New NATO idea to avoid killing innocent Afghans

To sum up this Associated Press article, they propose awarding medals to those soldiers who show enough restraint not to use unnecessary deadly force among civilians, unlike e.g. these guys.

If it has come to that, then it really proves that modern armies are little more than enlisted mercs/grim professionals who can't be really disciplined/ordered around or held 100% accountable for their actions on the battlefield like conscripts did, but are closer to how a private security guard with a license to kill would operate. A conscript will tolerate being bossed around, a professional will just tell you "you're full of shit, I'm leaving" and do so. The only incentive for them to behave as would be considered the norm in any army just 20-30 years ago is a decoration....which IMHO misses the point. A monetary compensation would work better to achieve what the NATO eggheads are set to.

The military hasn't changed. It's just easier for even the poorest civilian in a foreign country to have some device with a camera built in. It's nieve to think the forces in Korea, Nam or Gulf to have been anymore civil.

My dad who served told me the most dangerous people in war are the civilians. If it's a risk between your men and them...

Guerrilla warfare... shitsux

Sorry, but the times of your father are long gone. You're forgetting that the men who fought in those wars were conscripts, even those on the "evil imperialist capitalist" side (with the exception of the Gulf war, which was already full-blown professional US army vs conscript Iraq).

On the converse, the ones serving in modern multinational NATO and UN peacekeeping forces today are all enlisted professional volunteers. Even in countries that still have conscription, like Greece, only professional enlisted personnel is eligible to be sent to these missions.

And I use the term "eligible" because those sent there actually strive and compete for a place on those missions (they are numbered and limited), because the pay is 3x times their normal rank pay, plus other bonuses (front-up cash, faster career advancement etc.)

Generally they have the attitude of someone who's there to do a job, rather than serve their country or fight against Charlie or whatever, and their fellow grunts are viewed more like how e.g. cops in the same PD would see each other.

As such, these professionals tend to become unionized, tend to be very petty over comforts/"working conditions", ignore grunt-level discipline (uniform customization is pretty common, and often they are not subject to low-level discipline such as keeping clean bunks etc.), all things that no conscript would ever dare do at any time, in any army. Throw in a "multinational" element in all that, which makes common discipline/rules of engagement etc. difficult to apply, and see how modern warfare is more like an internationalized enterprise, much like building e.g. an offshore oil rig with specialist teams from all around the world.

Once one grasps that concept, they can also understand why traditional army discipline, instilled by a sense of duty and enforced in the field by provost/military police/a country in distress etc. is quickly becoming obsolete.

And that has exactly what to do with how many civilians get killed? If you're fighting in a place where the combatants can blend in with civilians then lots of civilians are going to die. Medals for restraint appear to be rewards for not losing one's mind in the sort of continuous situation that fucks up the minds of just about everybody. There is little there to do with a lack of discipline among soldiers with a sense of entitlement. The criminal slaughter of civilians is there just as it was in other wars when soldiers went mental. The accidents are still there, and so are the situations where guerrilla fighters cause psychological mayhem.

The difference between this and past wars is everybody gets upset when civilians die now. If that were the case in WWII they could have used a similar scheme. As it was, the policy in WWII rapidly evolved into bombing entire cities into oblivion. No need for a restraint medal there.

Aliotroph? said:

And that has exactly what to do with how many civilians get killed?

The fact that the ones doing the killing are essentially guns for hire on business doesn't help, and makes the causality/legitimacy of the whole operation appear murky.

Aliotroph? said:

If you're fighting in a place where the combatants can blend in with civilians then lots of civilians are going to die.

As above, let's ask again why they're there in the first place, and what their contracts say about it. There's a world of difference between Vietnam's conscript Private Joe who got his ass drafted there with no contract and strict discipline, and a professional who got there to make a buck and has much looser rules. Honestly, if I was in the "resistance" I'd kill such a "soldier" more painfully than an unwilling conscript, if possible, since he's trying to make a buck out of my people's misery. The fact that he's one among 1000s or part of a regular army doesn't change anything.

Aliotroph? said:

The difference between this and past wars is everybody gets upset when civilians die now. If that were the case in WWII they could have used a similar scheme. As it was, the policy in WWII rapidly evolved into bombing entire cities into oblivion. No need for a restraint medal there.

"One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic." - Joseph Stalin

Again, it's ethically much more different to die at the hands of:

• A conscript doing his duty, even a WW-II bomber pilot who's taking part in a blind carpet bombing.
  
• A merc killing you for fun as part of getting his 5 bucks.
  
• A volunteer who watched too much StickDeath - Martyr Machine and hates all non-WASPs.
  
• A cop abusing his power.
  
• A street thug killing you for fun or 5 bucks
  

However individual abuses of soldiers in WW-II were generally punished if promptly reported to MP/FeldGendarmerie. Today this form of restraint is unenforceable due to a sense of trade unionism among volunteer members of most NATO armed forces, the nature of the missions they partake, and very murky jurisdictions (e.g. in NATO missions, the role of Field Police is usually taken by one of the participating states with several MP/Provost units, but certain soldiers e.g. the U.S. ones are immune from any court system but their own, which is unlikely to prosecute them or let them in the hands of a NATO ally for judgment).

Wake up, warfare has changed, and so did the ethics it brings with it. If that wasn't the case, NATO wouldn't even have considered such a measure -regardless of whether it's materialized or not.

Maes said:

However individual abuses of soldiers in WW-II were generally punished if promptly reported to MP/FeldGendarmerie.

It wasn't any different with Russian forces either, my grandfather once told me that he saw a Russian soldier shoot an unarmed truck driver who, after being ordered to stop got out of the cab instead of staying behind the wheel. The soldier was court-martialed and executed within an hour.

Doesn't the situation seem similar to what could've happened at a checkpoint in Iraq/Afghanistan?

Belial said:

Doesn't the situation seem similar to what could've happened at a checkpoint in Iraq/Afghanistan?

Yeah, only that the shooters would probably just be reassigned to second-line duty/given a "post traumatic stress disorder" recovery leave, or at most dishonourably discharged with maaaaaybe a monetary fine and barred from re-enlisting, if they didn't have the right means to pull the right strings.

Again the dichotomy: serving as a (unavoidable) duty vs serving as a (remunerated) choice.

Maes said:

Sorry, but the times of your father are long gone.

Humanity has not evolved that much in the space of one generation. Soldiers are killers. Terrorists hide out in the midst of civilians. War is a hateful thing, but soldiers who are in a foreign dirtball country surrounded by hidden hostiles who despise everything about them, and whose home media is constantly trying to find fault with them, are very likely to snap now and then. Funny how nobody seems to pay much attention to when our side gets tortured and blown up. People only seem to care when our soldiers do it back.

I'm okay with this.

MajorRawne said:

Humanity has not evolved that much in the space of one generation.

Not humanity maybe, but warfare has done a lot of "progress", and now it's much more of a business than ever. Only that this time, it's not just the big string-pulling industries in the background or career officers that partake in it, but they have explicitly extended the business model even to the fighting troops, elevating them from the status of "grunts" to the status of "professionals" with rights, demands and wages/bonuses. And that alone is an ENORMOUS difference.

MajorRawne said:

Soldiers are killers. Terrorists hide out in the midst of civilians.

Again that argument... sorry, but who decides who's a terrorist and who's not, who's legitimized in his use of force and who's not? A-posteriori, of course it's the final winner rewriting history once and for all. In an ongoing conflict, it's the one with the best lobbying/media coverage. I bet the "terrorists" consider you as illegitimate and devious as you consider them.



I remind you that e.g. in WW II the German army labeled the Greek Resistance in Crete as "terrorists" because they got their ass kicked, and later on, the UK and US-backed right wing government labeled the left-wing Greek Liberation Army of WW II "terrorists" (200.000 terrorists? Any strategic analyst today would throw a fit!) during the ensuing Greek Civil war. So as far as I'm concerned, "terrorist" is just a label propaganda appends to the enemy to demonize/dehumanize/delegitimize it, as opposed e.g. to two warring sides that respect each other.

MajorRawne said:

Funny how nobody seems to pay much attention to when our side gets tortured and blown up. People only seem to care when our soldiers do it back.

Once again: those fighting "terrorism", due to the way modern international missions work inside of NATO and UN are basically legalized mercenaries, and those never received much sympathy for their "efforts" by anyone, in the whole human history. That's an enormous difference with WWII, Korea and 'Nam. It's essentially the first time after the middle ages that volunteer/professional soldiering became so much prevalent over conscripted armies.

Would you feel sympathy for a gangster doing a drive-by shooting that gets wasted in the process due to retaliation, knowing that he was "fighting" for the interests of his gang alone and with no regard for any collateral damage, as is often the case? Only if you were a member of his gang or a relative. For everyone else, he was a predator on an opportunistic mission. Same with modern soldiers partaking in NATO missions.

It's no wonder that modern NATO armies have to spend a lot of money in PR to give a sheen of morality, legality and legitimacy to these missions, and convince those partaking in them that they're doing it primarily for the sense of duty or a higher justice ideal (e.g. a terrorism-free world).

What I do know is, our way of life is under attack from an utterly determined, completely amoral (to our way of thinking) enemy who would see us drowned in our own blood, an enemy who thinks nothing of blowing himself up to kill a crowd of children if it will kill even a single Western soldier... an enemy who struck first blood.

So the mighty forces of America and Britain struck back with typical human ferocity. Quel suprise. Two of the mightiest nations on Earth are not going to let a bunch of "barbarians" commit such scale of atrocity without reprisal.

I don't know about you lot but I was sitting in the office with a headset on, trying to explain to an old lady how to use Internet Explorer 5 when a colleague walked in saying "Someone's just flown a plane into a building".

I am not sure what the West did to deserve being branded worthy of extinction, but I can tell you now, if sitting in an office talking on the phone over a cup of tea qualifies, Britain as a nation should start hiding under its covers.

I find it really, really difficult to see the West as the villain in this piece. The war against terror was declared the moment someone decided to hijack planes and fly them into buildings, killing thousands of people for a cause right-minded people don't understand or give a damn about.

The dogs of war were let slip in retaliation. Those dogs of war would still be on the leash if it hadn't been for the 11th September 2001.

PS My granddad, to my mum and her sisters during the American/Russian standoff at the height of the Cold War:

"Listen, girls, those Russians aren't stupid. They won't start world war 3. They don't want it any more than we do. It'll be your hotheads and bloody nutters in the Middle East. They're the ones we'll need to watch out for."

MajorRawne said:

... an enemy who struck first blood.

...did they?

If only it were that simple...remember, who sows wind harvests storms afterwards, and that's what happened on 11/9. Still, it was just a pretty piss-poor pretext to invade Afghanistan. The real reasons involve so complex geopolitics, that unless you read history and military actuality magazines, it'd be pointless to explain here.

If you look at the whole thing with a results-oriented POV, you have bunch of mercs fighting for a murky objective.

Nowhere near that crystal-clear and idealistic situation as you make it to be. Not Gott mit uns. No holy paladins vs vicious orcs, just a tangled mudball of geopolitics.

Of which those mercs are just willing pawns (well, maybe driven by unemployment or whatever...but still mercs). Sorry, a resistance fighter doesn't understand the invader's "professional union right" to stay alive while "doing his job" ;-)

And don't forget that the forces in Afghanistan are NATO's, not just the US. Who "drew first blood" on them?

And if you can't see how things got so downhill that they needed to propose a fucking medal to reward what in a conscript army would be standard discipline, then I have nothing more to say.

Actually, I see this how I saw the Argentine invasion of the British Falklands. The Argies made a declaration of war and were ruined and humiliated by the British response.

On the 11th of September 2001, the Taliban committed an act of war against America. America's allies (or at least some of them) responded. The military of Afghanistan and Iraq basically ceased to be within a few weeks, leaving the tunnel dogs who started the whole conflict hiding in caves beneath their ruined countries. Lesson: do not, ever, declare war against a superior force when you have nothing more to cling to than a twisted moral superiority (underdog syndrome?).

I do see the invasion of Iraq as wrong since this should have been resolved in the first Gulf War when there was full and clear cause to destroy Saddam's regime, but the allies pandered to public opinion and left Saddam Hussein to wreak murder on the innocent civilians left behind.

I suppose it all comes down to the question: can Western countries be attacked with impunity by countries which do not share their comparatively peaceful ideologies (as in compared to the war-torn middle east where life is worth less than a handful of pennies or cents and women are basically slaves with no human rights), just because said Western countries are many, many times more powerful, better equipped and capable in all-out conflict?

Should Western response be non-existent just because their cowardly opponents hide out among women and children? How are the Western countries supposed to defend themselves and their rights?

Perhaps during WW2, the British Empire should have left its European allies to annihilation and enslavement because poor, innocent Germans might have got hurt? Millions of civilians on both sides died. The butcher's bill of war, yet another reason why all war is wrong, but think of the cost in life if the Third Reich had conquered the entire of Europe. We wouldn't be having this conversation now; I'd be speaking German and America would most likely have been nuked.

If I go up to someone and punch them in the face, telling them they have less right to live than I do, they should have every right to smack me back. If I see my friend being attacked, I will go to his aid, and I will attack the people who are attacking him.

Of course, negotiation, brainpower and agreement are the ideal solution to any problem: but how do you negotiate with someone who utterly despises you and feels that you have no right whatsoever to continue to exist, and who believes that he will be rewarded in heaven if he brings death to you and your loved ones?

MajorRawne said:

On the 11th of September 2001, the Taliban committed an act of war against America.

Really? Weren't all the hijackers Saudis? That's what they taught you at briefing, private?

MajorRawne said:

I suppose it all comes down to the question: can Western countries be attacked with impunity by countries

What countries? Seems you didn't read the propaganda leaflets you've been issued, private. The enemy is everywhere....and threats are "asymmetric". No trench warfare. No more "us vs them" (which is also why it's so hard to rationalize these invasions). There's no enemy front, no enemy HQ...just a vague threat, somewhere.

MajorRawne said:

stuff

At this point I really have to ask you number and rank, soldier. Either you have direct/indirect interests in these missions, or you just gulp down whatever they tell you. NAME and RANK, please.

Maes, this is an anonymous debate on the internet. I have no intention of falling out with you, and this is starting to get personal. I think we have both made our points so we'll have to agree to disagree.

To answer your question about military experience, I am partially sighted so I am not eligible for any service. I wanted to enlist with my local regiment which happens to be armoured infantry so I could drive a Challenger 2 MBT or a Saracen APC. I wanted this not to go around killing people, but to defend the people, country and way of life that I love. That's all.

MajorRawne said:

I wanted this not to go around killing people, but to defend the people, country and way of life that I love. That's all.

As honorable an attitude as that is, modern soldiering is not about that anymore, and if you didn't spend your term behind a desk or doing menial chores in a camp, you would probably be sent to do something totally unrelated with the ideals you mentioned.

Sure there are people that stiil enlist based on these values, but the kinds of missions you would be asked to partake in (or, even better, compete with thousands of others to be sent there) would have little or nothing to do with defending your homeland/your homesoil/protecting your family.

Incidentally, that's why most communist/socialist and even some hardcore right-wing parties around the world oppose abolishing conscription: a conscript has nothing to fight for but what you mentioned, has no personal economic interests in fighting, but will instead pain for his home & loved ones especially after being forcibly drafted (and thus wants to come back alive and free) and will be much more wary of disciplinary rules because he doesn't want to be killed/jailed by his own side before even doing his part.

A professional's performance and ethics on the other hand are motivated purely by his wage/working conditions/bonuses/benefits/career advancement, and he doesn't need to see his country being actually invaded to do his job: he will follow orders anytime because he's paid to, just like any salaried public servant. Think e.g. a cop or fireman. Actually, a strict adherence to the ideals of purely homeland integrity/defence etc. would be a disadvantage for a pro: how would you convince such a soldier to go e.g. on a NATO mission or intervene in some unrelated foreign conflict?

The regimes/parties I mentioned don't want an army of such soldiers (at least not in their enlisted ranks) for different reasons. Left wingers fear that a 100% professional army is essentially a capitalist corporate entity working purely on market/demand laws, and stips if of that sense of national belonging/integrity/identity you too wanted to fight for.

Some right-wingers also share that view, and both know that such an army would be impossible to e.g. order to make a last sacrificial stand before overwhelming odds: any professional would call it quits, as he feels that just money are not reason enough to die for any cause.

Pretty sure our guys just get sent wherever they're told when they sign up. No chance to compete for missions and such. Many of them would rather not end up in places like Afghanistan and they get sent anyway. Many others would rather go there. Meh.

Wars will murky goals, mercenary soldiers and civilian death still advance technology. Advancing technology is always good.

Aliotroph? said:

Pretty sure our guys just get sent wherever they're told when they sign up. No chance to compete for missions and such. Many of them would rather not end up in places like Afghanistan and they get sent anyway. Many others would rather go there. Meh.

I'm sure the very least they state their willingness somewhere in their enlistment contracts (I know they can't decline if chosen, but surely those with an explicit willingness will get priority), and there are surely waiting lists/priorities over certain specialist positions, because of the career boosts they can give and the relatively good working conditions.

E.g. an assignment on second-line duties such as administration, field hospital or in Signals/IT in Afghanistan is relatively safe, with good working conditions, yet earns you the "foreign service" distinction and increased pay benefits, without risking your ass as much as a first-line grunt. Surely better than twisting your thumbs behind a desk at home....