Ethics to combat troops?

We have already discussed the whole 'atrocity' thing on here, with the basic conclusion that combat troops under attack from guerillas who are indistinguishable from the local population will get frustrated / make mistakes / take it out on captured guerillas, regardless of nationality...

But do you reckon that this is a good way to solve the issue?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5036686.stm

 

being more ruthless may solve some problems in maintaining order, but it will create others...
more soliders excercising less discretion will produce more casualties, and perhaps exhaust the resistance as the US hopes to do... but it means alot of civilians will die

 

i think that unless an invading army is willing to practice ruthless selective genocide it will never subdue a determined guerrila force.....ceasar in gaul,cromwell in ireland,the british army in the sepoy revolt....the us army in luzon in 03......i think the germans in the balkans and jap army in asia would have crushed the partisans if not for outside allied pressure....in the age of reporters and video cams these actions are tough to sweep under the carpet....i think any western conventional army operating under geneva type rules of ingagement is doomed to failure and might as well go home...am i wrong?....a car bomb killing attaturks or tamerlanes garrison troops in falluja would probably result in a huge massacre in that citie,if not complete anihilation of that civil population....horrific ,unjust and harsh but other car bombers would think twice...against u.s. forces they merely ponder where to put the next one....

 

A good hearts and minds operation is far more likely to be succesful in the long run though, take the example of Cromwell and the Irish, the Irish were atill prosecuting a guerilla war centuries later and to this day not all the paramilitary groups have disarmed.

Take the Malayan insurgency, that was defeated without such a genocide.

 

Yea right, investigation, will bring up the truth. What a joke. I still remember investigation in shooting down airliner IA-655 in the 80's (captain of USS Vincenness and his ExO were decorated for being cool under fire later on).

About insugency. As long as runing water, electricity and other necceseties are not restored (it is taking a long time if one consideres that victory was declared by Bush in 2003) and as long US goes around blasting civilians things won't calm down. Kill a couple civilians in a town and all you did was make their extended families (thats a lot of poeple) suporters or active members of ressistance and entire town is now hostile towards you. It seems that US military doesn't know old proverb: "We learn from mistakes, but only idiot learns from his own mistakes."

This reminds me of one interwiew with Vietnam vet who said something like this (Vietnam war on Discovery channel multi part series on Vietnam in Battlefield series - citing from my memory):

 

when you kill a mans buffaloe or mom or dog you have pretty much made an enemy,wether you did so on purpose or not...such is war.the point is,we always do our best NOT to kill civillians....the insurgents kill way more innocent civillians than does the u.s. military...and they couldnt care less....gods will....if we ran power ,water and cable tv to every mud hut in iraq for free it would have zero effect on the insurgency...we are the godless invaders ,outsiders,ect...nobody likes being occupied by foreign troops no matter how benigne the intentions{we wouldnt like it either}hearts and minds seems like the best way,,,but it has never worked...viet nam ,somalia ,iraq always a fiasco.....as to the malay insurgency ..it was run and sponsered by outsiders{red chinese}and never supported by the malay population {mostly muslims}the uk promised and deliver independence to the maylays once the reds were defeated...not a valid example ,in my opinion ,simon..

 

Man, invading a country and trying to impose "democracy" like the US did is just plain old stupid. Did the administration really believe it was possible?

 

And so was the early stages of the Vietnam war - North Vietnam (with the assistance of certain external powers) tried to undermine & take over South Vietnam, with much opposition from the southerners. If the northeners were not being opposed, why did they not take over before America could step in?

The French had failed in French Indo-China as they were fighting to keep it a colony, and the locals were fighting against that.

America was fighting to keep it from becoming Communist, and (while many peasants apparently did not seem to care) a fair chunk of the population was with them on that. I have no idea what the comparative figures are for Malayan vs Vietnamise support are, nor if they even exist, but they would make interesting reading.


Early American involvement in Vietnam was good - Special Forces, hearts & minds, etc etc. But for whatever reasons, they managed to lose that edge. They never really fell behind militarily (doing as well or better than any army faced with guerillas who mix with the local population has ever done), but politically they lost out. Too many civilians killed on the news, too many massacres (well, only a handful, but that's the Media), too many casualties for no measurable successes.

 

Incorrect. Investigation did eventually determine the facts. The Vincennes blundered and some attempts were made to conceal that blunder afterwards. The Captain and his XO were not decorated. The air warfare coordinator on boars Lt. Cmdr Lustig did receive a commendation. He wasn't involved in the decision to fire or the mistaken identification but merely in it's execution i.e. the firing procedure.

The US military did not as a matter of policy kill water buffaloes of peasant farmers nor his family members. The VC on the other hand quite often did both (and worse) as they attempted to terrorize the local populace into supporting their efforts.

 

So what were free fire zones and Phoenix program then?? Is killing of civilians in Iraq a matter of official/semiofficial/unofficial policy?

Officialy US still did not admmit to the mistake, including the fact that USS Vincceness was in Iranian terrritorial waters at the time of the destruction of Iranian airliner ( that is still unofficial). Iran Air is still trying to get compensation for its plane in court (unsuccesfully i might add). Compensation for victims was paid a couple of years ago, but US did not publicly apologised for the mistake as it was settled out of court.
Compare case of IA-655 its media coverage and excuses/accusations (by the US) with KAL007 incident over Sakhalin.
Just to compare. IA-655 was flying in daylight on the route in Iranian airspace (admmitedly a few miles south of the corridor) on properly announced flight. KAL-007 was flying at night in USSR military no fly area (check old maps - it was shoot without warning area) almost 700km off course.

 

The tactics used by the US/Coalition Forces in Afganistan were brilliant in execution.
Special Forces (Green Beret) A-Teams and SAS were placed with various warlords of the Mujahadeen Northern Alliance. They won the support when they showed how they could laze targets and destroy what had been--for years--insurmountable, static Taliban defenses.
Then they distributed food, clothes, ammunition, working weapons, boots--many of the muj fighters had none--and medical care. The 'Berets/SAS did it right and they rolled-up the country using the native fighters. It is said little more than 100 special forces troops were on the group at any-one time in Afganistan.
I think the "hearts and minds" concept showed real value in this campaign. They won the "Muj' troops respect with their fighting spirit--and results--and provided medical care when the fighting was over for the day. The simple act of extracting a bad-tooth or providing other dental care made these green berets friends for life.
When large numbers of conventional troops were introduced, the results were markedly skewed. We took more casulaties, and the average trooper wasn't knowledgeable nor sensitive enough to the regions' customs and culture. This is the point when 'winning the hearts and minds" becomes much more difficult. (As in Vietnam.)

Tim

 

well said,hoosier...i think the green beret super sgts and indiginous troops is the better way to go all arround....one problem in viet nam was commi infiltrators ....if your trusted stalwart sgt nung turns his ak on u and the platoon some nite in a fire fight..it could be a bad scene all arround

 

I'll address the second part of your comments regarding the Vincennes in a later posting.

Free fire zones were areas where, in cooperation with the South Vietnamese government, farmers and villagers had been relocated to areas where they were under the protection of the military forces. Anyone remaining in those areas had no legitimate reason to be there thus were considered to be vietcong guerillas and were subject to attack under the rules of engagement.
The Phoenix Program refers to a covert operation that targeted viet cong cadre leaders and officials for assasination. One aspect of a guerilla insurgency is that the guerillas hide amongst the populace whenever it suits their purposes to do so. Whether one considers it an ethical pursuit or not to assassinate guerillas I fail to see how either free fire zones or the Phoenix program realtes to the point you were apparently trying to make regarding the US policy towards the killing of civilians. Neither program was aimed at civilians but at guerillas so what exactly was your point?

Insofar as Iraq is concerned it is also unclear what you are asking. I have no doubt that you are aware that US policy expressly forbids the deliberate killing of civilians so if you have a specific question perhaps you should state it more clearly?

 

Operative word is forcibly relocated in camps under watchfull eyes of US and ARVN military. When something like that was done in the west it was branded as war crime in itself. Comparison with Boer war, WW1 and WW2 is self evident here. A lot of civilians were left in these so called free fire zones and a lot of them were killed. If that was done on purpose or "unsatisfactory" work of South Vietnam authorities i don't know.

That was the theory. Practice was a bit different. A lot (some say most ) of innocent civilians were killed in this program. Phoenix especcialy was terror program aimed to alianate civilian population from VC by killing sympthysers (or those thought to be), true or imaginary officials and leaders of VC. By the way a lot of Germans, Hungarians, Rumanians... were hanged after ww2 for doing just that.

Both programs were aimed at civilians, Those who were considered rightly or wrongly symphatetic to the VC.

I think, that this should also be explained to the US troops in Iraq. Stupid rethoric of high ranking officials like: We will get him dead or alive (al Sadr - couple of years back for example), realy doesn't help, it just gives the impression to the grunts that all is allowed.

BTW
Do you consider arresting entire families (women, childeren...) and holding them hostage to force surrender of certain individual a war crime?

Take your time. This is a topic i know well as it was example (together with KAL007) in International Aviation law when i was taking this class on college.

 

I hope you know it better than you know the Vietnam war. I don't have time to devote the research to answering ATM so I will return to it at my convenience.

 

Grieg wrote:

No legitiment reason to stay or even visit the area they were born and grew up? There is no possible way the US higher ups could have believed that this would work out to where no innocent life would be lost. It would be impossible to forcefully evict all villagers from their villages and not have any refuse the orders. Hundreds, if not more, of innocent civilians must have died due to the indiscriminating fire of the free-fire zones. The only illegitmancy I pick up is the US command's installation of strategic hamlets and free-fire zones.

 

lol...where did you ever get the idea that us. "higher ups" said or thought there would be NO innocent lives lost...let me clue you in on a little historic reality....there has never been a war without innocent lives being lost..war entails large groups of fit young men desperatly intent on killing another likewise desperate groups of same....civillians are almost always killed usually by starvation [70000 men who march 20 miles a day are always hungry and devoid the countryside of all edible plants and animals like a hoarde of 2 legged locusts}.civillians count themselves lucky if only pigs, chickens and grain is carried away....modern western democracys do their best to not harm civillians...if your really intrested in civillian deaths ,zukoff you need to read up on stalin ,mao and pol pot...adolf and benito are small fry by comparisin....really ...do some reading ,then come back and tell us about free fire zones of 1968....its called perspective....you will prolly change your nickname to westmorland....go ,read..and sin no more my son.

 

"majorwoody" - I am sure I speak the truth when I say that Zhukov indeed is very informed about history, perhaps even more than you are. I don't believe he is being naive and saying that there never are civilian casualties... he is criticizing the "free fire zones", something entirely different.

 

oops ..dang,i didnt see the eagles on his collar...i thought it was that new guy sgt zerkoff...tell the col. im sure he is right...the free fire zones were prolly set up to give door gunners a good place to practice deflection shooting on water buffaloes and papasans...yes ,ill retract my post at 0700 tomorrow...yes sir ,thank you sir...good night

 

majorwoody, please don't stray into simple sarcasm etc - you are capable of giving good, reasoned replies, please do so.

Zhukov is questioning both the legality and the practicality of the free-fire zones, which is a valid question that deserves a valid answer. Which I'm sure somebody will provide.