Rules Of Engagement and "Lone Survivor" by Marcus Luttrell
brinktk
Active member
Wow...seriously?! WTF Over?
Anyways, back to the topic at hand. The ROE is in place for a reason. Anyone who says 'to hell with it, we should just kill em all" has absolutely no idea what the hell they are talking about. That's the easy way out. It's easy to indiscriminately kill. It's easy to resort to the types of fighting our adversaries are using. Professionals are not in it for the ease. We ARE the good guys. We have to act accordingly. We are better...again...we have to act accordingly.
When you have a professional trained to the point of lethality that modern professional soldiers are, it is a huge responsibility to ensure that they are used only when necessary. Blunt force trauma will not and will never work in COIN ops. Surgical precision is necessary on the part of your soldiers. Picking and choosing your targets, target discrimination, and sometimes not returning fire when there is just too much risk of damaging local relations. Remember, it's the people. That's the objective.
Do some research on the Sunni Awakening in Al Anbar province back in 2006-2007. There is a reason they came to our side. We changed our approach, and the extremists outstayed their welcome because they subjugated and enforced their will on the people who were supporting them. Once the sheiks and tribal elders got tired of it, they came to us...virtually over night the most dangerous place in the world became a relatively safe place. It's because of the people, and it's because they realized we were willing to look the other way if they came to our side. We were able to get rid of the militia's that were creating a lot of the trouble. Use those same militia's as IP's to identify foreigners and simultaneously protect their families and neighborhoods. At that point, they had a vested interest in the security of their area and SIGACTs went down dramatically.
Part of the reason this was all possible was because of a shift in our operating procedures and a more conservative ROE. Are there times when you have to assume more risk? Yes. The end state justifies it though. As a result, more lives are saved in the long run not only on our side, but with the very civilians we are trying to protect.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand. The ROE is in place for a reason. Anyone who says 'to hell with it, we should just kill em all" has absolutely no idea what the hell they are talking about. That's the easy way out. It's easy to indiscriminately kill. It's easy to resort to the types of fighting our adversaries are using. Professionals are not in it for the ease. We ARE the good guys. We have to act accordingly. We are better...again...we have to act accordingly.
When you have a professional trained to the point of lethality that modern professional soldiers are, it is a huge responsibility to ensure that they are used only when necessary. Blunt force trauma will not and will never work in COIN ops. Surgical precision is necessary on the part of your soldiers. Picking and choosing your targets, target discrimination, and sometimes not returning fire when there is just too much risk of damaging local relations. Remember, it's the people. That's the objective.
Do some research on the Sunni Awakening in Al Anbar province back in 2006-2007. There is a reason they came to our side. We changed our approach, and the extremists outstayed their welcome because they subjugated and enforced their will on the people who were supporting them. Once the sheiks and tribal elders got tired of it, they came to us...virtually over night the most dangerous place in the world became a relatively safe place. It's because of the people, and it's because they realized we were willing to look the other way if they came to our side. We were able to get rid of the militia's that were creating a lot of the trouble. Use those same militia's as IP's to identify foreigners and simultaneously protect their families and neighborhoods. At that point, they had a vested interest in the security of their area and SIGACTs went down dramatically.
Part of the reason this was all possible was because of a shift in our operating procedures and a more conservative ROE. Are there times when you have to assume more risk? Yes. The end state justifies it though. As a result, more lives are saved in the long run not only on our side, but with the very civilians we are trying to protect.
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