Quote Originally Posted by Abu Suleyman View Post
All of that notwithstanding, the article is limited in scope, where as the nature of a man, or a woman, is not. The moments in the article are just slices of time out of a mans career, and life. A few bad, and even criminal decisions, do not automatically turn someone into Satan incarnate. I find it amazing that people will advocate "seeing things from the terrorists perspective" but will forget to look through our own soldiers eyes. That is a real shame.

It seems that in an effort to justify ourselves, and our actions, and defend the just war, we are willing to abandon anyone who makes mistakes. I would not try to justify Nate in his decisions, and I was not trying to, but he is not some irredeemable goblin, nor an embarassment to the officer corps. He is just human, like all of us. He made many, many decisions in Iraq, and some people want to condemn him for his bad ones, while forgetting his good ones. You can condemn the decisions without condemning the man. More importantly, I believe we should be willing to forgive mistakes, for someone who did so much good, at least in the long run. I am saying that I believe even with the Samarra incident Nate Sassaman's time in Iraq was a net positive for the Iraqis.
I think most folks are fully willing to underwrite mistakes, provided that the person learns from them. However, I think there are two reasons that people don't have much empathy for his actions. First, it involves a moral-ethical choice, not a tactical choice. After 19 years in the Army, one should have inculcated and fully understood the values of the Army - if that's not enough time, then there shouldn't be a place for you in the Army. Secondly, LTC Sassaman appears not to have learned from the mistake - while he accepts responsibility, he appears unapologetic about the decision, even stating at one point in his memoirs that if he had known that there was an ongoing criminal investigation that his actions to cover up the incident would have been different.

"[T]here had been no reason for me to believe there had been an ongoing criminal investigation when I had asked the company commander and platoon leader to not say anything to anyone about the water." -page 269
That's not the statement of someone doing the right thing, essentially, "if I had known that I couldn't have covered it up, I wouldn't have tried."

You can contrast this behavior to LTC West, who allowed his men to beat a detainee and then fired the pistol past his head. Yet, it didn't take a criminal investigation for him to acknowledge his mistake. He called his commander that very same night and then acknowledged his mistake to his leaders the very next day and told them that his behavior (both firing the pistol and allowing the beating of a detainee) was in violation of Army Values, policies, and regulations.