The Wall Street Journal-20080123-Holding Fire Sometimes Gets Better Results
Return to: The_Wall_Street_Journal-20080123
Holding Fire Sometimes Gets Better Results
In response to Fritz Mehrtens's "Damn the Torpedoes, Not! Restraint May Bite Us" (Letters, Jan. 15): When I was a young Special Forces NCO, I was running control on a night AC-130 training mission. Due to a frequency problem, I had the A-team on one radio and the Air Force on another. The team had marked their target and themselves. The Air Force was pretty sure they knew which one was which and both parties badly wanted to execute the fire mission. My commander, a man much wiser than me, walked in just as this event began to unfold. Listening to the excitement and confusion, he calmly called off the aircraft. He said there are moments when you need to understand the consequences for getting it wrong.
Years later, I was in Iraq as the First Sergeant of the largest civil affairs company in the country operating in the Salah Ad Din province. After I arrived in country I quickly recognized my soldiers' desire to succeed in their missions, and to survive. In the first few months, we had almost daily escalation of force incidents on the highways. These were mostly a result of machine gunners who were concerned about letting anyone get close enough to their vehicles to detonate a bomb. The problem was that not one of those shots ever disabled a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device. They were, however, very effective at undermining our goal to gain support within the region. It was a challenge to balance the soldiers' right to self defense with an understanding of the consequences for getting it wrong. But over the months, escalation of force incidents for my soldiers on the highways practically disappeared. I chalk this up to their maturing over the year, developing a bond with the Iraqi people and their desire to avoid having to talk to me about why they shot an Opel.
About half way through my tour, a new Counter Insurgency Manual arrived on my secure Internet. I despise reading large documents online, but found myself unable to stop reading this one. A huge departure from the approach we were currently practicing, I cursed the wisdom of the author and the stupidity of the Army for not applying it to our war.
That book and its principles are now the guide for our change of course in Iraq and for even the most contemptuous naysayer, the improvements in Iraq since the change are hard to deny.
Our military is the most intelligent, confident, capable, battle proven force in modern times. Strength as a warrior comes not only in having the ability to fight, but the wisdom to know when that time is. Given the outcome of the confrontation in the Straits of Hormuz with a nation with which we are not at war that incurred no loss of life or damage to the ships, I'd say the Navy got it right.
To assist the Iraqis and Afghans in the establishment of strong, stable governments and societies free from oppression is that weapon the despots of the world fear most.
George Tuider
Port Orchard, Wash.
