Reply #49: Not Good Enough, Sir

[The Magistrate]

Not nearly good enough.

There must be some component of reasonableness in the assessment of 'feeling' oneself under threat, otherwise that purported standard is a lisence to shoot at whim and phantoms, and plead "But I was scared, Sir!" to evade any consequence in aftermath. That plea deserves no more than a brisk slap, some grotesque sexual insult, and busting to the ranks if made by an NCO. If the command authority is setting the bar too low, as certainly seems to be the case here, whether in the interests of cover-up, or a misguided belief they deprive the enemy of propaganda points by not prosecuting, or an equally misguided belief doing so is a necessary safe-guard to morale among the rank and file, then that is a seperate problem, and into the bargain a seperate instance of criminality, for failure to prosecute violations of the Geneva Accords is itself a violation, establishing command responsibility for the actions of rank and file riflemen firmly onto the authority that does not prosecute.

By the Sergeant's own account, in storming the two houses, he made no identification of his target, and no attempt at reconnoiter: he simply heard several shots from that direction, and fixed on the nearest shelter as their source, without any real cause to do so but laziness of mind compounded by rage and fear. The second house stormed is even worse. Again, by the Sergeant's own words, he decided that armed men had fled there from the first house, though he never saw any armed men in the first house, or any sign such had ever been present there, nor did he claim, even, to have seen them flee the first house, or enter the second one. He was not at that time under fire, had seen no enemy combatant at all at any point, and simply cannot make a credible claim he was acting under imminent threat and taking the best steps possible to remove that threat.

Put bluntly, Sir, there really is no way around it: the man fucked up, he fucked up badly, and deserves a heavy sentence for sheer incompetence, let alone criminal behavior. The finding of a pack of officers to the contrary does not matter a tinker's damn to me....