The Military Thread

So any opinion on the Ed Gallagher case?

(Reposted from RPG.net by Bane Sidhe)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/us/navy-seals-crimes-of-war.html

Guy should be shot, what else is there to say?

Prison.

War makes people do crazy things. He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the UCMJ the same way anyone else would, that’s why it’s there.

North Korea has suspended finding remains of missing soldiers from the Korean War:

From NHK:

Edited by Ominae on May 8th 2019 at 7:57:44 AM

X4 It’s more than just him that needs to be punished, someone recruited him, someone trained him, someone was responsible for him, all of those people need to be investigated and possibly charged.

That’s before we get into the attempted coverup, the SEA Ls with him had to fight far to hard to get him bought to justice, everyone who either stood in their way or failed to help them needs to at least be retrained and possibly charged with conspiracy to cover up war crimes. Where someone is found to have stood in the way of bringing him to justice the people responsible for recruiting, training and supervising that individual need to be investigated and possibly removed from their position.

War crimes don’t happen in a vacuum, it’s more than just him that has to be dealt with.

Some new information has come out about a munition that’s been used in a couple mystery strikes in recent years. [1]

It’s probably a Hellfire variant called the R9X, and it’s described as being like “an anvil falling from the sky”.

There’s only really so much you can do.

Edited by archonspeaks on May 9th 2019 at 4:04:20 AM

Silas: You are suggesting an excessively broad brush there. We would have to imprison damn near every recruiter if we held them accountable for something someone did years after they were recruited, same for their trainers. Their immediate superiors though is another matter as is anyone that could reasonably have intervened and didn't. Even then reasonable responsibility has a lot of room for interpretation so it still isn't exactly easy to narrow it down.

Trust me though I do agree we need to rein in the special forces especially the SEAL teams as this isn't exactly the first time there have been issues with them.

It’s not about imprisoning them, it’s about investigating to see if they either did something wrong or missed something they shouldn’t have, if they did everything the way they should have then we also need to consider if the system is wrong, if this guy came into the military as such a terrible person that we need to know why he wasn’t identified and removed at the beginning.

You check everything, not everything needs to be burnt, with some parts of the system it will often be that a fix was made but that it was made to late, but it still needs to be checked.

In the end this guy either turned into a bloodthirsty criminal while in the military or was one before joining. In the former case someone somewhere played a role in turning him into this, in the later case there was a serious failure of quality control somewhere at the start that needs to be identified so that it doesn’t happen again.

It’s not a matter of quality control but simply the nature of the job. These are incredibly dangerous deployments with individuals who are already borderline personalities to begin with, it’s very easy for them to go off the rails.

Well, I think blaming it on the recruiters might be a bit harsh, though we might wish to look into the screening process. In all honesty though, there probably isn't a sure-fire way to keep all potential psychopaths out of an organization like this.

Of course, that doesn't mean we can't look into making sure this doesn't happen again.

Archon: I am sorry but that is bullshit. That is the war and PTSD makes you intolerably violent and prone to excessive violence has been so thoroughly disproven it isn't even funny as a joke. You trot it out nearly every time SEAL war crimes come up and it is still untrue as it was the last several times. It is easily undermined with casual observation and noting that units that have seen far more combat than the SEAL teams and extensive deployments and re-deployments are somehow not breeding anywhere as many issues as the SEAL teams point to an issue with the SEAL teams not the nature of war. What is more telling is that not all the SEAL teams are churning out shit bags and it is some of their number who have been turning them in when they feel safe doing so. The constant problems with the SEAL teams have a lot more to do with both who they select and how much oversight is given to them and their operations.

There was likely something wrong with this guy going in or he hit a breakpoint and no one pulled him when he did. That is a quality control issue. When someone starts displaying overt actions and attitudes that are shady or quite likely war crimes and it isn't addressed that is part of quality control.

There is very much a quality control issue with the US military at large and has been for quite some time. The FBI alone ID 53 separate gangs whose members have been in or are part of the military. Other reports including additional FBI reports, reports by Yale Legal Review, National Gang Intelligence Center, and independent investigations by credible papers have all unearthed rather overt evidence the US recruiting process is pretty damn lousy at screening out individuals with predispositions to both illegal activity and violence. Special forces have repeatedly proven to be no exception with the SEAL's almost singlehandedly being the worst example because of the repeated number of incidents.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on May 9th 2019 at 7:26:08 AM

Sadly, it isnt really possible to screen out everyone with serious issues. A certain percentage will always get through.

The problem is the US recruit process is lousy at screening out quite a few that should be. The recruiting process is in rather serious need of an overhaul.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on May 9th 2019 at 7:27:00 AM

What screening procedures should they be using that they are not?

Than the job has to change, if the way the US government is using special forces inherently turns soldiers into war criminals than the way special forces are used has to change.

It seems to be an issue of poor quality control and the whole "elite" thing they have going for them. Recruiting unstable people and telling them they are the best of the best is a recipe for disaster.

De Marquis: They used to select much harder against potentially dangerous and violent personalities and backgrounds. That includes gangs, people with histories of violence, members or affiliates of extremist organizations, and other problematic issues. The issue is the demand for troops vs what the recruiters can realistically pull in leaves them frequently short. Which is why the more cynical-minded think allowing women into combat was in part to help alleviate recruiting pressures and issues. Which likely has a grain of truth to it.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on May 9th 2019 at 8:57:06 AM

Tuefel: it’s not a matter of PTSD or anything silly like that. Prolonged or repeated exposure to stress is known to change people’s personalities. Police deal with this all the time.

I accept that you’re right and it probably is something we can select for, but I don’t think we have any useful way to select for something like that. It has to come down to the leadership and institutional culture putting limits in place. Other units with stricter institutional cultures have far less issues, even dealing with the same problem.

Edited by archonspeaks on May 10th 2019 at 3:35:49 AM

Selection isn't a one-time thing. Being a constant gardener means keeping tabs at every step. Which means encouraging nice surprises and pulling weeds the whole way.

Even at the top. :/

If you let a mad dog into your team, tell them they are the best of the best, and let them loose without a leash, don't be surprised if the mad dog bites a baby or something.

The Seal infrastructure seems disturbingly lolbertarian relative to the rest of the military.

Edited by M84 on May 10th 2019 at 6:45:02 PM

Well, that’s what I was getting at about institutional culture. The SEALs_ pride themselves on operating outside traditional command structures, but those structures exist for a reason.

Even the more buttoned-down units have problems though, there’s a practical limit on what you can do.

Edited by archonspeaks on May 10th 2019 at 3:49:06 AM

I know it's a bit of a cliché to say 'power corrupts,' and thus I'm not going to do that.

I am, however, going to say that 'power enables.' While the exposure to intense, high-stress environments does lead to people changing personalities, there's another thing with cops and SEA Ls that's left out of the conversation, which is the fact that both of them are, to some extent, unaccountable. Or, at least, the barrier to which they're taken to tasks for actions that would otherwise be sanctioned is much higher than it is for everyone else. In those sorts of situations, people exercise power in terrible ways all the time. Think of how many politicians, celebrities and Internet personalities over the years have turned out to be massive creeps who've been able to hide beneath a pleasant persona and an excellent PR department.

In this case, we're just seeing this extrapolated to another field where people have power over others. It's not new, and it doesn't even have to be unique to the stressors of the battlefield.

If they are letting people into the SEA Ls and other special operations units who have a history of violent crime or gang membership, then that seems like a problem, but I would also be surprised if that were true. I think it would have been reported on more widely. In any case, if spec-ops personnel are not being held accountable, that's a failure of the chain of command. In every bureaucracy I've ever heard of, you get the behavior the system rewards. If there is a repeated pattern of SEA Ls acting like rogue killers, then that can only be because someone above them tacitly encouraged it. Probably because it was seen as useful. This would not be the first such instance in US history, not by a long shot.

Man, that guy would've made a perfect applicant for Blackwater/Xe/Academi/Whatever it's called these days.