…who stops the fellow caught red-handed burying the bomb meant for your troops ~ harm not a hair of a single civilian’s precious head as they rush to aide the insurgent ~ and YOU…are the war criminal.
Shifting guidelines prompt calls for ROE reform
Second guesses on front-line decisions can jeopardize careers
The Afghan man captured on a grainy surveillance video was a known insurgent. And there he was — again — digging a hole for a homemade mine beneath a well-traveled dirt road in Helmand province.
Several Marines in a nearby combat outpost watched the video feed closely, but a decision on what to do fell to 1st Lt. Josh Waddell, executive officer of India Company, who was running the command post on the afternoon of Nov. 1 for 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines.
Waddell, 25, sprang into action, calling his battalion headquarters to get authorization — what military lawyers call “positive identification” — to launch a strike. From there, he hurriedly issued orders to ground patrol units, sniper teams and aircraft hovering nearby, coordinating a complex operation to kill or capture the enemy.
The insurgent was surrounded by a village full of women and children, so Waddell’s decisions required the kind of nuanced judgment call that has become a hallmark requirement of today’s often murky counterinsurgency missions.
Waddell opted against calling in the helicopter gunships. Instead, he ordered a sniper team to home in on the insurgent. The first sniper shot was high and off-target, sending the man sprinting across a patch of farmland. But other shots struck his leg and stomach. The man dropped and rolled into a ditch for cover.
Waddell had a split second to decide on his next move. And the choice he made — to fight rather than stand down — put him in one of the thorniest dilemmas faced by leaders in today’s wars: the rules of engagement…
…An order to fire
When Waddell saw some civilians hoist the wounded insurgent onto a nearby tractor, the young Marine saw a tactical retreat. He ordered his snipers to fire at the tractor’s engine block, to disable it until a Marine foot patrol could arrive to detain the man.
What a lawyer later saw were civilians conducting a medical evacuation — and firing on them was a potential war crime.
Waddell ultimately ordered his snipers to cease fire after more civilians, including a child, gathered around the tractor.
In the end, the insurgent was found dead from his wounds. No civilians were injured.
Nevertheless, the incident made Waddell a target for months of investigations. His commander, Lt. Col. Seth Folsom, later said he acted “recklessly” and showed “poor judgment.” Although Waddell did not break any international laws of war, he violated the “tactical directive in effect at the time.”
The young officer was relieved from his job as company XO. Folsom later gave him a searing “unsatisfactory” on a fitness report, saying Waddell was “not recommended for promotion with his contemporaries…
Read the whole thing.
It will make you ill.