Category: Military issues

Swamper sends us a link to The Blaze which describes the experience with the New York Police Department of one SEAL;

Twenty-nine-year-old Shaun Day was on a leave from his duty as a Navy SEAL duty when cops nailed him for running a red light in Manhattan, New York on Thursday.

NYPD officers searched Day’s pickup truck and found a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and three magazines full of ammo.

During the arrest, police claim Day was babbling incoherently and repeatedly claimed that he was an elite Navy SEAL with “top- secret clearance,” but was unable to provide any documentation for police.

I’ll admit that I have doubts about anyone who tells me they’re a SEAL these days, but a rubber room at Bellevue seems a bit extreme. But, given the insanity of the news out of NYC these days, Day was probably the sanest person in NYC on that day with or without PTSD.

The Columbus, GA, Ledger-Enquirer reports that Fort Benning plans to cut training for 35,000 combat arms trigger-pullers in 2012.

The post will train 96,000 soldiers this fiscal year — which began Oct. 1, 2011, and ends Sept. 30 — compared to 131,000 for fiscal year 2011.

That revised number is dramatically lower than previous projections, said Gary A. Jones, director of public affairs for the Maneuver Center of Excellence.

“We previously projected our fiscal year 2011 number of personnel to be trained at about 145,000,” he said. “However, the Army’s announced personnel draw down and the departure of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011 have affected training requirements across the Army.”

Ya know it’s one thing when you talk about cutting bloated weapons programs, it’s quite another when you’re saving money by cutting the training of the people who are at the bayonet point of our foreign policy and national security. Fort Benning trains the infantrymen and the cavalry and tankers at every level of their careers. That 35,000 number means that there will be fewer small unit combat arms leaders.

Given how the media has recently been given a voice in the way the troops are trained, you can be sure that there won’t be cuts to their training in the laws of land warfare or sensitivity training in regards to sexual deviancy. So what training do you suppose they’ll cut? Probably the training that will be paid for in blood in the next conflict.

Stars & Stripes reprints an LA Times article in which the reporter quoted some people she calls “experts” who say that the troops need need more training on the laws of land warfare. Unless the intent is to make the troops all lawyers, I don’t see how it’s possible to give them more training, or what kind of training they’d need.

I remember that the very first class we had in basic training, after we learned how to march, sort of, was on the Code of Conduct and the Law of Land Warfare. We learned that the Law of Land Warfare was nothing more than the Golden Rule, that we weren’t allowed to do anything to the enemy that we wouldn’t want done to ourselves or to our families.

And the training didn’t stop there…we had semi-annual classes which were annotated on our 2-1 military records and in our training records in the orderly room. Those records were inspected and made accountable to the division commander.

How many of us have read about US troops fighting from behind civilians or attacking the enemy from Mosques or churches? If these so-called experts want to train someone in the law of land warfare, they shoudl focus their energies on our enemies, all of whom, historically, have broken the rules throughout our history, back to the French and Indians.

The article focuses on Haditha and My Lai. The troops in Haditha, according to all accounts were forced into an impossible situation of defending themselves from an enemy who had used civilians as shields. There was no intentional crime there. And last I checked, none of the partiipants have been convicted of a crime at Haditha, much to the obvious disappointment to the “experts”.

At My Lai was an anomaly – Lt Calley should have known better than to think his commanders intended for him to wipe out civilians. No amount of training can get the stupid out of some people. The same goes for thse marines in their urination video. They knew what they were doing was wrong and that they needed to keep it from their superiors or they’d be punished. There was no directive encouraging that behavior, nor was there a climate of acceptance.

It’s interesting to note that the “experts” all teach law and none of them have any experience in land warfare, so if you “follow the money”, they have a vested interest in the military hiring them to teach law to the troops, of course, that’s their recommendation. The Law of Land Warfare is common sense treatment of our enemies and the people caught up in warfare…you all know how to treat people, so what the hell good is wasting more training time to teach common sense?

Our buddy, Jeff Schogol, formerly of the Stars & Stripes and currently of the Air Force Times sends us a link from the Marine Corps Times which reports that the three-star commander of all NATO has ordered potty training for the Marines;

[Army Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti] said in his letter that all commanders should ensure their subordinates understand what the law of armed conflict includes, “especially regarding the appropriate treatment of the dead.” He added that “defiling, desecrating, mocking, photographing or filming for personal use” bodies of dead insurgents is a “grave breach” of that law, and should be reported by those who see it.

“Such actions bring dishonor to those who commit them, and violate the core values of all military services, regardless of service or nation,” the general said. “Such actions break our faith with the Afghan people, who trust us to uphold standards of law and decency, and to treat the living and the dead with dignity and respect.”

Oh, ok, so the general didn’t order potty training, it’s just that I couldn’t resist. Sorry. Call me names.

So, like I said on the radio, this has all been blown out of proportion by the media hungry for writing about images of pee-pees and wee-wees of Marines. So, the investigation is being handled by Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command, according to Stars & Stripes, the Defense Secretary has condemned the video, the NATO commander has ordered that the Law of Land Warfare training is reinforced among the troops still in theater. So can we all move along and let the wheels of military justice turn?

I noticed in the reportage, because I had to watch VTWoody on CBS this morning, that the two day old story still led CBS’ news, but they’d changed the story to “the video appears to show…” instead of “the video shows”.

Like I said initially, it might be that we’re being pranked. We won’t know until Jethro Gibbs and Ziva at NCIS finish their sweat box questioning with Abby in the lab testing the urine while “Probie” McGee works his computer magic.