Rules?

While watching the news and reading the morning newspaper headlines all I see are comments about the incident in Haditha, the accident in Afghanistan and politicians asking why aren’t we making headway in Iraq? I can answer those questions in three words, “Rules of Engagement”, or ROE, as they are also known.

The rules of engagement are established by commanders on the ground and often times Washington, they set a form of rules when and where soldiers may or may not use deadly force and quite honestly, they totally amaze me. I am amazed because these rules are so unspecified that we have military personnel failing to pull the trigger when in fact they should.

I have had conversations with vets who have returned and they often say they were afraid to pull the trigger, or fire first because of the possibility of charges being filed. Most of them tell me how difficult it is to fight in the first place, when a person may be standing on the corner holding an AK47 and an RPG had just been fired from the direction immediately behind him, whom do you target?

When small arms fire had just come from a second floor apartment, you have seen which apartment it was, know beyond a doubt it is that apartment, but a little old man is standing there with a weapon in his hand, you know if you return fire, killing him, you will be crucified in the media and in the courts. When the enemy combatants intentionally wear clothing that matches the civilian population, fires at you then blends into the population, what do you do besides nothing?

We really must step back for a moment and say to ourselves, either we are at war, or not, either we are going to effectively fight terrorism, or not. How can we hinder our military in defending themselves or defeating the opposition, I am at a total loss over this. If we are going to go to war, then we need to throw all the rules out the window and go to war, as it should be, as those we are fighting are doing as I am typing this.

Some of us are so caught up in the political correctness of the world and how we feel the morality of the world should be that we are placing the lives of these men and women in jeopardy. Ladies and Gentlemen, we cannot save the world from itself, we cannot save a rainforest that no other country cares about and we cannot stop the disappearance of the ozone just because we outlaw antifreeze, because we are but a small part of this world.

We are but a small mound of ants when compared to the rest of the world and guess what, they don’t play by our rules and they play to win at all costs. That is what war really is all about. We are used to hitting beachheads, fighting our way through a defined enemy and this is not the same folks, it has changed and if we want to win this thing, we need to change with the rest of the world, before it is too late.