Reply #9: The Broad Brush

[noamnety]

Always, the broad brush is a problem.

The phrase "the troops" will always be problematic when you are looking to lay blame. Some of them are trying to do what's right, in an impossible circumstance. Some are just bonehead racists corrupt with their own power. You can't lump them together. I have a friend trying to get back in to serve, who is having problems reenlisting because he was too outspoken against what was happening when he was in Iraq before. He wants to go back to help try to prevent abuses. He is not the problem.

The problems:

1) A lack of clear guidance. There should be clear guidance issued, so the soldiers have clear guidance to follow. For example, when the first abuse was disclosed, there should have been a memo immediately from the top down outlining what is or isn't acceptable treatment of detainees. Instead we had ambiguous statements that they condemned it but wouldn't necessarily call it torture, and vagueness about who was or wasn't covered under the Geneva Convention. Don't ask, don't tell is not an acceptable policy for interrogation.

2) A lack of discipline (again, a leadership issue). Items which become public relations problems needed to be dealt with but weren't. That doesn't mean hide the evidence, it means address the behaviors. The day the photo of troops in the Rush Gitmo shirt came out, that unit should have been taken to task for endangering not only themselves, but other troops overseas as well.

3) A lack of vision/ability to see the big picture. When you see repeat incidents of soldiers luring children to them as they hand out toys or candy and the children getting blown up as a result of being around the soldiers, it's time to issue guidance telling the soldiers to STOP luring the kids to the tanks, stop tempting them into harm's way. It's a war crime to use children as human shields. And yet I still see websites (www.anysoldier.com for example) asking for toys to give to the children. That's not the fault of the soldier running the site, whose heart I'm sure is in the right place. It's the fault of the leadership for not sending a clear message that it's unacceptable behavior in a war zone because it's endangering children.

Yes, individual soldiers need to be held accountable for their actions, there's no doubt about that. If a commander issues guidance and the soldiers violate it, they're accountable. If the commander doesn't issue guidance and tells the soldiers to make it up as they go along, the commander should be held equally accountable for the decisions they make.