Green Beret Officer Blames ‘Moral Cowardice’ for Doctors Without Borders Strike by Dan Lamothe, Washington Post
Declassified military documents released Friday detail not only how the United States mistakenly struck a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan last year but also frustrations among Special Operations troops.
The strike, which killed at least 30 people at the hospital, occurred in the city of Kunduz, which the Taliban had seized in previous days and U.S. Special Operations troops were working alongside Afghan forces to take back.
One officer, whose name, rank and unit were redacted from his witness statement, launched into a diatribe in which he blamed what happened on senior leaders. The officer wrote that he was going to provide unsolicited opinions, and that “these words may well be the greatest contribution of my career for one simple reason: the words I speak are the truth.”
The officer wrote that the enemies of the Kunduz operation were “moral cowardice” and a “profound lack of strategy.” Army Green Berets on the ground in the city at the time asked for guidance “no fewer than three times” during the multiday battle and heard nothing other than crickets — “though those were hard to hear over the gunfire,” he alleged…
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A Green Beret officer has…
A Green Beret officer has recently expressed his opinion that the current state of the military's morale is largely to blame for the decline in operational readiness and effectiveness. The officer blames a lack of respect for the chain of command, inadequate resources, and a lack of focus on the mission for the current state of affairs. walgreens survey
Just a side comment..as one who has extensive experience (over 12 months) of constantly using a AC130 (and the older C47 Spooky) with call signs Spectre 23, 24, 25 .....in using the AC130 Spectre as a CAS in the days when there was not the AF JTACs around which is a waste of taxpayers money......but that is another story.
It is not as easy as the movies make it out to be.....especially if the ground unit is in heavy contact.....and especially in an urban environment.
I did things that today most JTACs would pale if you mentioned them BUT I trusted my AF counterparts AND I was not in an urban environment where mistakes do matter.....BUT as with all technology anything can and usuaully does go wrong .....down to wind currents effecting the rounds and air pockets bounching the AC130 around....yes all is sensor driven but sensors are sometimes slow to catch an air pocket bounce and in a built up environment a millisecond bounce can mean 150 meters on the ground and in the wrong place that it was called for.
Back in 2012, I saw a long video that was shown to new JTACs on how to not direct CAS...it took them over 25 minutes to have a Reaper zone in on a sniper....in VN the same target would have taken us 3 minutes to guide them in.........WHY because we had flown often with a FAC during actual CAS missions and knew how to put ourselves into the shoes of the AC130 pilots....
I am betting that the Taliban wisely selected this command post location using the hospital as a shield not vice versa knowing the US would shy away from engaging them.
Now the question becomes one of a moral nature.....what if the hospital as it was being used as a shield for the Taliban?...what if they mounted a heavy assualt on the SF unit and threatened them with say a "broken arrow" event then all bets are off and the hospital would have had to fend for itself in that moment......
Something to think about...war is never black and white..it lives in the grey zone...and senior leaders have hard time working the grey zone as it involves risk taking and micromanagement is in play....AND with senior leaders even in SF being risk adverse what then??.....ignore the calls from the field...AND that is exactly what happened.....
cammo99,
The MSF hospital was NOT established only a few blocks from a Taliban command center, rather the reverse.
The hospital was not a temporary building and site, it had been established at the site for four years. It has been widely reported that MSF informed all parties of their location once the fighting in Kunduz city began.
In no way can this hospital be described as 'acting as human shields'.
There was at least one article I read that claimed Taliban were firing from or so close to the "hospital" as to indistinguishable. Why Doctor's Without Borders would establish a hospital only a few blocks from a Taliban command center (During a battle) suggests they were also voluntarily acting as human shields. I have little sympathy for the arrogance and presumption these "doctors made and the resulting propaganda they have made from it.
Perfect example of what I mean on how senior leaders in both DoD and the Obama WH treat "warfare".......they disciple those involved in a heavy urban firefight where errors can and often do occur but that is why the term "war" is used AND when a nation state commits virtually the same thing but deliberately violating all humanitarian and international law....UTTER and complete "silence"....
Footage
No legitimate government would unleash such bombs on cities ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjlJADgLcTQ …
AGAIN...what is the DoD and NCA response to this video...complete utter silence.......
Just how in the heck does the current Special Force "tolerant" their own senior leadership.....yes war is brutal and yes war sometimes has no moral boundaries and it is the war fighter who must use his own survival instincts to survive and morals takes a second place and yes civilians get caught up in fighting especially in urban warfare and then the so called "morals" does kick in to protect civilians as much and this is key as much as possible when steel is flying.....
This current group of senior SF officers and the National Command Authority has seriously forgotten the above in the over use and abuse of constant and I mean constant SF rotations into combat zones IN the attempt to keep from sending regular boots to do the job WHICH would conflict with the desire of the National Command Authority attempting to go down in history for not sending troops into harms way.
There is and remains a major difference between the "old SF" and the "new SF".....our senior leaders fully understood the above and never attempted to "second guess" the war fighter directly engaged in the fight.
This problem actually extends into the senior leadership of DoD with the Sec Def....when confronted in the Senate when questioned by McCain this week on if the SF on the ground in Syria were attacked by RuAF and or Assad AF could they defend themselves with MANPADs.
The answer goes to the heart of this discussion...his answer was a definitive NO.....
You cannot place warfighters especially SF into combat without providing them every tool to defend and protect themselves AS they are not a BCT AND you must not second guess them nor micromanage them AND you must be there 24 X 7 X 365 to provide guidance WHEN it is asked for.
It truly appears that SF officers of the "old SF" which were not true trained "Crossed Arrows" were far more receptive of this idea than those that are supposedly now "Crossed Arrow trained".
I was once in a major 14 hour fire fight as a small recon company taking on a complete NVA Regiment...with Ho's own personal honorific Regiment... and partially surrounded....my SF senior leader constantly monitored my radio conversations, constantly ensured via my FAC there was CAS literally "stacked over me"....discussed with me my exit strategy when we went to "broken arrow" and flew into a hail of ground fire multiple times to kick ammo and water to me.....
This particular LTC was only airborne trained and never had been "Cross Arrow trained".....not even a Ranger.....but he stood by all of his ODAs and was available 24 X 7 in the days when cells did not exist which means he slept as little as we did.
There has been an ever increasing number of SF personnel being "tossed out" because they did not "fit the image of what those senior leaders thought it should be".....with those senior leaders not realizing they are not the war fighter on the ground and we are actually in a "war"...a "war" by any other name is still a "war".
Micromanagement is killing SF..it was even there when I left SF again in 1991...but where are they now when serious life altering decisions must be made in seconds.....nowhere to be seen and or in this case...heard from......
NOW this disciplining of SF members involved in heavy urban warfare will cause those in the future to truly walk away from the firefight following the motto "a guerrilla lives to fight another day and walks away"....when in a heavy firefight one cannot be mulling over what his decisions will mean if and when he is able to get back home...Or if he is going to be disciplined for decisions made in the heat of combat.....
BTW...working CAS in an urban warfare scenario especially with heavy fighting is truly a black art not a science....and unintended things do in fact happen.
BUT that is the reason they use the term "war"....which this National Command Authority has a really hard time using.
BTW....balance this action taken against US SF BUT THEN total silence by the National Command Authority when Russia and Assad deliberately and consequently targets and kills civilians and destroy hospitals, schools, mosques and marketplaces....NOT a single word.....well really maybe a press conference comment or two BUT nothing more than that.....
That is telling.....