How to Fix a Broken Special Operations Culture
Andrew Milburn
September 13, 2019
Commentary
In early June of this year, Gunnery Sgt. Kevin Maxwell of the U.S. Marine Corps was sentenced to four years in jail for his part in the unlawful killing of a fellow servicemember, Army Green Beret Sgt. Logan Melgar. During the trial, the court heard how Maxwell and three others, all special operators, allegedly planned to tie Melgar up before subjecting him to a sexual assault by a Malian man whom they had brought along for that purpose. By the time of Maxwell’s sentencing, one of the assailants, SEAL Chief Petty Officer Adam Matthews, had already received a one-year sentence after a plea bargain that required him to testify against the others. The remaining two accused, Gunnery Sgt. Mario Madera-Rodriguez and Chief Petty Officer Anthony DeDolph are still awaiting trial.
https://warontherocks.com/2019/09/how-to-fix-a-broken-special-operations-culture/
@rangerrebew Yeah,BOY! That uber-tough 4 year sentence should really go far in discouraging future COLD-BLOODED RAPE-MURDERS!
BTW,Milburn is a clueless fool with his "wear red and march in a straight line" philosophy. It reflects his USMC officer mentality. You need to let teams run themselves with the senior NCO taking the traditional reins on troop morale and behavior,BUT.........,and this is the most important part,IT NEEDS TO STAY WITHIN THE TEAM.
If a team has behavior problems nobody is more responsible for allowing it to happen than the senior NCO. The officers immediately above him in that arm of the chain of command MUST be the ones to relieve that senior NCO of duty and replace him with someone who will make it clear to the younger team members what is acceptable and what is NOT acceptable. This sort of stuff is not a secret to the other NCO's in that command. Stories get told within each little sealed-off community.
And "Yes,there ARE certain circumstances where civilians must be killed in order to save the team from being wiped out while trying to extract. Nobody wants to talk about it,never mind do it,but if you are escaping and evading a superior enemy force on your tail and run into civilians who you have reason to believe will immediately contact the enemy that is pursuing you and tell them how many of you there are,how you are armed,if you are carrying wounded,and the direction you were headed,you just MIGHT,as the senior man on the team be forced to kill them in order to save your team.
The trick is in understanding when a threat would be a genuine threat,and when it is a situation where it would not be necessary. Obvious examples are situations where you are behind enemy lines in enemy country,and it is generally accepted as fact that all the locals support your enemy. In that situation,you have to do what you have to do no matter how much it goes against your nature. You are in a dog eat dog situation,and your team is relying on you to be the top dog.
There are other situations where a guerilla war situation exists,and even though the locals are living in an area dominated by the guerillas,they may not support them any more than they have to in order to be able to survive. Or some of the locals may even be slave labor working for the guerillas. In cases like that,you just have to suck it up and hope they tell the enemy trying to follow you that they saw nothing and nobody.
I know of one case where a team leader made a decision he couldn't live with,and as a result got out of the army with just a few years left before retirement,and went "full pacifist". He saved his team,but at the expense of his soul/conscience. I don't know of a single soul that knew him that found fault with either of his actions,or that tried to make fun of him for becoming a "hippy". He did what he had to do BECAUSE he HAD to do it,not because he wanted to do it.
The world is not the simple place we all dream about it being,but it IS the world we all live in. Some people are just more aware of the responsibility burdens that may be laid at our feet than others.
BTW,a perfect example of what I am talking about happened several years ago in the Muddle East. A Special Operations team of some sort (forgot which one) was inserted into an area to find and "spotlight" with lasers a building that was to be used as a meeting hall for the local Taliban leadership. If it had gone as planned,none of the locals would have ever seen them,but almost nothing ever goes as planned. Right after being inserted they were spotted by a local shepherd boy that was maybe 13 years old. He spotted the obvious Americans and started to scream and run towards the village,so they tackled him,tied him up,and gagged him. The team leader decided to let the boy go after giving him talk and getting him to promise to not tell anybody they were there. He did this despite everybody on the team advising him to not do this because it was a hard-core Taliban area,and the boy and everybody in that village were hard-core Taliban or the Taliban leadership wouldn't be meeting there.
The team leader let him go anyhow,and the end result was not only were the Taliban leadership in that are NOT killed by smart bombs,but everybody on the team BUT the team leader were killed trying to get away.
There was a movie made about this with the team leader as the technical advisor. To this day that fool thinks he did the right thing. To save that ONE life,everybody on his team died but him,and who knows how many other lives were lost over the years due to the Taliban leadership in that area not being taken out that day?
