ROE What?

A Most Disturbing Story:

Joel, would you mind to take a look into this? If this is being accurately portrayed, it's the most disturbing story I've heard in a while.

In June, the Pentagon changed its Standing Rules of Engagement to allow commanders to limit individual self-defense by members of their unit. Interpreted for me by two Army judge advocate general officers (JAGs), this essentially means that soldiers and Marines may not have the individual prerogative to fire upon an enemy when they are faced with an imminent threat of death or serious injury. That belongs only to commanders, who may not be present to make a decision every time a soldier or Marine faces a deadly threat.

The impetus behind the rule change likely evolved from concerns that a soldier might misinterpret a danger and kill an innocent instead of a bad actor. But critics say the solution to this ever-present tension is better training, not more restrictive rules.

Commanders and JAGs close to the debate say the rule change poses numerous potential problems and contradicts the guiding principle in all of America's rules of engagement, which is that nothing in these rules limits the inherent right of self-defense. If a soldier or Marine can't make a split-second decision to kill or be killed, even at the risk of making an erroneous judgment, he or she may eventually hesitate, fumble the wrong way, and end up dead.

Hat tip: Sharp Knife.

UPDATE: I'm going to leave this post on top today, as it seems to me a tremendously important matter. You cannot "turn off" the right to self defense. It is the most fundamental right -- "the inherent right," as the piece puts it. The military can suppress free speech for a time, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and so forth. These rights, recognized in the Constitution, can be set aside by military orders. Volunteers, even draftees in the days of the draft, can be ordered into dangerous situations -- volunteers particularly.

Neither can you set aside personal responsibility for how the right is used. Whether you have orders or not, you as a serviceman are personally responsible for the fashion in which you bear the arms entrusted to you, even as a civilian who exercises the right to keep and bear arms is responsible for how he uses his arms. If you act "in self defense" in a fashion that is not appropriate, you have in fact committed a crime for which you can be punished under the UCMJ. This is true just as a civilian who wrongly shoots another can be punished under state and sometimes Federal law. More than that, you will answer to yourself, if you guess wrong and kill an innocent. For many, this will be a worse punishment than the law.

Because the responsibility exists in the law, in all times at all places, there is no need to abridge the right -- even were it moral to do so, which it is not. It is already the case that the soldier and Marine will answer for how he uses his arms. The military has apparently decided that it might prefer not to answer for how it has trained him to use them. Better that he should stand in place, and maybe die, than that the military should risk having to explain why he shot what turned out to be an innocent.

Such moral risks exist in war. There is no avoiding them, and though training can mitigate them no war can be fought without them. It will not help to tie his hands.

Nor is it right to do so. It is also the case that he will answer for how he has failed to use them. Only in some cases will the law participate in that process, if for example he refuses orders to fight. The worse case is the one in which he makes a choice not to defend himself or his unit -- guesses wrong about a figure who might be a civilian but who might be a suicide bomber -- and has to live with the memory of his friends.

These are awesome moral weights to bear at any age. Yet there is no avoiding them. The consequences -- sometimes legal, certainly moral -- will fall on these young men on the front lines. The worst of them cannot be touched by the law. It is hard enough that these men must take up such weights so young. It is unacceptable that the military should strip them of the power to choose and act. The weight will not leave their shoulders because the power left their hands.