The Trump administration says it wants to return the “warrior of the warrior” to the Pentagon, and it is exactly what it means.
Defense Minister Beit Higseth said: “It is fatal, loyal, and deadly,” said Defense Minister Beit Higseth. “Everything has gone.”
This includes the senior lawyers of the army, the navy and the Air Force, who were separated just less than a month after the new defense minister swore.
Why did we write this
The rules of engagement of armed conflict can be fortified with the service members against “moral injury”. Some former military leaders say the current focus on “war fighting” can undermine effectiveness.
Although he gave little reasons for the separation, Minister Higsith mocked the lawyer of the Judge (Jag), who advise leaders on issues such as the rules of engagement and war crimes.
There is a course on civil-military relations that are required from one officers of the stars, and requires Richard Kun, the former chief historian of the Air Force. In this, some generals who serve during the first or second Trump departments expressed “anxiety” about the possibility of having to provide “illegal orders, or orders that are not illegal but incorrect – unethical or unethical,” says Professor Kun, now Professor at North Carolina State University.
Minister Higseth, who watched as a pedestrian officer, during his publication 2005-2006 in Iraq, later served in a training center in Kabul, Afghanistan, to pardon the war crimes committed by the American forces. He also talked about his decision to ignore an order not to shoot Iraqi fighters unless they raised their weapons first.
“I remember getting out of this briefing and withdrawing the family together and being like,” guys, we do not do that. “
“The Americans should not fight through the rules written by generous men in Maojni’s rooms eighty years ago,” says in his book “War on Warriors”, referring to the types of existing treaties aimed at preventing war crimes.
Analysts say that American leaders are concerned with the laws of war not because they are kind. This is because, among other benefits, they see these guidelines necessary to protect their forces, to the extent that they can, from having to make complex moral decisions in the midst of battles – options that can prepare conflicts on the line.
Military psychology, such as psychiatrist Jonathan Say, has written about an ethical injury, for example – what he calls “indignation” from watching “betrayal” of what is right “by a leader” or leader during the war.
For this reason and others, it was historically that “the excessive assertion of the war fighting, the formation, and similar concepts” is historically considered as unseen and even amateurs by the major military strategists. He cited the Bardium that “amateur tactics speak, and professionals talk about logistical services.”
General Denlab notes the observation of the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tsu that “winning a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the skill. The enemy without a fight is Acme of Skill.”
While Mr. Higseth seeks to bring his brand for the ethics of the warrior to the Ministry of Defense, law experts and the history of the armed forces are studying ways that leaders can prepare for a possible impact.
The differences between killing and violence
Brent Sadler, an older colleague at the Conservative Heritage Research Center, says that the deployment of Mr. Higseth was “colored experiences with an enemy who tries to kill you.”
For this reason, he says, Mr. Higseth tends to mix the dead, or the ability to harm or harm, with actual violence, and the warrior spirit comes with special respect for those who pull the trigger.
Mr. Higseth Salama is at risk, and some argue, when he recently participated in information about an imminent military attack on the Houthi forces in Yemen in the sign chat group, an unintentionally added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg.
The Minister of Information, Higseth, added in the chat, including the time and the means of delivery before the strike, which could have been considered classified as he participated, according to military experts. But Mr. Higseth rejected the severity of the leakage, and called Mr. Goldberg, the Editor -in -Chief of the Atlantic, one of the oldest and most serious in America, “very credible”, on the pretext that joint information did not constitute “war plans.”
Operations like these often depend on surprise. Mr. Shedr, a retired American navy commander, says: The military event always depends on the threat of the dead, or “the ability to inflict severe violence.” “Whenever we try to water it, we escape the real task of the army.”
He adds that this violence may never happen, but the American army’s tendency because it gives opponents temporarily.
In his first appearance in front of the Pentagon Press Corps last week, Sean Bernil, the chief official speaker of the Ministry of Defense, spoke frequently about his combat experience in Afghanistan during a 30-minute briefing on Yemen-and it seems that it indicates that, some analysts said that under the leadership of Mr. Higseth, the intention of the battle is the key to credibility.
“I know what is similar to being in a position when they are at fire by the enemy,” said Mr. Barnil in discussing the Houthi rebels who targeted the sailors in the Middle East. “After he was in the enemy’s fight before, the fog of war is a real thing,” he explained after a question about the civilian victims in the strikes.
After a correspondent from a conservative news port asked whether the Pentagon “will be committed to shooting or disciplining” the leaders participating in America’s chaotic withdrawal of 2021 from Afghanistan, where 13 American service members were killed, Mr. Barnell said they should be responsible.
He said: “The men in my faction … We blew the earth in red in Afghanistan.”
A newly adopted warrior ethics are not ashamed of the violence of war. It also seems to include admiration for those who transport them in other arenas.
Last month, a press release of the Pentagon celebrated the visit of Connor McGregor, an Irish mixed military artist who was found responsible for rape by an Irish court in a civil case last fall. During their Pentagon meeting, Mr. McGregor and Mr. Higseth formed pictures and regretted how migration destroyed the culture of their countries “from the inside”, said Mr. McGregor.
The Ministry of Defense press statement on Mr. McGregor’s visit also said that “increasing the dead” will make the forces “more suitable to defend the nation.” He pointed out that these defense efforts currently include deployment of forces on the border to help stop illegal immigration.
Giving and getting when it comes to violence
As far as the transfer of the dead, the Pentagon leaders in the Trump administration are also clear, to thwart them from being at the end of it.
In the Pentagon journalist, Mr. Bernil noted that his unit has a victim of 85 %. “Your life is at risk. The life of your friends and friends in the battle is in danger.” He said that the restrictions imposed on the return of fire, in the midst of the fighting, invented for him “an infernal position that I do not wish at the worst opponent.”
This point is a focal point for Mr. Higseth, who raises “academic engagement rules that have been linking the hands of war fighters for a long time” and the military lawyers he holds responsible for their enforcement.
But these lawyers do not make the rules of engagement. This is the function of civilians and the higher leadership. Instead, their mission is to help leaders to explain and adhere to them, says General Denlab, the CEO of the Center for Law, Ethics and National Security at the Faculty of Law at Duke University.
For this reason, “Jag’s lawyers, like all good lawyers, are trying to find legal ways for their” customer “what the customer wants,” even if Jag does not approve personally. “
General Denlab says: If the goal behind the expulsion of senior army lawyers is to convert “Jag Corps into partisan rubber stamps by removing their greatest leaders, I expect this case to fail.” “Sometimes the only correct legal answer is no.”
Currently, the Trump administration relieves the rules of leaders who make military and air strikes, and expand the scope of people and places that can be targeted.
“It is a broader set of goals,” Lieutenant General Alexos Greenkiich, Director of Operations for Joint Employees, said at a press conference last week. “Therefore, this allows us to achieve the pace of operations as we can respond to the opportunities we see in the battlefield.”
“Terrible but legal orders”
Professor Kon says that as generals in the classroom, the current military scene, and often have the impression that they can choose not to follow the orders they consider immoral or immoral.
This is not the case. The co -teacher of Mr. Kohn, Peter Fever, director of the Duke program in the American strategy, are called “terrible but legal” orders.
The US Army’s Military Courts Guide also shows, “The dictates of the person’s conscience, religion, or personal philosophy cannot justify or excuse a legal matter otherwise.”
However, Professor Kon says, “What you can do is that you can say,” You know, sir, this forces us to do unethical or unethical things that will not produce the result you want. “
To help students develop these skills, professors guide them in the art of “leading from the center”.
This not only includes transferring orders to subordinates, but also a reaction to orders from the top “that you think are not in the interest of leadership or country,” says Professor Kon.
“You are trying to convince them of it. You are talking. You are talking quietly.”
And if the orders are illegal, or for example, the risks on the forces posed by the newly described engagement rules are very big – so [the commanders] “You have an ethical problem, because, again, it is not the issue of legitimacy,” says Mr. Sadner of the Heritage Foundation.
“They need to resign and then make a very general statement.” “This is how he is supposed to play this.”
