War Breeds War Crimes by its Nature ─ but High-Ranking Rogue Leadership and a Non-Functioning Chain of Supervisory Command Should Not Contribute to Them

© 2010 Peter Free

 

14 October 2010

 

Egregiously lax supervision is the most significant contributor to self-defeating team performance in all aspects of life ─ In making war, it is inexcusable

 

When an Army brigade commander sends his troops off on their own mission, in direct contravention of announced Theater strategy, one would think that a general or two would notice and correctively intervene.

 

Guess again.

 

The Army’s 5th Stryker Combat Brigade commander, Colonel Harry D. Tunnell IV made his own rules in Afghanistan.

 

Today, five of his troops are charged with murder ─ which equates to “war crimes” on the international scale of justice ─ arguably due to the Colonel’s penchant for aggressively implemented insubordination.

 

The fact that Col. Harry Tunnell is the IVth in his family line probably gives us an indication of the self-importance his genes carry with them.  His chromosomes’ implied nobility arguably makes the plight of his humble-origin soldiers more lamentable.  The insubordinate Colonel’s commanders let them down, too.

 

Extracts from Craig Whitlock’s Washington Post article include:

 

When the 5th Stryker Combat Brigade arrived in Afghanistan, its leader, Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, openly sneered at the U.S. military's counterinsurgency strategy. The old-school commander barred his officers from even mentioning the term and told shocked U.S. and NATO officials that he was uninterested in winning the trust of the Afghan people.

Instead, he said, his soldiers would simply hunt and kill as many Taliban fighters as possible, as dictated by the brigade's motto, "Strike and Destroy."

 

U.S., Dutch and Canadian officials asked Army Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, then the deputy commander of Regional Command South, to intervene with Tunnell. Nicholson agreed to talk to the brigade commander, but the chat had little effect, the State Department official said. Nicholson did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

 

In some of the gravest war-crime charges to arise from the Afghan conflict, five soldiers have been accused of killing unarmed Afghan men, apparently for sport, and desecrating their corpses. Seven other platoon members have been charged with other crimes, including smoking hashish - which some soldiers said happened almost daily - and gang-assaulting an informant.

 

 

© 2010 Craig Whitlock, Brigade linked to Afghan civilian deaths had aggressive, divergent war strategy, Washington Post (14 October 2010)

 

A commander’s perspective always influences subordinates, for good or evil

 

The single most important aspect of effectively implemented organizational philosophy is the attitude of the commander.

 

If one considers (a) Col. Tunnell’s announced and insubordinate combat strategy and (b) the allegedly murderous actions of some of his troops, one must suspect that the former contributed to the latter.

 

Youthful troops require mature role models ─ Col. Tunnell probably failed in delivering the requisite maturity

 

A commander’s psychic maturity role model’s desirable behavior for youthful subordinates.  A psychically immature commander, as Tunnell appears to be, models the opposite.

 

Though no one thinks that Col. Tunnell condoned murder by his soldiers, his insubordinate, aggressive kill strategy arguably contributed to run-amuck testosterone-poisoning among some of his troops.

 

Theater strategy matters, in Afghanistan it matters a lot

 

The Army’s counterinsurgency strategy arrived on the back of combined experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

COIN may be mistaken, but it certainly has a better chance of success than Tunnell’s, “strike and destroy,” plan, which both theaters of war have already proven to be counterproductive.

 

When you have an out-of-line Colonel, you fire him

 

The whole point to military chains of command is that they be followed.

 

Otherwise, chaos reigns and impressionable young minds are left to drift, according to their warfare-enhanced, youthfully animalistic impulses.

 

An avoidable moral darkness

 

Col. Tunnell IV and his ineffectual superiors are complicit in creating a moral darkness.

 

Worse, they have impugned the United States’ name in an area of the world where we can least afford to have it discredited.

 

The Commander in Chief needs to start behaving like one

 

Col. Tunnell’s attitude parallels the contempt for higher-ranking authority that General Stanley McChrystal displayed before the President fired him.

 

With two such displays of insubordination now plaguing him, the President needs to light a fire under General David Petraeus.  “Bring your commanders on board, or else.”

 

The President needs to mean and enforce it.