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Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Military Justice Op-Ed
I found this morning an interesting article from Marcia Drezon-Tepler on Middle East Times online. The article, here, is the first in a two part article about the problem what special forces troops in Afghanistan and Iraq can do with non-hostile civilians that they believe are likely to give away the troops position. The article is well written and sourced, and gets the MilJus stuff relatively correct. The article is apparently a republication/update of a New York Daily News piece, here, that Ms. Drezon-Tepler wrote last year about Army Sgt Evan Vela who was convicted of murder and sentenced to 10-years as a result of an incident that allegedly involved this type of an encounter.
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9 comments:
What a no-win situation. Very sad. Thanks for sharing this article.
When in doubt, servicemembers should remember this: It's better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.
(or judged by at least five as the case may be)
Well, it also points out the failure of good "mission planning." In that area, they should have expected that locals would be in the area with their animals and had a plan up-front. Admittedly, there aren't too many good options.
But, in the mission planning for the Desert One debacle, the subject of what do you do if there are "local" shepherds that just show up, was debated. They didn't find shepherds, but a busload of Iranian tourists showed up in the dark. Somewhere, there should be a "mission planning" database entitled FUBAR!
Anon 1543,
I wish more soldiers would take that maxim to heart...I fear our lawyers, with all their cock-strong prosecutions of "murders" in a war zone, have dulled the trigger finger of our war-fighters. Shoot first, ask questions later...this old saying has stuck around for a reason...Sometimes I think the lawyers forget that if not for the war-fighter, they'd be out on the street hustling for slip and falls like the rest most attorneys...
Let God sort 'em out...you navy folks who run this blog wouldn't understand that, I suppose...pretty easy to lob cruise missiles from ships, eh?
"God will know his own" is the wrong way to give orders...but a bunch of lawyers and rank hungry PC generals convicting the fighting men for battlefield decisions is even worse.
I think maybe you're forgetting a step in the process of actually convicting someone...
"I think maybe you're forgetting a step in the process of actually convicting someone..."
I think every battlefield action from guiding a bomb to firing a pistol can have an upheld murder conviction---so long as the rank hungry generals charge using a stateside base standard.
Add in some military judges who have never seen a TC motion they don't love, and a panel full of officers hoping to get a good OER and promoted to O-6 and avoid trying to get a job in the Bush/Obama depression, and Joe Snuffy making a shoot/don't shoot decision is off to the USDB.
There may be more to the story... Esquire Magazine did a lengthy piece on it last year. Tom Junod, The Six-Letter Word That Changes Everything, ESQUIRE MAGAZINE, June 11, 2008, available at http://www.esquire.com/features/michael-hensley-0708?kw=ist.
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