Gurkha beheads Taliban...

[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.

[Polarbear1605]

“Mission tactics (orders) are just as the name implies: the tactic of assigning a subordinate mission without specifying how the mission must be accomplished. We leave the manner of accomplishing the mission to the subordinate, thereby allowing him the freedom and establishing the duty to take whatever steps he deems necessary based on the situation. The senior prescribes the method of execution only to the degree that is essential for coordination. It is the freedom for initiative that permits the high tempo of operations that we desire. Uninhibited by restrictions from above, the subordinate can adopt his actions to the changing situation.” FMFM 1 p.70-71
Sounds to me like the soldier stayed within the bounds of “military necessity” and followed his mission orders. If the commander cannot handle the results…he probably should not be a commander. If the Gurkha soldier was flown back to the UK as reported….it should be to give him a medal vs investigation.
Strategic Legalism…Oh Ya! Breaker Morant, Littleton Tazewell Waller, and now Jeffery Chessani (Haditha Battalion Commander).

Read When Doctrine becomes Dogma here:
http://warchronicle.com/DefendOurMar...ls_PartSix.htm

[Rifleman]

After reading the article I got curious and watched several youtube clips of Gurkhas.

There were many interesting clips showing Gurkha units and training, but I liked these best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuTsU...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZMHw...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khfMT...eature=related

[jmm99]

to you, Bob, for your huge effort in the Defend Our Marines, and related web sites. Your own articles and your collections of articles by others bring home the realities of the impact of laws (sometimes applied correctly; other times not) on the individual troop.

And, keep gnawing at the generals' ankles.

Even in the Corps, generals have yielded to lawyer-politicians, going back (in my memory) to Ribbon Creek and Matthew McKeon. The problem there was not the court-martial (it found what it found); the problem was the generals' abject capitulation during the course of the Congressional investigation.

Regards

Mike

[subrosa]

what do you think the khukuri was invented for?

[subrosa]

Rifleman you said-

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.

i totally agree! poor guy. not that this excuses him, but gurkhas are generally buddhist or hindus so they cremate- not bury so the whole idea of returning the body in one piece is not that big of an issue in the nepali culture.

it is very gruesome but the gurkha was not beheading him for crime, punishment or amusement. the guy was a dead terrorist commander who was attacking them and he needed to be IDed for intelligence purposes and they were in the middle of a fight. plus what else could be have done? (dont they have cellphones with cameras?)
!!

[jmm99]

wood, brush, large and small animals, etc. .....