Defense Articles

Editorial Abstract: Military leaders at all levels face difficult moral and ethical decisions. Originally presented at a memorial conference for the late Manuel Davenport, this article aims primarily to underscore Professor Davenport’s example as an excellent teacher of military ethics, ex-amine several unique themes in his work, and recommend his effective method for approaching problems of military ethics in general.

STARTING AND FIGHTING wars is a morally hazardous business. The philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe describes the peril well: in starting wars, our common foibles have too often led nations to “wrongly think themselves to be in the right.” (1) The deadly serious work of fighting wars presents to the military professional in combat even more pitfalls: “Human pride, malice and cruelty are so usual that it is true to say that wars have been mostly mere wickedness on both sides…. The probability is that warfare is injustice, that a life of military service is a bad life.” (2) We might disagree with Anscombe’s estimations of the probability that we will fail, but certainly no other context presents so many opportunities for the worst kinds of immorality. In the face of this danger, some people have actually embraced war as a moral catastrophe, allowing without condemnation any use or abuse of power in international relations and any method of fighting in the prosecution of war. Fortunately, many more of us rightly set our faces against this kind of moral nihilism with respect to war.

With the opposition to nihilism and its radical permissiveness should come yet another worry: that we will do a poor job of formulating our moral judgments (and the accompanying, well-intentioned attempts to remedy or prevent problems). We must not proceed naively, too quickly, or from the “outside” without an appreciation for the real nature of the moral difficulties found in statecraft and the prosecution of warfare. Numbers of thinkers have avoided these risks, become wise and informed specialists in the morality of war, and made many helpful contributions to coping with the thorny problems posed in military ethics. Manuel Davenport was one of those thinkers. Indeed, we can understand in retrospect that he was part of an elite group of military ethicists who have done this vital work truly well. (3) The thoughtfulness, moral conviction, and discipline he brought to the enterprise of doing and teaching military ethics provide us with a great example. We should reflect on that example and see what lessons it can teach us in the present.

Lessons on How to Teach Military Ethics

The places where Davenport taught military ethics allowed his work as a teacher to have maximal reach and impact. Texas A&M University’s Aggie Corps of Cadets normally has as many as 2,000 members, making it one of the largest groups of uniformed students in the country. (4) During his long tenure at A&M (starting in 1967), Davenport taught a course in military ethics that touched many of the cadets from this rich source of officers. Moreover, he twice served as a distinguished visiting professor at the Air Force Academy, where he taught military ethics to hundreds more future officers. Here is the first lesson to learn: at the very least, we must place courses in military ethics close to all of our commissioning sources.

On many occasions, I observed Davenport engage these undergraduates, who would soon become our leaders; he was always at their level–engaging, memorable, kind, and funny. Yet at the same time, he remained rigorous and intellectually demanding. In time his teaching provided a widespread, positive influence on how many of us throughout the armed services think about moral problems–influence planted one student at a time. So here is another lesson we should learn in reflecting on Davenport’s teaching: we cannot teach military ethics properly by using only posters, pamphlets, or short motivational speeches. Reasonable concerns for efficiency and leveraging our resources must not trump what is essential to the educational process. Individual engagement, one student at a time and over long periods, is a vital part of the job.

Davenport did more than teach many college-aged students on their way to becoming junior officers. He also taught a number of teachers who then went on to educate many, many more undergraduates. The faculty of the Air Force Academy, like the one at West Point, is staffed in large part (indeed, for many years before the 1990s, almost exclusively) by military officers. Some military professors have long-term relationships with the academy, hold doctorates, and have years of teaching experience. Significantly more members of the military faculty, however, are very junior officers recruited from various career fields to serve a single tour of duty–three or four years–as instructors in lower-level introductory courses. They must hold a master’s degree in the subject they hope to teach. If no qualified officers who hold the advanced degree are available, then the academy sponsors those with the right credentials for 12- to 18-month fellowships. That is, when necessary, the institution will “grow” its own junior instructors.

The United States has occupied many foreign lands over the last half century–Germany and Japan in World War II, and, on a much smaller scale, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo in the 1990s. In all these cases, we sponsored elections and handed-off to democratic governments control of countries that were relatively stable, secure, and reasonably peaceful.

In Iraq, we failed to do this, despite heroic efforts by U.S. and coalition troops. The newly-elected Iraqi government inherits a country in which assassinations, kidnappings, suicide bombings, pipeline sabotages, and beheadings of foreigners are daily occurrences. For the last eight months, the ranks of the insurgency have been growing faster than those of the security forces of the provisional Iraqi government–and an alarming number of those government forces are secretly working for the insurgency. American-led combat operations in Ramadi and Fallujah killed large numbers of the enemy; but at the price of fanning the flames of anti-American hatred and dispersing the insurrection throughout Iraq. Despite nearly two years of effort, American troops and civilian administrators have failed to restore basic services to much of the central part of the country where a majority of Iraqis live. The U.S. military has not even been able to secure the 7-mile stretch of highway leading from the Baghdad airport to the Green Zone where America’s own embassy and the seat of the Iraqi government are headquartered.

How we got to this point is by now quite obvious. Even many of the war’s strongest supporters admit that the Bush administration grievously miscalculated by invading Iraq with too few troops and then by stubbornly refusing to augment troop numbers as the country descended into violent mayhem after the fall of Saddam.

This analysis, of course, presumes that it was ever possible to invade and quickly pacify Iraq, given the country’s religious-ethnic divisions and history of tyranny. But it also presumes that the fault is primarily one of judgment: that the president and key senior military officials made a mistake by accepting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s theory that a “transformed” American military can prevail in war without great masses of ground troops. That judgment was indeed foolish; events have shown that, while a relatively modest American force can win a stunning battlefield victory; such a force is not enough to secure the peace.

But there’s a deeper problem, one that any president who chose to invade a country the size of Iraq would have faced. In short, America’s all-volunteer military simply cannot deploy and sustain enough troops to succeed in places like Iraq while still deterring threats elsewhere in the world. Simply adding more soldiers to the active duty force, as some in Washington are now suggesting, may sound like a good solution. But it’s not, for sound operational and pragmatic reasons. America doesn’t need a bigger standing army; it needs a deep bench of trained soldiers held in reserve who can be mobilized to handle the unpredictable but inevitable wars and humanitarian interventions of the future. And while there are several ways the all-volunteer force can create some extra surge capacity, all of them are limited.

The only effective solution to the manpower crunch is the one America has turned to again and again in its history: the draft. Not the mass combat mobilizations of World War II, nor the inequitable conscription of Vietnam–for just as threats change and war-fighting advances, so too must the draft. A modernized draft would demand that the privileged participate. It would give all who serve a choice over how they serve. And it would provide the military, on a “just in time” basis, large numbers of deployable ground troops, particularly the peacekeepers we’ll need to meet the security challenges of the 21st century.

America has a choice. It can be the world’s superpower, or it can maintain the current all-volunteer military, but it probably can’t do both.

Plowing a field with a Ferrari

Before the invasion of Iraq, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki and Army Secretary Thomas White advised Rumsfeld that many more troops would be needed to secure Iraq (something on the order of 250,000 to 300,000). Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose State Department was shut out of the post-war planning process, also privately argued for a bigger force. A RAND Corporation analysis, published in summer 2003, offered a range of estimates for what size force would be necessary in Iraq. Using troops-to-population ratios from previous occupations, RAND projected that, two years after the invasion, it would take anywhere from 258,000 troops (the Bosnia model), to 321,000 (post-World War II Germany), to 526,000 (Kosovo) to secure the peace.

None of these figures seems, at first glance, unachievable for a U.S. military comprised of 1.4 million active-duty troops, 870,900 reservists, and 110,000 individual ready reservists (soldiers who have served their tour of duty and are not training with the reserves but who can by statute still be called up for service). And yet an Iraq deployment that has never exceeded 153,000 ground personnel has put so much stress on the military that a senior Army Reserve official has candidly stated that current rotation policies will lead to a “broken force.” How can that be?

The ground for library work in Finnish military hospitals during World War II was prepared before the war by three different traditions of library activity. First, professional librarians and state library authorities tried to initiate hospital library work in Finnish hospitals as an extension of municipal library services. Impulses from abroad, mainly from Great Britain through the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), were important in this initiative. Second, nurses, especially in the Red Cross Hospital in Helsinki, started to give library services as a voluntary operation in late 1930s. The first full-time hospital librarian, a volunteer, was originally a nurse. Third, the Soldiers’ Homes Associations run by women volunteers organized libraries for conscript soldiers during peace time. This article describes how these traditions worked together during the Second World War. Professional librarians’ attitudes toward voluntary library work in military hospitals and the interaction between librarians and patients as readers are described. Library work in civilian hospitals grew out of wartime activities.

The demand for recreational reading for soldiers during the Second World War was organized in many ways in different armies. In times of peace, regular libraries were often found in garrisons or training centers, but the war so increased the demand for recreational books that special measures were needed. There were different solutions. One example was the special editions of books created for U.S. soldiers (see, e.g., Cole, 1984). Another was the book boxes that were circulated in the trenches of the Finnish army. A special case was the library activities in military hospitals situated outside the actual combat zones. Almost everywhere these activities were the result of an enthusiastic voluntary engagement of civilians, mostly women. The aim of this article is to describe these services, their historical and international background, the attitudes of the professional librarians toward voluntary work in hospitals, and what happened when men who had read little in civilian life came into contact with books in the military hospital environment. Library services in military hospitals reflect interesting mixes of peace and wartime practices, with professional librarians acting as volunteers and nonprofessional volunteers acting as librarians. Some of the questions that may arise in circumstances like this are: Who makes the selection of books? Who is entitled to choose freely what he or she reads? How do professional librarians react in a situation where they have to relax what they see as their high moral and aesthetic professional standards? It also is interesting to know how and by whom library services in military hospitals were organized, what was the historical and professional context of this activity, and what happened when the war was over.

By way of historical background, (1) after having been part of the kingdom of Sweden for seven hundred years, Finland was, in a side-show of the Napoleonic wars, invaded by Tsar Alexander I and made a Grand-Duchy in the Russian Empire in 1809. After a century of cultural and economic progress, Finland gained independence after the Russian October Revolution in 1917. The beginning of independence, however, was clouded by a bloody civil war in 1918. Between the world wars there was again a period of peaceful progress until 1939, when under the terms of the the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, Finland fell into the sphere of influence of the latter. After failed negotiations about land and other matters, the Soviet Union attacked Finland. The Winter War, as it was known, lasted from November 1939 until March 1940. The Finnish forces, with great sacrifices, halted the enemy, but it is assumed that Stalin aborted the attack mainly because he feared that the Western allied powers would send troops to help Finland. Although Finland maintained its freedom, it was forced to cede a large area of land and lease a naval base to the Soviet Union.

There followed an uneasy period of armistice from March 1940 until June 1941, during which the Soviet Union put pressure on Finland in many ways. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Finland became Germany’s ally, planning to take back what was lost in the Winter War. In addition to that the Finnish foces occupied large areas in Soviet Karelia. This second phase of the hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union is called “the Continuation War” in Finland, and it lasted until September 1944, when Finland and Soviet Union again concluded an armistice. This time the area that had been ceded after the Winter War to the Soviet Union was permanently lost. In addition, Finland had to pay large war reparations to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, Finland remained free, although its fate after the armistice was not at all certain; nor was the war completely over for Finland because there followed a campaign to drive its former German allies out of Lapland, the so-called Lapland War, that lasted until spring 1945.

Washington Post staff writer Josh White will be online Wednesday, Oct. 25, at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the 2000th U.S. military fatality in Iraq, which came Tuesday with the death of an Army sergeant after a roadside bomb north of Baghdad. The toll reflects those killed since March 2003.

Military Has Lost 2,000 In Iraq. ( Josh White and Ann Scott Tyson, Oct. 26, 2005

Gallery: Faces of the Fallen: U.S. Fatalities in Iraq.

Submit your questions and comments before or during today’s discussion.

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Josh White: Good morning everyone, and thanks for joining me here. I’m already getting some great questions, so I’ll just dive in.

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Washington, D.C.: Is there a number, a total body count, to which you think the American public will react? Is there a parallel number which the Arab states will react with Iraqi deaths? Have we become too jaded in this year of natural disasters to value the lives in Iraq?

Josh White: That’s very hard to tell. There are certainly people across the country who have been reacting to every death, and I think it’s fair to say that any soldier lost in any war is a great tragedy. The 2,000th death wasn’t so much a milestone as it was an opportunity to look back at the war so far, and its toll on America. The difficulty in measuring the casualties in Iraq is that there is really no reliable count. The Defense Department has estimated that somewhere in the arena of 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed by insurgent attacks, but I haven’t seen a reliable estimate as far as collateral deaths or insurgents killed.

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Henderson, Nev.: What is the total of all American servicemen killed and wounded in Iraq including non-combat deaths? What is the breakdown? How many Iraqis have been killed and wounded?

Josh White: The total number of American troops killed and wounded in Iraq is as follows: 2,000 dead; more than 15,000 wounded. Non-hostile causes account for a little less than 19 percent of the total fatalities, including accidents, illnesses, etc.

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Wheaton, Md.: There were single day death tolls much higher than 2,000 in WWII. Is anyone calling that war a failure for America?

Josh White: This is a very good point, and as we mentioned in today’s story, the deaths in Iraq are far, far less than America has experienced in previous wars. The world wars claimed more than half a million American lives, and Vietnam claimed 58,000. An important fact to remember is that the U.S. military fights very differently now than it did a half century ago, and the advanced weapons, protections such as body armor, and modern operational tactics the U.S. uses are keeping the number of U.S. casualties down.

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Jackson, N.J.: Hello, after 2000 deaths and who knows how many serious injuries, is it really believable that none of our troops have ever been captured in Iraq?

Josh White: There have been cases of U.S. troops getting captured in Iraq, including the very notable case of PFC Jessica Lynch, which I’m sure most people remember. Part of the reason there have been relatively few soldiers and marines captured is the way in which this fight is playing out. U.S. troops who are out on missions and are out on patrols can win a firefight with insurgents relatively easily, and there is little opportunity for insurgents to get up close to such patrols. As my colleagues reported in a very good piece today, the improvised roadside bombs that are being left by insurgents — and detonated remotely in many cases — are the cause of many U.S. casualties. Here’s that story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/25/AR2005102501987.html

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Emerson, N.J.: My son died in Iraq. Why is there so much emphasis on the number and not on the individual’s sacrifice and the individual’s life, service and family. Why is 2000 more important than 1461 or 1 or 536 or any number?

Josh White: First, let me offer my heartfelt condolences on your loss. And you’re absolutely right, every loss is important, and the number 2,000 is no more or less important or relevant than every other soldier, marine, airman, or sailor who is lost. We are doing our best to focus on each individual’s sacrifice, and the impact of each tragedy. We saw 2,000 as an opportunity to look at the toll on America and to remind people that each and every one of those people died in service to this country.

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Wheaton, Md.: I find it difficult to understand how the American public avoids being impacted by even small numbers of casualties (”The daily casualty tolls are not usually big enough to jar the American public as a whole”). Who do people think is dying–not to mention Iraqi civilian deaths? I find these events personally disturbing even though I have not had anyone close to me involved.

One of the questions I feel supporters of our invasion of Iraq are obligated to ask is “is this action worth the death of one of my family members (spouse, child)?” If the answer is yes, I guess their support of the policy is justified. If the answer is no, maybe the policy needs to be rethought.

NO ONE CAN DENY that today’s terrorist threat is particularly high. It reached an extremely dangerous level at the dawn of 2007. France is aware that the terrorist risk represented by the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) Islamic Extremist Movement–its rebellion has resulted in 150,000 deaths (mostly civilians) since 1992–has been heightened by the run-up to the presidential elections and has reinforced its vigilance and toughened its anti-terrorist procedures accordingly.

The terrorist threat has grown continuously and diversified itself by constantly multiplying its networks on a global scale. Now, for the first time in history, no region of the world is safe.

However, the real scale of the terrorist threat and predictions about how it may change in the future are very difficult to measure. The media often have overemphasized certain sensitive or critical events without really addressing the structural dimension of a phenomenon that only is rendered visible by its most violent manifestations. Like an earthquake, a terrorist attack never is an isolated event. It is the result of a build up of pressure or, in this context, a long-term strategy. This strategy of terrorism increasingly is diversified, taking into account its enemies’ strengths and weaknesses and demonstrating a frightening opportunism in the face of world development, geopolitical aspects, and the political agenda of the world’s states.

The Islamic threat not only has become globalized, it has developed a globalized strategy of attack. This can be seen in terms of targets and the means used. In 2001, Al Qaeda and the other terrorist networks that had joined them–or that share the same ideology–shifted from traditional methods of bombing to using civilian aircraft as weapons of mass destruction. These have been developed through diversification, with the sole objective of intensifying the message of terror.

Suicide bombing operations used by Palestinian organizations and Chechen terrorists now are, since the Iraqi conflict, also employed by the terrorist networks that have joined the movement of the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This diversification of methods also is illustrated by the capacity of certain networks to use unconventional weapons–chemical, biological, or even radioactive–known as “dirty bombs.” These are not merely suppositions, but serious hypotheses that must be considered by the Western intelligence and anti-terrorist services.

In 2002, France successfully dismantled a radical Islamic network that intended to attack its territory usIng toxic substances. Europe incontestably has become a major target for Al Qaeda since the strengthening of the role of the GSPC. Yet, it is not the sole target, either geographically or in terms of the terrorists’ motives and objectives. Al Qaeda and the organizations and structures working alongside it adeptly have integrated methods of communication into their strategy by using satellite television channels and the Internet. This opportunistic use of media broadcasting, digital transmission, and provocation to communicate threats has become Al Qaeda’s new weapon, helping them promote their specific objectives as well as the general feeling of insecurity and fear. Besides mastering the use of these Al Qaeda has the details of the global economy into its strategy, particularly the interdependence of financial markets and their volatility, the energy crisis, and commodities exchanges.

International terrorism of Islamic origin, which is characterized as being all at once highly decentralized, polymorphous in its structures and organization, everchanging, and global, is at the center of the problems and risks that our societies are facing. These risks threaten our collective safety and the individual liberties that are the basis of our democratic societies. They likewise are political and geopolitical, as shown by the Iraqi dilemma and recent developments in the Middle East. Finally, the risks are societal and environmental, and could lead to economic or monetary crises through terrorist action.

A fragile West

In the face of this global threat, the reaction of the democratic, especially Western, countries and the regimes associated with them is fragile and lacks unity. As yet, we have been unable to agree upon a global and unified anti-terrorist approach, given that we have not even managed to agree upon a common definition of terrorism. Despite the gravity of the situation, it seems that a certain egocentrism reigns and that the individual interests of states prevail. The European Union–with its 450,000,000 consumers–is a major player in the global economy, despite its political disparities and the absence of a constitution that would legitimize its institutions. In the past decade, Europe especially has seen the growth of militant Islamic networks and groups devoted to the Salafist cause, which today have joined the elusive Al Qaeda movement. This radical Islamic movement based in Europe has profited from these disparities and from the resulting legal and institutional loopholes that have prevented the implementation of a united and consistent European terrorist prevention policy, even if significant progress has been made in this field. So far, Europe has encountered real difficulties in efficiently managing the double-edged problem of immigration and integration of the immigrant population into our societies.

It may be many months–if not years–before U.S. troops make a permanent exit from wartime service. However, it never is too early for military personnel and their families to start talking about the right financial steps to take when returning home, according to the Financial Planning Association, Denver, Colo.

Here are some suggestions military personnel and their spouses should follow during deployment or at the end of their service:

Prevent identity theft. If a member of the military has not registered an “active duty alert” with the three major credit reporting companies (Transunion, Experian, and Equifax), they should de so immediately. Such an alert–effective for one year but renewable–instantly stops all credit offers from being mailed to their homes. A call to any one of the credit bureaus automatically will put an alert on an individual’s file with all three agencies. For extra protection, get a trusted family member authorized to check your credit report annually and place or remove an alert in your stead.

Know your rights if problems occur. The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act of 2003 provides a variety of financial protections for active duty personnel. The act provides stays on civil litigation, including bankruptcy and divorce, and prevents wage attachments when military personnel are away. Coverage requires active duty confirmation from a commanding officer, but expires 90 days after that status has been terminated. The law also makes it tougher–but not impossible–for landlords to evict military families for nonpayment of rent.

Note credit protections. The 2003 act also freezes credit card, mortgage, and some student loan interest at six percent if the military personnel were approved for the loans before they were called to active duty. On student loans, reservists and active duty members assigned away from their permanent duty stations may receive a deferment for up to three years on student-loan payments as well as a break on accruing interest on missed payments. Finally, deployed military away for at least six months can terminate a car, truck, or other vehicle lease without penalty.

Understanding tax issues. Activated and deployed military personnel receive special tax breaks at the Federal and sometimes state level. Military income earned by soldiers in combat zones is tax-free and they do not have to file taxes until 180 days after their return. Activated military personnel also are entitled to an extension on the period of time allowed for a tax break on the profits from the sale of a home as well as tax breaks on child care assistance and certain travel. Nontaxable combat pay can be considered for the Earned Income Credit.

Plan ahead for lump-sum earnings. For returning military receiving accumulated military pay or compensation from civilian employment, it is tempting to take the money and spend it. Instead, sit down with a tax and financial advisor before a dime gets wasted.

Know injury benefits. The Veterans Administration’s Traumatic Injury Group Life Insurance program, launched late in 2006, already has distributed more than $165,000,000 in grants between $25,000-$100,000 for wounded troops. Servicemen and women need to register for a monthly fee of one dollar for the extra coverage on top of what they pay for Servicemembers Group Life Insurance.

Do not forget retirement. Military service counts toward vesting for all civilian retirement plans–even though employers may not always be required to give you your job back when you return. Thanks to the Heroes Earned Retirement Opportunities (HERO) Act that passed in 2006, military and their families can put more money into traditional or Roth IRA accounts. The act allows tax-free combat pay to be considered as earned income for determining the contribution amount. Previously, a military person who earned only combat pay was not allowed to contribute to either form of IRA.

China has nuclear weapons and the third-largest military budget on the planet; mounts invasion exercises directed at Taiwan, and fires the occasional missile as a warning shot at them; has bought into the European satellite guidance system known as Galileo, which has a military dimension; maintains a standing army of several million; and is currently deploying 4,000 troops in Sudan, the first Chinese imperial venture for several centuries.

It doesn’t take a Clausewitz to realize that something with most alarming implications for everyone is going on in that Communist state. At an Asian security conference in Singapore, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld did what he’s good at, and asked a simple question: Since nobody threatens China, what is all this military expansion about? He went on to say that ultimately China will need to embrace some form of open, representative government. Beijing’s delegate at the conference asked whether Rumsfeld truly believes that the United States feels threatened by the “so-called emergence of China,” as he put it in the deadpan style that has served Chinese diplomats so well for so long. Well, yes, actually, and in the years to come successive defense secretaries, whoever they are, are going to have to take up where Rumsfeld left off.

The contemporary operating environment and today’s demographics determine that most of the U.S. Arroy’s battles will be fought in major cities around the world. Our enemies realize they cannot defeat us on an open battlefield dominated by macro-terrain: therefore, they drag us into cities dominated by micro-terrain, taking the fight to the squad level, immensely increasing the value of squad-level training.

The 1st Armor Training Brigade (1ATB) trains the basic fundamentals of urban combat, which is the foundation for surviving urban conflict. To increase soldier effectiveness and survivability, 1ATB has tailored squad-level training based on the Warrior tasks and battle drills, which include performing movement techniques during urban operations, entering a building during urban operations, improvised explosive device detection and defeat, and urban operations target engagement. This training is primarily performed at the 1ATB’s military operations on urbanized terrain (MOUT) site, and is designed to train new soldiers and trainers in the basics of urban operations. This training provides new soldiers the basics of urban operations, which they can successfully build on once they arrive at their unit. These skills teach soldiers how to fight and survive in the micro-terrain of the urban environment.

The Room-Clearing Team

The most important skills taught at 1ATB are individual skills, which include weapons carrying, room entry, and actions in a room. As in all combat situations, the clearing team members must move tactically and safely. Individuals who are part of a clearing team must move as a team using synchronized doctrinal techniques:

* When moving, team members maintain muzzle awareness by holding weapons with the muzzle pointed in the direction of travel. Soldiers keep the butt of the rifle in the pocket of their shoulder, with the muzzle slightly down to allow unobstructed vision. Soldiers keep both eyes open and swing the muzzle as they turn their head so the rifle is always aimed where the soldier is looking. This procedure allows soldiers to see what or who is entering their lines of fire.

* Team members avoid flagging (leading) with the weapon when working around windows, doors, corners, or areas where obstacles must be negotiated. Flagging the weapon gives advance warning to anyone looking in the soldier’s direction, making it easier for an enemy to grab the weapon

* Team members should keep weapons on sate (selector switch on SAFE and index finger outside of trigger guard) until a hostile target is identified and engaged. Alter a team member clears his sector of all targets, he returns his weapon to the SAFE position

* If a soldier has a weapons malfunction during room clearing, he should immediately announce “gun down” and drop to one knee and conduct immediate action to reduce the malfunction. The other members of the team should engage targets in his sector. Once the weapon is operational, he should announce “gun up” and remain in the kneeling position until directed to stand by the team leader. (1)

Precision Room-Clearing Techniques

The urban operations training curriculum also includes precision clearing techniques. These techniques do not replace other techniques currently being used to clear buildings and rooms during high-intensity combat. Specifically, they do not replace the clearing technique in which a fragmentation or concussion grenade is thrown into a room before friendly forces enter. We simply cannot use fragmentation or concussion grenades at 1ATB’s MOUT site. We can train with dummy grenades, but the effects will not be part of the training; therefore, the training is not to standard.

Precision room-clearing techniques are used when the tactical situation requires room-by-room clearing of a relatively intact building in which enemy combatants and noncombatants may be intermixed. To clear a building methodically, rather than rising overwhelming firepower to eliminate or neutralize all its inhabitants, increases risk and must be carefully and doctrinally executed:

* Compared to the deliberate attack represented by high-intensity room-clearing techniques, precision room-clearing techniques are conceptually similar to a reconnaissance in force or an infiltration attack. During a reconnaissance in force, the friendly unit seeks to determine the enemy’s locations, dispositions, strength, and intentions. Once the enemy is located, the friendly force is fully prepared to engage and destroy it, especially if surprise is achieved. The friendly force retains the option of not employing preparatory fires (fragmentation and or concussion grenades) if they are not called for (the enemy is not in the room) or if they are inappropriate (there are noncombatants present). The attacking unit may choose to create a diversion (use a stun grenade) to momentarily distract the defender while they enter and seize the objective.

* The determination of which techniques to employ is tip to the leader on the scene and is based on his analysis of existing mission, enemy, terrain, troops, time, and civilians (METT-TC) conditions. The deliberate attack (high-intensity techniques), with its devastating suppressive and preparatory fires, neutralizes everyone in the room and is less dangerous to the clearing team. The reconnaissance in force (precision techniques) conserves ammunition, reduces damage, and minimizes the chance of noncombatant casualties. Unfortunately, even when well executed, it is very stressful and hazardous for friendly troops.

In charge of military intelligence in Beirut from 1982 to 2002, Gen. Ghazi Kenaan was effectively the Syrian Viceroy of Lebanon. A hardliner in the little Baathist clique around Hafez Assad, and then his son and heir Bashar Assad, Kenaan was greatly feared. His lust for power and money was legendary.

On account of his intelligence background, he was widely suspected of organizing the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. His assets in the United States have been frozen, and the United Nations investigation into the assassination of Hariri has been closing in on him. Nobody need be too surprised, then, that he has been found shot dead in his office. His career suggests that he would always take other people’s lives rather than his own-but the official Syrian word was “suicide.” A colleague of Kenaan’s, however, did not quite toe the line. Foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa, another veteran of the Assad clique, told reporters that “unjust and vague information” had contributed to the “killing”-whereupon he quickly corrected himself, “I mean the suicide.” As the KGB used to say, any fool can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a suicide.

The red-cockaded woodpecker, endangered since 1970, may have a new best friend: the US military. The Pentagon is eager for you to believe it, and the claim–so far as it goes–has merit. The North Carolina Sandhills, home to the Army’s Fort Bragg, boasts one of the largest populations of the threatened bird. The Nature Conservancy has protected more than 9,000 acres of wildlife habitat around the base, with funding from the US Department of Defense (DoD).

The unlikely partnership represents the Pentagon’s “new commitment” to environmental sustainability. And efforts are being made: In 2004, Congress voted $12.5 million for “cooperative conservation” projects such as Fort Bragg’s. At least 20 such projects are now in progress, with The Nature Conservancy involved in almost all. The need is clear: Military installations–ironically, the only green spaces left in some areas–harbor more than 300 endangered and threatened species.

Still, it’s duplicitous, say many environmentalists. “Publicly, the Pentagon positions itself as ‘going green.’ But behind the scenes, it’s doing all it can to avoid responsibility for the environmental damage it has already done, which threatens soldiers and civilians on its bases and the people who live nearby,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents civilian employees on military bases.

Nearly 29 million Americans live within 10 miles of a military base slated for Superfund cleanup, and more than 100 DoD facilities are on the Superfund list of worst toxic waste sites. DoD has taken “extraordinary steps to limit the military’s accountability for a 50-year legacy of pollution,” according to an investigative series in USA Today in October 2004. At the same time that the Pentagon is publicizing campaigns about its eco-commitment, its lobbyists have won exemptions from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, and they are seeking exemptions from the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

“Clearly some environmentalists find things to criticize in how the military deals with a lot of things,” Bob Barnes, The Nature Conservancy’s senior policy administrator for its DoD projects, tells VT. “But on the conservation programs we’re involved in, environmentalists are highly supportive. And from my experience, the military has a surprisingly sophisticated attitude on environmental issues for which it gets little credit.”

Time will tell, How much time, of course, is the issue–for soldiers, civilians and red-cockaded woodpeckers.

WRITE, CALL OR EMAIL

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY (PEER)

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Alan Pell Crawford is a former congressional press secretary and US Senate speechwriter.