The Sole Survivor

[Abu Buckwheat]

In this case, the central issue is the ethical status of intentionally killing civilians. I firmly believe that it is wrong, regardless of the calculus of lives in the balance. You attempt to cloud the issue by painting them as spies. but the SEALS didn't know that and even in hindsight you can't say with reasonable certainty if they were willing collaborators with the Taliban.

This is the heart of the problem we are having at many levels in the military. One time there was a pretty broad ethical line that COULD NOT be crossed. Did it happen outside of the sight of higher headquarters, yes. Did it happen when overzealous officers took orders as authorization from higher headquarters. Yes. However my contention for the last seven years is that there is no authority to commit war crimes because the GWOT is considered (by guys like Douglas Feith) as "A new type of war." Hitler told the German Army before Operation Barbarossa that the German army had to abandon its usual adherence to chivalry and the laws of war. We cannot continue to go there. Al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban sympathizers are combatants when on the battlefield. Unarmed civilians who may rat your mission out are part of the game. In the first Gulf War several SOF OPs on key lines of communication were compromised by kids with goats or kids playing. We cannot get into the killing civilians game.

We cannot second guess their moral struggle on the battlefield but the fact that he said military training was not a factor in his reasoning for voting against killing the civilians is indicative that the system has gotten so far off the rails that we need to re-institutionalize our own sense of honor and chivalry.

I think the wild west like "War on Terror" has really badly damaged our image as professionals. Its being run too much like the Indian Wars where the indiginous population are considered non-humans. There have been too many incidents of murder (as many as 100 cases), abuse and random "screw it I'll just shoot them, its a different war and these aren't humans" have been seen and we will hear MANY more reported in the post-conflict period. This is an anathema to COIN. Paticularly in the Pashtunwali-soaked areas of the Lower Hindu Kush. Ask Kipling for examples.

Worst yet, there is also a visceral dis-respect of the enemy G's knowledge of his own game on his own home court. In this case the Gs adhered to Sun Tsu's "If you know the enemy and know yourself ..."

Before the first Gulf War General Schwarzkopf sent a message out to all unit ordering the ban on the use of Death Cards, which I had seen MANY guys carrying, all ready to play Colonel Kilgore. Schwarzkopf said we cannot debase ourselves and act like our enemies.

Should they have let the HVT get away and abort? Only they could make that call. However, I see it this way -we are the greatest goddamn combat power in the world ... we CAN re-sked missions without committing war crimes and we WILL get our target.

Someone in the next DoD needs to be tasked to bring the nation's Honor and adhering to laws and humanity back as a core value (AGAIN) at the troop level. God bless all of those team guys. They are asked to do hard things, but the issue is not about the ROE, its about the ROL, Rule of Law.

We have some major league recalibration to do after this war.

[Rank amateur]

I agree 100%. It'll be much easier for the military to recalibrate if the country does, but I think the country is looking at it as a political/values issues as opposed to what's the most effective way to fight the GWOT.

[marct]

This is the heart of the problem we are having at many levels in the military. One time there was a pretty broad ethical line that COULD NOT be crossed....However my contention for the last seven years is that there is no authority to commit war crimes because the GWOT is considered (by guys like Douglas Feith) as "A new type of war."....We cannot continue to go there. Al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban sympathizers are combatants when on the battlefield. Unarmed civilians who may rat your mission out are part of the game.

This has been a concern of mine for quite a while now in more than just a purely military setting. I must admit that one of the reasons why I dislike Feith so much is because, IMO, he embodies the ideology of the ends justify the means without regard to what those means do to the people and their social system. As with many theologians, both "secular" and "sacred", he appears to live in an illusory world which, because it is "true", requires that everyone must accept it and, if they do not, be made to accept it "for their own good". In this way, he is similar to UBL and other brands of fanatics.

Abu, you mentioned "honour" and "chivalry" and they are important in this respect - they are lodged inside individuals. This is something that fanatic ideologues cannot accept - for them, "truth" must be given from a central system - it cannot be contained within individuals and serve as a source of opposition to that central system. This is all about a fight between types of power: "power within" and "power over" as Miriam Seimos would say.

We cannot second guess their moral struggle on the battlefield but the fact that he said military training was not a factor in his reasoning for voting against killing the civilians is indicative that the system has gotten so far off the rails that we need to re-institutionalize our own sense of honor and chivalry.

I think the wild west like "War on Terror" has really badly damaged our image as professionals....There have been too many incidents of murder (as many as 100 cases), abuse and random "screw it I'll just shoot them, its a different war and these aren't humans" have been seen and we will hear MANY more reported in the post-conflict period. This is an anathema to COIN. Paticularly in the Pashtunwali-soaked areas of the Lower Hindu Kush. Ask Kipling for examples.

Leaving aside the actual efficacy of it, and I agree it is about as useful as sending a package of Twinkies to a famine zone, there are other, more important issues. The "War on Terror" has done more than "damage" the US military's "image as professionals" - it appears to have damaged, at least in some cases, your self-image; in theological terms, your souls. It has done so by putting you in what Bateson called a "double bind"; a situation where you are squeezed between two conflicting and contradictory positions. Pulled apart a bit further, think of the "debate" over waterboarding with some ideologues saying that it is not torture while knowing that it is. The "solution" being offered to this double bind by certain ideologues - "it's not torture, just a necessary tool in the War on Terror" - is not a solution that can be accepted while retaining honour.

Someone in the next DoD needs to be tasked to bring the nation's Honor and adhering to laws and humanity back as a core value (AGAIN) at the troop level. God bless all of those team guys. They are asked to do hard things, but the issue is not about the ROE, its about the ROL, Rule of Law.

We have some major league recalibration to do after this war.

While I agree, I would go further that saying it is about ROL - I would say I is about basic philosophy in the original meaning of that word; it is about "knowing yourself". Institutional "recalibration" is a good start to that; even St. Paul managed to realize that one when he noted that "I had not known sin but by the law" (Romans 7:7), but that is only the start - it is still basing individual ethics, "honour" as it were, on some system external to the individual which is amenable to manipulation by ideologues. Honour (and ethics) must be internal even if they are shaped by external (actually inter-personal) systems. If they don't live within you, then you are "just following orders" - a "defense" that I doubt will be accepted by any sane court or deity.

Marc

ps. Yes, Wayne, I am a radical immanentalist

[Entropy]

Well, I have read Luttrell's book, was in Afghanistan at the time, played a very small role in his recovery and have read most of the AAR's, etc. That said, the events that day cannot be singly traced to the decision to let the goatherders go - there were other factors at play which I won't get into. The point being, it wasn't ultimately a simplistic question of "kill the civilians, save the Americans" vs "let the civilians go, let the Americans die." What happened with Operation Redwing was a wake-up call to many and served as the catalyst for a variety of changes at various levels of command. And so I agree completely with the others in here who warn of monday morning QB'ing that one decision and the danger of what amounts to murdering unarmed civilians. Besides the legal and ethical considerations, there are practical ones as well including ramifications. For example, would the friendly villagers have taken Luttrell in, protected him, and contacted US forces for him had he killed the civilians? Probably not.

BTW, Luttrell's target, Mullah Ismail, aka Mullah Ahmad Shah, was killed in Pakistan about two weeks ago when he tried to run a Pakistani Police checkpoint in the NWFP after kidnapping some poor Afghan refugee.

[oblong]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/lo...,7551760.story

Murphy's father wasn't happy with Luttrell's book.

In the NBC interview and in the book, Luttrell describes a discussion by the four SEALs and then a vote to let the herders go. That account, said Daniel Murphy, a former Suffolk County prosecutor and now a law clerk in State Supreme Court in Riverhead, is a far cry from what he said Marcus told the Murphy family not long after the death of their son.

"That directly contradicts what he told [Murphy's mother] Maureen, myself and Michael's brother John in my kitchen," said Murphy, who watched Luttrell on television but said he hasn't read the book. "He said that Michael was adamant that the civilians were going to be released, that he wasn't going to kill innocent people ... Michael wouldn't put that up for committee. People who knew Michael know that he was decisive and that he makes decisions."

Luttrell suggests that he sugar-coated the story later in a visit to Long Island, where he met Murphy's mother Maureen. She asked, he writes, "He didn't suffer, did he? Please tell me he didn't suffer."

[Eden]

I read Luttrell's book before I discovered this thread, and my reaction to the incident being discussed was a little bit different. Like most of you, it disturbed me that US soldiers could be so cold-bloodedly discussing murder of non-combatants; to me it is clearly a no-brainer that you abort at that point, and that killing is simply not on your options list. But that is not what disturbed me most. Two other things bothered me long after I put the book down.

1. Luttrell is brutally honest about his thought processes. As he reflects on his internal struggle, he continuously refers to his military training which he says clearly calls for killing the shepherds who have stumbled upon his team. Part of his burden of guilt rests on his not having followed his military training. Clearly this superbly trained warrior, a true elite member of the US armed forces, has either:
a. completely misunderstood whatever training he has received on this subject, or
b. has been trained in a way that undermines our common understanding of the law of war and its effect on military operations.

2. The fact that his lieutenant completely abdicates his leadership role and allows his subordinates to make such a momentous moral choice. It would have been fine, even wise, to ask their opinion, but to put it to a vote was wrong. It was a form of morale cowardice, and I do not say that lightly of a fallen soldier who displayed such formidable physical courage. He shifted a terrible moral burden from his own shoulders to those of his subordinates, a burden that still haunts Luttrell by his own admission.

I encourage all to read the book - you can't fully grasp the incident unless you have all the background - and I hope this incident will be used as a case study in the terrible choices men have to make in war a hundred years from now and how we prepare them to face those choices.

[Ken White]

if applied to a conventional unit, for some SOF missions one simply has to apply a different standard and Luttrell's quandry is but one example of many where there are differences in approach and training that must be applied.

Is it morally acceptable to shoot an innocent (if he is in fact 'innocent') shepherd, perhaps a child? Dunno. Is it moral to NOT shoot said child if his life being spared results in losing four or six or ten of your own people? Dunno the answer to that, either. METT-TC applies and I suggest that each person has to make their own decision when they are actually in such a situation. That creates a quandry and there is no 'right' answer.

You cite Luttrell's military training being abrogated and I agree -- if applied to conventional forces. In SOF operations of many kinds different rules apply; have to apply -- that's part of why they are called 'special operations.' You may disagree that such operations are conducted or that such organizations can have different rules. That is your prerogative but it doesn't change reality. Such organizations do exist, such operations are conducted, the rules ARE different and such quandries are a part of them.

You also condemn "his Lieutenant" for abdicating his leadership role. In most SOF units that line is not and absolutely cannot be as distinct as it is in a conventional unit. That, too is reality.

All the above factors are some of the many reasons there's a disconnect between the 'big Army' and SOF. You mention the incident as a "...case study in the terrible choices men have to make in war a hundred years from now and how we prepare them to face those choices." Good idea. Part of that case study could be used to educate the conventional force on some of the very knotty problems faced by their SOF brethren that conventional units rarely if ever face. We have not done that at all well.

[jcustis]

2. The fact that his lieutenant completely abdicates his leadership role and allows his subordinates to make such a momentous moral choice. It would have been fine, even wise, to ask their opinion, but to put it to a vote was wrong. It was a form of morale cowardice, and I do not say that lightly of a fallen soldier who displayed such formidable physical courage. He shifted a terrible moral burden from his own shoulders to those of his subordinates, a burden that still haunts Luttrell by his own admission.

There are others out there in the board/forum thread realm (whom I presume are the veteran SOF members they claim to be) who have damned Murphy for his actions, despite the resulting MoH citation. Bottom line, you aren't alone in this.

[Ken White]

.................

[Abu Buckwheat]

There are others out there in the board/forum thread realm (whom I presume are the veteran SOF members they claim to be) who have damned Murphy for his actions, despite the resulting MoH citation. Bottom line, you aren't alone in this.

I agree with Bill. We can't give any ground to anyone judging Lt. Murphy. The team guys have a different way about decision making it depending on the unit. I am not a team guy but I have trained ALLOT of them in prisoner handling and interrogation in the field. They have a weird "I'm-the-Surfer-in-charge-but-we-decide-this-together-based-on-all-of-our-experience" thing going on inside the platoons. If anything the Chief Petty Officers have equal authority but its their way of doing business and what makes them special. So Monday morning QB'ing Lt. Murphy or the platoon's discussion is not particularly fair. It has happened many times before and its going to happen again. God bless them all but its beside the point.

The discussion is about what guys are presuming they can do if they get compromised by civilians. The issue at hand is that the military needs to re-institutionalize honor and chivalry in arms. This "our enemy has no rules so we should have none" stuff is out of line and getting out of hand. The Army's seven core values (which all other services embody) seem to be modified for this fight so that that Honor and Integrity are not applicable in this "different" war.

The "Hard Deck" as we call it in the Navy is this: We NEVER intentionally kill civilians or captives. This is what Zip-ties are for and I don't believe for a minute no one in that section had 550 cord or zip ties or a dump pouch to use as a hood. That’s not SOP even for super light Alpine style LR Special Reconnaissance missions ... now there are many "unless’s" to be considered like shooting in Self Defense, planting munitions or anything that makes a Sheppard change from non-combatant to combatant ... and spies, recon et al are considered combatants but you had better have proof ... and lots of it. Saying a guy is a look out and shooting him means we will have lots of dead and a trail of hostility that will defeat the ultimate mission.

So as far as COIN goes this is right up there with AC-130s blasting 50-100 person weddings. We need to ensure that the ROE defaults to supporting the strategic objectives of the COIN mission. Failing that gets you Iraq-style atrocities. Look what Marine SOF did on thier first mission in J-Bad two years ago ... they got IED'd and shot every damn civilian for over a mile ... then then got kicked out of Afghanistan. The indiginous people are the mission. Remember it. Dig it. Right on.

We need to re-establish the hard moral deck here.

[William F. Owen]

Is it moral to NOT shoot said child if his life being spared results in losing four or six or ten of your own people?

I think the point here is context is critical, but guidance does have to be absolute when dealing with such an area. You never kill unarmed and/or innocent civilians and you must be prepared to risk own lives in order to stick by that. (- an area where I and some of the IDF part company on the ethical implications. No IDF commander cannot put the lives of his soldiers first.)

...but there are clearly situations where civilians may be killed because they are trying to kill you or aid others that will. It is their intent and actions that should seal (no pun!) their fate.

Technically, I should have no problem (never having had to do it) in dropping some 14-year-old girl, with pig-tails, who is driving an SUV full or armed men, attempting to retrieve a weapon, carrying mortar bombs, or spotting the fall of shot for mortars. She is clearly "hostile."

(Will the BBC show the bullet ridden body to the world? Yes. That's my CoC's problem, and part of the "Information Ops," effort to deal with.)

I submit that the test would reside in the realms of an action being "clearly hostile."

Having said all that, the Luttrell book (and the book on Operations Anaconda) leaves me asking a whole raft of questions about how the operation was planned and how SEAL's are trained, but that's something different.

As was shown with the Bravo-Two-Zero, and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, it may be naive to believe that the written account is entirely accurate.

- and now seeing Ken's post I broadly concur.

[trident86]

1. he continuously refers to his military training which he says clearly calls for killing the shepherds who have stumbled upon his team.


2. The fact that his lieutenant completely abdicates his leadership role and allows his subordinates to make such a momentous moral choice.

This is what happens when you let a civilian write your story. I can assure you neither SEALs nor any other US SOF are taught that deliberately killing unarmed civilians is an option. In fact, the contemplation of this in the training pipeline or on actual operations would ensure dismissal from the unit and the SOF community.

What IS emphasized is that SOF are held to a higher standard, and we are a much more surgical option because of our discretion and judgment on the battlefield.

Having served with Michael Murphy and personally watched his development as a junior SEAL officer, I can assure you that once again, something was lost in the translation between Marcus and the author. I cannot imagine Murph "abdicating his leadership" under ANY circumstances. More likely and in accordance with Marcus' debrief to our Team once he returned from his convalescent leave, Murph polled his guys when he ran out of easy answers in order to gather any information he might not have previously considered, and in turn make the best decision under the circumstances.

This is where we cross the line--where we judge the men on the ground based on the (now obvious) turn of events. The operation should no doubt be thoroughly analyzed with the intent of educating our younger troops and making better decisions (if that's even possible in this case) on the battlefield.

As pointed out by several others, this single decision was only one of many made by the team on the ground and the leadership in the forward headquarters at several levels that ultimately led to the failure of the mission.

Regarding the Iridium Sat phone--it was a back up means of communication, rather than the primary means as implied in the previous post. In my experience, cell phones are normally an administrative vice tactical form of communication.

[Ranger94]

From the accounts that I have read, Lt. Michael P Murphy, displayed the type of physical courage that deserves our respect and honor. I am humbled each time I read his story.http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/1...l_moh_071011w/

I have not read Lettrell's book. I am completely hung up on one point of the mission. During the planning stage, was compromise by a non-combatant covered?

My head spins when I think of a Long Range Surveillance team leader (and this is how the Seal team was functioning) debating with his team on how to act given a common situation that must ALWAYS be accounted for PRIOR to movement.

Compromise on a RECON mission is a contingency plan/immediate action drill not a debate. Input from the team on how to handle this situation should have come during the planning phase.

If it was considered during the planning phase, I doubt very much, the Op-Order said "shoot the unarmed civilian and continue to observe"

I think the comments on training have been the most productive in this thread.

[Kiwigrunt]

My head spins when I think of a Long Range Surveillance team leader (and this is how the Seal team was functioning) debating with his team on how to act given a common situation that must ALWAYS be accounted for PRIOR to movement.

Compromise on a RECON mission is a contingency plan/immediate action drill not a debate. Input from the team on how to handle this situation should have come during the planning phase.

Fully agree.
Indeed, Bravo Two Zero went through the same thing in '91 and everyone knows the story. Should be discussed under 'actions on'.
'Higher command' should take responsibility for troops on the ground not knowing how to react to 'unexpected' situations like these, especialy where those situations are to be so clearly expected.

[Ken White]

I agree with Ranger 94 to an extent but disagree that the Team was functioning in the LRS mode. Regardless, the action if a compromise or potential compromise occurred should've been part of mission planning and probably was. We do not know many things including the depth of that planning and the specific actions and the terrain and situation at the time during the mission; best laid plans and all that. Thus, I submit we cannot judge.

Obviously at first blush shooting civilians is not a good thing but situation dependent, we cannot say 'never.' Some missions may be too important and not be able to be rescheduled. In this case it would appear, and I agree with several, that the mission could be aborted (as it was) and rescheduled, so it was a bad idea if it was ever seriously considered. Was the shooting of the civilians ever seriously considered? We don't know really that, either.

I also submit that we cannot judge Murphy. Did he ask for a 'vote' (not a good thing) or did he simply solicit opinions about possible actions from the other more experienced Team members (a good thing). We don't know; we weren't there. We only have Luttrel's version and given that he apparently told the Murphys one thing for whatever reason and told another thing in the book his tale is at least mildly suspect to be after the fact-itis. Combat recall is dicey at best.

Much the same is perhaps true of Bravo Two Zero and 'Andy McNab.' There are others who dispute his version. Anyone who was not actually present in such operations is rarely going to get a clear unjaundiced view of what occurred. Thus, I'm inclined to believe judgmental calls on the rights and wrongs by all us bystanders (to include unit staff types involved but not in the field at the time and emphatically including higher echelon staffs) are probably going to miss many salient points, are generally unhelpful and should be avoided. YMMV.

Entropy who was peripherally involved says that there were many factors not made public (and I'm sure that's true) and that lessons were learned, absorbed and new TTP implemented as a result (and I'm equally sure that occurred) -- that's the important thing.

[Entropy]

Entropy who was peripherally involved says that there were many factors not made public (and I'm sure that's true) and that lessons were learned, absorbed and new TTP implemented as a result (and I'm equally sure that occurred) -- that's the important thing.

Ken is a wise man. The tragedy, as it seems is too often the case, is that good people have to die as a catalyst for such change.

Also, on the subject of books, it's important to keep in mind that some details will be left out because of security reasons and Luttrell's is no different.

Finally, on the goatherders, to me it doesn't matter if they were combatants or civilians - once "captured" and placed under the control of Lt. Murphy and his men, they are legally noncombatants and cannot be summarily killed. To do so would be a war crime if I'm understanding my LOAC correctly.

[IntelTrooper]

Someone in the next DoD needs to be tasked to bring the nation's Honor and adhering to laws and humanity back as a core value (AGAIN) at the troop level. God bless all of those team guys. They are asked to do hard things, but the issue is not about the ROE, its about the ROL, Rule of Law.

We have some major league recalibration to do after this war.

Uh, what?

Edited to Add: Nevermind, that was an extremely old post.

[goesh]

This is a hell of a thing to have to think about. The senior man should have made the decision. The last thing to go before the collapse of an entrprise be it a combat patrol or a hot dog stand is discipline. Adrenaline, instincts and psychological stress makes a bad admixture that even good discipline can hold together for only so long. We all chose this path and we are haunted at times by making the right decisions and the wrong decisions and IMO only discipline keeps the score even. These men did no right or wrong, they died and 1 walked away from it. Let it be knowing we could have done no better or worse had we been there ourselves.

[Ken White]

In most any SOF or SF units, if things get rough, leaders tend to ask what others think and to discuss the possibilities. Generally, no one has any problems saying exactly what they think -- and no one has any problems with what the boss decides after asking. That's what everyone then does, even if they had a different idea. Like any generalization, I'm sure there are exceptions but I've never seen one and I've seen a few confabs, even held a couple. It's not a breakdown in discipline. The contrary, in fact.

What happened out there we'll never know. We know what one guy might have said. Editors want to sell books, sometimes thing in books get modified to do that...

In the end, what really matters is that you're right:

These men did no right or wrong, they died and 1 walked away from it. Let it be knowing we could have done no better or worse had we been there ourselves.

[carl]

There is an article in the current issue of Marine Corps Gazette by Ed Darack.
In it he states that Mr. Luttrell's book has a number of "inaccuracies" and some "misinformation.

http://www.marinecorpsgazette-digita...u1=friend#pg65

I saw this first at Tom Ricks' blog and the link is there too along with comments.