“Deadly Double Standards”
Today’s Wall Street Journal features an op-ed column by Lt. Colonel David G. Bolgiano called “Deadly Double Standards” — part of a rising chorus of complaints from serving military officers below flag rank about national decision-making in the Iraq War and the Global War on Terror (the full op-ed is available by subscription). The main point of the column is to defend soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. They have to make decisions about the use of force under extremely stressful circumstances in a split second, and sometimes their decisions lead to tragic outcomes. In the United States, we don’t prosecute law enforcement officers or even penalize them as long as they “act reasonably” regarding the use of force. Higher ranking American officers get the benefit of more time and distance when they make their decisions on the “rules of engagement” for individual missions, yet the brunt of complaints about civilian casualties has fallen on soldiers in the field. In provocative language, Col. Bolgiano asks that we at least treat our lower-ranking troops as well as we treat their superiors — and ultimately, he wants to treat them the same way we treat police in the U.S.
A key passage:
It therefore is unconscionable to apply higher standards and expectations to a younger, less-experienced Marine than to a commander in an operations center far from the battlefield. This isn’t to say that commanders should face tighter legal standards, but rather a call for the same deference for a rifleman who learns only in hindsight that he may have killed civilians.
In a way, this sounds reasonable: American troops are in an untenable position in Iraq, where we ask them to know more about people’s intentions than anyone can possibly figure out (who is hostile? who is a bystander?). We want inexperienced soldiers to expertly decide what to do. We ask them to be adroit politicians when they interact with locals, and we ask them to defly mediate complex arguments, whether longstanding feuds between individuals or Byzantine religious disputes between groups that even local scholars struggle to understand.
But weakening the standards that we apply to judge American soldiers is not the answer. There are two reasons that all Americans (not just people with close connections to the military) should worry about Col. Bolgiano’s advice.
The first reason stems from the nature of the war that we are fighting. The mission in Iraq is a difficult mixture of counterinsurgency (primarily against anti-American jihadists) and peacekeeping (primarily trying to keep sectarian groups from killing each other). Countless studies of those two types of missions — including the American military’s new counterinsurgency manual — point out that they are unusual missions in which the military’s primary target is not to kill or neutralize the enemy directly but instead is to compete for the support of a third party to the conflict, the general public. “Collateral damage” is extremely costly to these missions, and, in fact, any use of force must be extremely measured.
The struggle in training troops for high-intensity combat is to get them to overcome their natural inhibitions against killing, encouraging them to default to firing their weapons. But in both counterinsurgency and peacekeeping, that principle is reversed: the struggle is to get soldiers who have been trained to shoot back instead to exercise restraint. That is the widely accepted way to win, and sometimes it means accepting more casualties than you would if our side used the full firepower available. If you would like to, you can consider this part of the Clausewitzian dictum that “war is an extension of politics by other means:” the political goals of operations in Iraq must sometimes trump the tactical needs of the troops in the field. That means that we need to constantly reinforce the message that restraint is the first order of business for our troops, even in the awful, untenable positions that they face in Iraq.
Of course the best way to protect the troops from these impossible decisions would be to avoid placing them in the untenable situation to begin with. The debate that Americans need to have is about policy: what can we realistically achieve in Iraq, and is it worth the cost? I doubt that we can “win” this fight anyway, but even if we can, is it worth it to sacrifice American lives — either on the field of battle or in the military justice system — that we know could have been saved by more firepower? That choice inheres in the nature of the kind of fight we face in Iraq.
The second reason for concern about Col. Bolgiano’s column is that a lieutenant colonel took his appeal to the public at all. In the United States, we don’t worry about the risk of a military coup, but we do still have problems of civil-military relations. The problem that we face is that it is hard to get good quality military advice in the political process. We need independent-thinking generals and admirals to give their honest opinions to a variety of decision-makers (the president, the secretary of defense, the joint chiefs of staff, the combatant commanders, and the Congress). Instead, we now have a system that promotes solid officers who “get along” (David Isenberg posted a link to a good Boston Globe article by Andy Bacevich on this issue a couple of weeks ago.)
Sometimes, flag officers should take their views public, when important advice is ignored — when they feel that the civilian leadership is not living up to its end of the civil-military bargain. And they should face the risk of being fired for doing that. Each side of the relationship has an important check on the other. The American system is built on such checks and balances.
But the people who should consider bringing a case public are the top officers in the military, those charged with providing advice to the civilian, political leadership. They should at least have flag rank. “General officer” means someone with a certain stature, experience, and training to allow them to use their professionalism to advise on general policy questions. Lower ranking officers have other obligations. The chain of command looms large for them. The public interest requires that the military hierarchy stress obedience and loyalty, quick reactions to implement command decisions.
Lt. Col. Bolgiano seems smart and articulate, but at this point, it is not his job to persuade the public or to circumvent the chain of command. I have no idea what steps he took to persuade general officers to plead his case. Frankly, I hope he tried — and failed, because I think his case, appealing as it is, is wrong, given the strategic goals of the United States. Even if he wanted to reach a broader audience than a few general officers, the U.S. military has many ways to stimulate internal discussion without going to the readership of the Wall Street Journal. Those other methods would have given Lt. Col. Bolgiano a more appropriate outlet for his argument.
No related posts.
Mr.Gholz
Thanks for this thoughtful and timely piece. Please write more about this topic…it is vitally important, even more so as the war in Iraq winds down and we enter an election season.
Comment on July 5, 2007 @ 7:17 am
Excellent piece.
This is right on in most respects. The ultimate issue, as you note, is clearly why and whether our people ought to be on the ground in Iraq today facing the kinds of impossible challenges Bolgiano discusses in the first place.
Having spent the past year inside the military justice system (and having heard “Bo” Bolgiano’s remarks on the topic in person), though, I’d like to offer a few more detailed observations.
First, Bo has an important but too often ignored point about Rules of Engagement (RoE). As he very dramatically tells it based on his experience as a Baltimore police officer, shooting first (to good effect) is a tough skill to learn. For a host of reasons, human beings are physiologically poorly equipped to respond rationally and effectively in high stress, life threatening situations, and it takes an almost mechanical skill level for a soldier to do what he is supposed to do under fire–shoot back and kill.
The problem is that adding any complexity to soldiers’ instructions on when and how to shoot may be asking far too much of them under the circumstances. Thus, when military doctrine, media coverage, and RoE “constantly reinforce the message that restraint is the first order of business for our troops,” it is a proven fact that soldiers on the ground are less prepared to fight fire with fire when lives are on the line. Does this mean we should abandon RoE or the important lessons of COIN warfare? Of course not. But it does mean that the answer is not adding complexity or hesitation to an 18 year old private’s thought process when he has a loaded gun in his hands.
Second, I’d just offer a clarifying observation related to your final point about flag officers vs. (in this case) field grade officers speaking out about large issues of national security and defense policy: Bo Bolgiano, who is now an Air Force reserve JAG and an expert on both RoE and urban combat, is a little different from your typical field commander making a political statement (of which we’ve seen a fair number in recent months–more on this in a future post).
While I share your initial discomfort with military leaders stepping outside the command hierarchy and entering the policy discourse while still in uniform, I think in this case it may be justified. Military lawyers (JAGs) do not traditionally carry the same clout within the services as line officers of equal rank (the Marine Corps may be an exception, since Marine JAGs serve as line officers as well), and JAGs of general officer grade are few and far between (e.g. the Marine corps has only one). Thus, the only way for a US military officer with legal expertise to be heard at high levels on an important issue like this one may be by commenting in his or her private capacity, without command authorization.
All that said, I ultimately agree with you that Bo may have missed the point. In light of the political exigencies and military reality of the war in Iraq, we’re not likely to see any dramatic simplification of RoE or of the standards by which soldiers in the field are evaluated after action. When the Arab world is already convinced we are bloodthirsty killers of Iraqi children, how can we afford to go easy on soldiers who kill civilians? What we probably ought to see, though, is greater liability at the other end. Top decision-makers (both civilian and military) who send troops into the wrong battles, or give them the wrong orders in the line of fire should be held to account. In US law, a corporate officer, manager or other fiduciary is liable for breaching the “duty of care” by making sloppy decisions that cause major financial losses. It might be time to apply a tougher standard at the highest levels of our military.
Comment on July 5, 2007 @ 7:36 am
A few comments from the author of the subject WSJ article:
1. Too many mistake the Counter-Insurgency (COIN) concept of “minimum force” — which has merit at the strategic level — with the amount of force one should use at the tactical level to quell an imminent threat.
2. I am not advocating a loosening of the legal standard of when our forces can engage. Rather, I am calling for a fair and accurate standard by which individuals are judged.
3. For over seven years, many comat-experienced judge advocates have been pushing for more realistic judgment-based training for our forces. For the most part, these efforts have been rebuffed by the status quo.
4. The article was specifically written in a respectful tone with a view toward causing reasoned debate on this serious topic. I do not believe that flag officers (or senior management within Beltway think tanks) have a monopoly on ideas or the right to express them in a free society.
Comment on July 5, 2007 @ 3:12 pm
Having read LtCol Bogiano’s article, I have to disagree with your analysis. Whether we put troops in harm’s way is certainly a political issue but, once we do, we have the obligation to provide them with all the tools to accomplish the mission and — necessarily — to keep them alive in order to do so. Sending our sons and daughters into the enemy’s rifle sites and telling them that they will be investigated and prosecuted if they use reasonable force against the threat of death or serious bodily harm is the quickest way to destroy morale, alienate the troops, make authority suspect, and guarantee mission failure, not to mention the patently obvious result of getting our troops killed. Alternately, applying standing Constitutional law to the Rules of the Use of Force and Rules of Engagement in a hostile fire zone is not “weakening the standards that we apply to judge American soldiers.” Your assertion to the contrary not only defies logic, but should raise the ire of any mother or father who hugged their son goodbye as he ventured forth into the meat grinder that detached policy makers have expediently created for him. Furthermore, flag officers don’t have a monopoly on the right to publicly express their opinions, particularly when they are generally far removed from the battlefield, and the information they rely on in forming those opinions has been screened by a line of uniformed bureaucrats a mile long. Unlike LtCol Bogiano, how many general officers do you know who have actually gone outside the wire and interviewed young troops about making use of force decisions? And how many soldiers do you know who have the luxury of being candid with general officers when every senior NCO and line officer in their chain of command goes into vapor lock whenever there’s even a rumor that a flag officer intends to show up in camp? Moreover, you may have attended a different law school than I, but I learned in my studies that the Consitutional system of Checks and Balances created three distinct branches of our federal government with equal, but separate powers; I recall, however, no reference in any of the articles of the Constitution describing when or under what conditions military officers of any particular rank are allowed to publicly express their opinions (obvious violations of the UCMJ notwithstanding). I certainly agree with you that “[t]he public interest requires that the military hierarchy stress obedience and loyalty, quick reactions to implement command decisions.” However, I must disagree with your insinuation that the “strategic goals of the United States” requires our citizens to first jeopardize the safety of their sons and daughters by placing them in harm’s way, and then to sacrifice those individuals’ liberty by threatening to prosecute them for using reasonable force to stop a threat of imminent death or serious bodily harm.
Comment on July 10, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
Mr Gholz – this is NOT an issue of weakening the standards (as you state), it is one of simply applying the APPROPRIATE standard. We currently have a crop of senior officers who care more for career promotion than they do the well-being of their soldiers. Having made 7 trips to Iraq myself, I can personally verify that the current mess we are in is – in part – due to inadequate and inordinate application of – what should be – a simple set of rules. There is a break down between the decision to send the military as a vehicle of foreign policy and the conduct of the war. War being an extension of diplomacy through other means (paraphrase to Clausewitz), the military is a blunt instrument and consequences of collateral damage need fall on the policy makers and NOT on the executors of the policy. Expecting sterile results in a septic situation defies logic and the realities of the encounter. A simple set of rules and the universal application of such would go far to alleviate the damage incurred bu judging our soldiers in the harsh light of 20-20 hindsight. The clamour from the main stream media does little to quell the flames and in many cases adds fuel to the fire. How did we get to this point you may ask?? The massive drawdown of the ’90′s left a class of officers deviod of warrior ethos. Officer-Warriors showing aggressive qualities and a penchant for pushing the edge of the envelope were immediately identified as “OER fodder” and reduced from the force in order for us to meet our drawdown numbers. The lesson learned by the surviving mid term officer corps was to shut your mouth, do as little as possible and “go along to get along”. NOT rocking the boat was actually a good career move as moss provided an insulating protective cover for the rocks choosing career advancement over doing the right thing.
Disagree? Why is it that we currently have an inordinate number of Navy Admiral’s running what has been traditionally a ground operator’s realm? It would be folly for Junior officers NOT to speak up and to point out that the Emperor, indeed, has no clothes. Truth proves to be a valuable antiseptic and cleanses the wounds of folly better than sniffling elitists.
Comment on July 12, 2007 @ 11:43 am