Too Many Lawyers - Why Legalism is Undermining Ethical Conduct in the SOF Community
.By Daniel Pace
In 300, the popular recreation of the Battle of Thermopylae, King Leonidas is told by the Delphic Oracle that he must not march to Thermopylae to declare war on Persians because doing so would violate Spartan religious norms. Leonidas’s response is to quibble a bit. He will not march to war. Instead, he and 299 of his close friends will go for a stroll to stretch his legs. If they happen to encounter Persians along the way, then so be it. The conversation portrayed in 300 resembles discussions between SOF operators and their legal teams today. Just as Leonidas did, modern SOF operators manipulate the language in CONOPs to secure legal top cover, and this tendency is contributing to the inculcation of dishonesty in the community.
The SOF community has become over reliant on legal advisors when dealing with ethical issues. The permeation of legal advisors into every level of the community has changed the tone of both operational decision making and command-directed investigations in an undesirable way, making both processes more legalistic. This breeds distrust and leads to an organizational culture of internal dishonesty and quibbling. If the SOF community hopes to see its operators make better ethical decisions, the community needs to stop allowing legalistic processes to undermine honest communication in its ranks.
In the operational decision-making process, lawyers serve as a combination of tribal shaman and ethics professor for the organization. After deciding what they want to accomplish, SOF planners carefully offer the JAG a CONOP containing the most lawyer friendly language of which they can think. If the lawyer blesses off on the operation, then the planners know they are probably safe from scrutiny by higher lawyers. If he does not, the planners must try to convince him to approve it by allowing him to replace their language with his own cryptic, legalistic incantations.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/05/10/too_many_lawyers_-_why_legalism_is_undermining_ethical_conduct_in_the_sof_community_898813.html
