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Afghanistan combat veteran here. You've seen WAY too many movies. Discretion is everything. Any time we'd hit a compound, we would pore over the intelligence
by unit91 8y ago
Afghanistan combat veteran here. You've seen WAY too many movies.
Discretion is everything. Any time we'd hit a compound, we would pore over the intelligence, assess whether this was a likely badguy, whether they were a key player or just a low level radical, etc.
Equally important, are the people around said badguy likely also bad or innocent bystanders? If they're probably bad we want to capture them all together. If they're probably innocent we want to wait until the dude wanders off to minimize the risk to civilian life and property, even if that means greater risk to us.
Once you actually get to the target location, it starts all over again, only with less time and information. Is that a shovel or an RPG? I can't quite tell from here. Looks like an RPG -- what if I'm wrong? There's a house behind him, what's the risk if I wait 30 seconds...?
It's a real profession that takes real expertise by people with real emotions.
- wolf550e 8y agoUnfortunately, it seems the ROE of American occupation forces in Afghanistan is more civilian-friendly than the ROE of American cops fighting the drug/race war.
- imrelaxed 8y agoThere’s no race war in America, only a misguided drug war, stop disseminating nonsense.
- Abekkus 8y agoThe drug war has always been a cultural and class war, and of course it cuts along racial lines, as well as political ones. Not nonsense at all. https://youtu.be/sXPOw2unxy0?t=238 https://youtu.be/sXPOw2unxy0?t=238
- ryanmarsh 8y ago> Unfortunately, it seems the ROE of American occupation forces in Afghanistan is more civilian-friendly than the ROE of American cops You had me until race war but yes. This is true in my exp.
- thedailymail 8y agoRelated question – a relatively high percentage (~20%) of police officers are ex-military. It does seem that military ROE is more stringent than what we've seen from recent evidence of problems in police/citizen interactions. Do you think there is a cultural problem within police departments that engenders a weakening of discipline wrt use of force? Or is it just that the problems that occur domestically in the US get more coverage, and the rate of misapplied state violence is similar?
- ryanmarsh 8y agoEx-military is not ex-combat veteran. Having been adequately trained for and employed in the use of deadly force (vs. refueling trucks or counting bullets) are two very different things. 1 in 10 soldiers are actually in a combat job. It all comes down to training and experience. Police training budgets are tight, officers roll in single squad cars (little safety), sometimes physical fitness standards aren't upheld (fat cops can't scrap with someone they have to use a device to subdue them), and mental health issues abound (the job can be quite stressful and boring at the same time). I've watched a lot of body cam footage of (legitimate) police shootings. I wonder how many of these one on one situations would have turned violent if the perp knew there were two officers bearing down on him instead of one?
- omginternets 8y agoI remember hearing an NPR piece about how combat veterans were _less_ likely to shoot than others. Wish I had a link...
- trhway 8y agoWith robots you can err on the side of the shovel as worst that can happen is that the RPG will destroy the robot. With humans it is the "split second decision" which effectively pretty much takes any discretion away.
- javajosh 8y agoI suppose I should have limited my claim to police - the anecdotes abound there. There is SWATing, which can be deadly, there are stories of cops getting fired for NOT killing the suicidal person waiving a knife, etc. But with the military I was thinking more of pilots, drone and otherwise, who's whole job is to kill stuff from afar. How can they show discretion? But yeah, maybe a marine on the ground has more discretion than I realize. The other cases, though, I think are valid.
- jacquesm 8y agoDid you ever wonder if maybe you were the bad guys?
- unit91 8y agoNo. Have you heard of 9/11?
- jacquesm 8y agoSure. As I'm sure the 19 year old Afghan that tried to slaughter two of your countrymen in Amsterdam Central Station has too. Afghanistan as a country had very little to do with 9/11. Nor did Iraq for that matter.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoIt's sort of an HN tradition that anyone with actual expertise related to, basically, a touchy subject who tries to give some push back on inaccurate information will get some kind of inappropriate remark that makes them out to be an apologist for bad behavior, one of the bad guys, or similar. Thank you for serving your country. Thank you for lending your voice to this discussion. Even though you can't downvote such comments (when they are a direct reply to you), you can flag them (if you have enough karma, like 50 pts iirc). That's probably the best thing to do as the HN guidelines indicate we shouldn't reply to bad comments, it just deepens the problem.
- jacquesm 8y ago'Thank you for serving your country' -> Thank you for putting your life on the line on a geopolitical chessboard where American interests and lives trump those of the locals and where 'collateral damage' is entirely acceptable as long as the troops come home in one piece. Keep in mind that the only thing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have done is to create many more terrorists and destabilized a huge part of the world and left the rest of the world to absorb the damage done. So, no thanks for serving your country from me. This is not WWII where there is a 'good' and a 'bad' side, it's all one huge clusterfuck of special interests, commercial interests and good old empire building rolled all into one, to be abandoned when the cost turns out to be too high leaving a power vacuum which then is filled by local strongmen.
- ryanmarsh 8y agoThank you for your service.