Did Disdain for Counterinsurgency Breed the ‘Kill Team?’

[n2doc]

By Spencer Ackerman October 14, 2010




Protecting the Afghan population around Kandahar was “pussyfooting,” according to the commander of the Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade. Better to “strike” and “destroy” the insurgents. Inside one of his platoons, a team of young soldiers went rogue, applying that guidance not to insurgents, but to unarmed civilians.

The looming question within Craig Whitlock’s excellent Washington Post piece on 5th Stryker’s commander, Colonel Harry D. Tunnell IV, is whether Tunnell’s distaste for counterinsurgency created an environment of callousness that led some of his soldiers to form a “Kill Team.” Tunnell himself had nothing to do with the murders of three Afghan civilians that the “Kill Team” is charged with committing. And there’s no evidence to date that he knew about the team’s alleged killings, corpse mutilations or hash smoking.

But Whitlock’s report — like Sean Naylor’s Army Times profile from January — shows that Tunnell quickly rejected the counterinsurgency strategy set by the U.S. military command. After the brigade arrived in Kandahar for a year-long tour in May 2009, civilian officials were surprised to hear Tunnell say, “Some of you might think I’m here to play this COIN game and just pussyfoot with the enemy. But that’s not what I’m doing,” a State Department official told Whitlock.


Instead, he was going after the insurgents — hard. Tunnell told Naylor, “if you degrade formations, supply chains and leadership near simultaneously, you’ll cause the enemy in the area to collapse, and that is what we’re trying to do here.” Some of his soldiers thought that approach would ultimately accomplish “absolutely nothing,” as a squad leader told Naylor. (See this Ink Spots post for more.)

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/did-disdain-for-counterinsurgency-breed-the-kill-team/

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. He has a bright future ahead of him

in Blackwater.

Fire his ass.

[TheMadMonk]

2. Short answer: No. "Kill Teams" are an entirely predictable...

...and all too often deliberate outcome of the way the US has prosecuted foreign war for most of its history.

Whether by proxy through US trained "loyalists" in Latin America or "rogue" units inside the US armed forces, these "Kill Teams" are just too much a part of any warzone the US involves itself for them to be just a few bad apples. The existence of considerable documentation and other evidence to testify to many of the Latin American teams being deliberate US creations would strongly suggest that the ones within the US armed forces are also. Even without ever explicitly assembling and training such units, their spontaneous emergence can be guaranteed through a simple application of the lessons learned in the Stanford Prison Experiment. Mai Lai, Abu Grahib and this are simply extreme examples that attracted too much attention to ignore. As we are all aware they are just the tip of the iceberg. All it takes is lax oversight and failure to prosecute minor infractions. Minor infractions that steadily become greater as the poison spreads. Conversely all it takes is ordinary oversight and enforcement of the rules of engagement to prevent.

I know one should choose stupidity over cupidity, but this much stupidity, repeated decade after decade after decade in every single major warzone the US has involved itself in more than beggars belief. Coupled with knowledge that such practices were deliberately encouraged in theatres where US troops weren't fighting, the most logical conclusion that can be drawn, is that the absence of oversight AND the consistent overlooking of abuses that eventually rise to the level of war crimes, is in fact equally deliberate.

There is profit in conflict. Enormous profit, since the profiteers don't pay the butcher's bill, the people do.

However, for a long time there, "We The People" also profitted quite well from conflict kept well and truly stirred by US overt interference, covert influence and in all likelihood unchecked abuses in warzones. Middle America achieved a standard of living, that is three to five times what is susstainable. And today? What percentage of a rape in Rwanda, or murder in the Congo do the tantalum capacitors in a big screen TV, or the PC's we're debating through, represent?

There are so many way that we the privileged benefit at great cost to others. And the truth is that we are running out of ways and places to exploit others by simple proxy of day to day shopping. Cheap computers, game consoles and big screen TVs are directly responsible for a good deal of the conflich in Central Africa, the demand for electronic goods and an increasingly wired world is partially responsible for the Chilean mine disaster, fucking vanity kept Apartheid alive and kicking long past its use by date, and the relatively copious quantities of gold in computer gear helped there too and once more back to we Internet Warriors (whatever else we might be in face to face life).

America needs to get over its adiction to war, and America needs to get over its adiction to America.