?

Legal or not, justified or not, no one views dismembering of bodies by the enemy as legitimate.

[Pete]

A step-grandfather of mine was in the 17th London during the First World War. He said the gurkhas attached to his battalion would strip naked, oil themselves, and crawl through No Man's Land at night into German positions with their kukris. Before they left they would ask guys what they wanted -- watches, pistols, etc. All they would keep for themselves were the earlobes of those they had slain.

[jmm99]

from article:

His unit had been told that they were seeking a ‘high value target,’ a Taliban commander, and that they must prove they had killed the right man

The Gurkhas had intended to remove the Taliban leader’s body from the battlefield for identification purposes.

But they came under heavy fire as their tried to do so. Military sources said that in the heat of battle, the Gurkha took out his curved kukri knife and beheaded the dead insurgent.

He is understood to have removed the man’s head from the area, leaving the rest of his body on the battlefield.

Second, looking at these first facts from a Laws of War standpoint, the more appropriate COA (removal of the entire body from the field) was foreclosed by enemy fires. The Gurk, utilizing judgment in terms of the military necessity to ID the HVT, took an alterrnative COA to achieve that goal and complete his mission.

Thirdly, looking to another set of facts from the article:

The incident, which is being investigated by senior commanders, is hugely embarrassing to the British Army, which is trying to build bridges with local Afghan communities who have spent decades under #Taliban rule.
....
If the Gurkha being investigated by the Army is found guilty of beheading the dead enemy soldier, he will have contravened the Geneva Conventions which dictate the rules of war. Soldiers are banned from demeaning their enemies.

The Gurkha now faces disciplinary action and a possible court martial. If found guilty, he could be jailed.

He is now confined to barracks at the Shorncliffe garrison, near Folkestone, Kent.

The overall UK policy looks more akin to Strategic Legalism (the use of law or legal arguments to further larger policy objectives, irrespective of facts or laws to the contrary) than anything else.

The bottom line, therefore, has nothing much to do with law (especially military law); but is overwhelmingly a question of "proper policy". What is "proper" - I lean to MAJ Thomas:

Now, when the rules and customs of war are departed from by one side, one must expect the same sort of behaviour from the other. Accordingly, officers of the Carbineers should be, and up until now have been, given the widest possible discretion in their treatment of the enemy. Now, I don't ask for proclamations condoning distasteful methods of war, but I do say that we must take for granted that it does happen. Let's not give our officers hazy, vague instructions about what they may or may not do. Let's not reprimand them, on the one hand for hampering the column with prisoners, and at another time and another place, hold them up as murderers for obeying orders. [...] The fact of the matter is that war changes men's natures. The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men in abnormal situations, situations in which the ebb and flow of everyday life have departed and have been replaced by a constant round of fear, and anger, blood, and death. Soldiers at war are not to be judged by civilian rules, as the prosecution is attempting to do, even though they commit acts which, calmly viewed afterwards, could only be seen as unchristian and brutal. And if, in every war, particularly guerilla war, all the men who committed reprisals were to be charged and tried as murderers, court martials like this one would be in permanent session. Would they not? I say that we cannot hope to judge such matters unless we ourselves have been submitted to the same pressures, the same provocations as these men, whose actions are on trial.

That being said, the more likely result is "Shoot straight, you ba$tards".

Regards

Mike

Note Bene: This and my prior post are personal opinion pieces and not statements about what the "law" is.

[Pete]

Entirely by coincidence tonight while reading the memoirs of a Wehrmacht private first class I read that the Gurkhas in the vicinity of Monte Cassino in 1944 were in the habit of cutting off the ears of enemies they had killed. His story appears verify my Grandfather's tale from the First World War.

During the Cold War our support of various governments put us in an ethical dilemma when our clients didn't always live up to the norms of behavior we're accustomed to. It's a case of different moral principles being in conflict with each other -- is the main point to fight a moral war without stepping on the ethical cracks in the sidewalk, or winning the war?

In 1945 my Dad saw an unpleasant scene when his battery liberated a small slave labor camp. One of the prisoners there got hold of a U.S. weapon and gunned down his former guards. None of the G.I.s did a thing to stop him because they thought the guards had it coming. Dad said it may technically have been a U.S. war crime because they didn't do anything to prevent it; but he too felt the Germans deserved it.

Dad refused to watch "Hogan's Heroes" on TV because he thought there was nothing funny about German camps.

[Van]

I'm really baffled by this.

Al Qaida/Taliban/whichever gaggle of insurgents we're fighting today commits an 'atrocity' (that is utterly within conduct condoned by their culture), we're outraged, and they don't change. They keep doing things that outrage us.

An ally of ours commits an 'atrocity' (that is utterly within conduct condoned by both the perp's and the target's culture, by their actions if not statements), we're outraged, and we change. We stop doing things that create the gestures of outrage even if it common practice for the enemy to do to their own.

When we stress the importance of being an agile and adaptable force, but somehow I think we're missing the point.

If an action sets off Al Qaida/Taliban to this degree, perhaps we should arrange a way to allow the Gurkhas to avenge the insult visited upon them by the attorneys of the bad guys who have compromised our legal framework to their own ends. And avenging insults is perfectly acceptable with the Pashtunwali, thus demonstrating our respect for local culture in Afghanistan.