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Combat Self-Defense
Combat Self-Defense: Saving America's Warriors From Risk-Averse Commanders And Their Lawyers, by David G. Bolgiano
I liked this book. Short, well-written and interesting. It principally addresses the rules of engagement, why they need to be completely revisited, and why most of the lawyers and commanders who formulate them are deeply misguided. The fundamental problem, according to Bolgiano, is that the military is paralyzed by fear of negative media attention and other political fallout (including punishment of commanders) that result from incidents like the "Fallujah double-tap," where a film crew recorded a Marine shooting an enemy combatant who had been shot and was down but moved his arm. (The soldier later was cleared, but the damage already was done.) As a result, commanders and their military lawyers basically have paralyzed our warriors in the field, giving them difficult-to-follow ROEs which effectively take away (or at least severely limit) their right to defend themselves in combat.
Bolgiano spends a lot of time arguing that self-defense is a natural and constitutional right, and that the ROEs are invalid because they infringe the right of self-defense. I think he does a good job establishing the rights, but I question his claim that soldiers retain all of their constitutional rights when they enlist. Soldiers don't have unlimited First Amendment rights, for example, do they?
Bolgiano also spends some time explaining why civilians don't understand what it is like to be in combat, and why the ROEs are unfair to soldiers and counterproductive. For example, he discusses wound ballistics and the Tache-Psyche effect to explain concepts such as that soldiers should shoot until the threat has been eliminated, not "shoot and observe" or "shoot to wound."
There are some disturbing stories he tells, like a couple of soldiers being robbed in Afghanistan at gunpoint and not shooting back because they thought they couldn't under the ROEs. He also criticizes the fact that decisions on whether to shoot often go high up through the chain of command before anyone has the balls to make a decision, by which time it is too late. He says generals should never be making these decisions, NCOs should. He ends with a summary of a training program he seems to be offering to the military, which combines tactical and legal training.
There is a great introduction by LTC Dave Grossman which compares soldiers and LEOs to sheepdogs protecting civilian sheep from the wolves. He says the sheep don't understand how to deal with wolves, and they keep trying to make the sheepdogs into sheep.
Anyway, I liked it and recommend it. Now I want to talk to JAGs about their careers and stuff. Thanks to TR for recommending the book to me.
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