Why POW/MIA Numbers Dropped by Scott Sigmund Gartner, USA Today
The release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl highlights a fundamental difference between the war in Afghanistan and previous American conflicts. The U.S. has achieved a historic first: There are now no U.S. military personnel held captive in Afghanistan. Bergdahl was the last POW.
The figures are striking. The Defense Department's Prisoner of War and Missing Personnel Office lists the number of troops unaccounted for from past conflicts: World War II has 73,547; Korea 7,883; the Cold War 126 and Vietnam 1,642.
In comparison, Iraq and other conflicts (which also include Afghanistan, Desert Storm and Libya) have a total of six. Six unaccounted for in more than three wars; clearly something changed…
Comments
I think the author failed to fully look into why we have had fewer POW/MIA's than in past conflicts.
Risk aversion: Commanders at all levels are risk averse to the point that companies were deployed against squad sized objectives. Couple this with Generals making squad, plt and 1SG/CO level decisions about everything from uniforms, minimum force sizes etc. Snipers work best in two or at most 3 man teams, when you have to take 6 other guys, you reduce the chances of success... but it is safer.
Weak commanders: Fear of something bad happening, rather than getting after the enemy was a huge part. In fact so much so that I knew of commanders who passed on missions because of it. This of course leads to a false sense of security and leadership ability.
This is why you can't have a beer on the way home, are locked down like prisoners on the way there and back and even why you have to come to the states for leave instead of going where you wanted. When a US ship docks in a foreign country they leave the ship and are ambassadors for the US. When the Army goes to a foreign country they are locked up and not allowed to do anything because what if something happened? This is for our own good, LOL! Of course if the CG wants to bed his biographer, that's different.
This is also a factor in why 95% of contacts were enemy initiated.
In Afghanistan the troops were not even put on the ground until the infrastructure for recovery was in place... And the commander said it was too dangerous to do anything until it was and these were SOCOM troops. The CIA however had folks on the ground within a few days of the 9/11 attack.
Additionally if a troop went missing the mission was nixed in order to find him. If we operated like this in WW2 we would have never gotten off the beach...
When you join the military, you should expect some risk. No we don't want to be wasted uselessly but if we were that afraid of it then we would work at Wal-Mart.
In other wars, winning was the goal. WW2 the endstate was the total unconditional surrender of all Axis Forces. Pretty clear, pretty straight forward. After the first 6 weeks of both Afghanistan and Iraq there was no stated goal that made any sense. It just went on and on. In order to win, you have to risk. Additionally commanders though out small unit tactics and made larger than needed units the order of the day. This was particularly evident after a group of reserve Marine snipers was killed. Instead of seeing it for what it was, the order came down to go out in bigger groups so you don;t get killed or captured never mind that you will seldom if ever get the jump on the enemy.
Lastly, terrain. Easier to find and locate missing personnel when it is big open country. This doesn't mean it is easy, but it is easier than triple canopy jungle.
SWJ Editors,
I'm personally involved in the reorganization of that (and associated offices) within the Pentagon, or more accurately, I'm involved in the background that led to the SecDef ordering the overhaul.
ascottfoundation.org
(It's the MIA/POW project).
The USA Today claim, in my personal opinion, is misleading and almost certainly false. It would be accurate to claim that 'officially' there are no ACKNOWLEDGED U.S. military personnel held as POW's in Afghanistan, but that's not saying much.
If any of the Editors would like a fuller explanation, email me. Some subjects are inappropriate to discuss in a Public Forum such as this.
Best,
A. Scott Crawford