Two Soldiers I Served With Died In The Philippines. They Didn’t Have To.
10.10.2015 at 12:45pm
September ambushes me every year.
Life rushes by, and then I realize it’s another September, and another difficult anniversary. I look down at the band on my wrist, the scuffed aluminum band that soldiers wear to commemorate the dead.
Read more at The Observer. H/T SWJ friend Colonel (Retired) Dave Maxwell.
This pains me to read and send. Where you stand depends on where sit and this young former sergeant is now sitting in a bad place based on his tragic experience. The experience of this young psychological operations soldier is heartbreaking. But he provides important perspectives few see. I have to take issue with his belief that we were “buying loyalty for us” though his insights on governance are very important. But it pains me because his snapshot in time experience does not illustrate the work that has been done on governance issues (e.g., return of absentee mayors, peaceful election and transfer of of power between rival families in 2007, the huge amount information provided to Philippine intelligence by Philippine citizens, the ruling out of calling former MNLF soldiers “integrees” by the Task Force Sulu CG in 2007 because they were now simply Philippine soldiers, Muslim soldiers taking duty for Christian soldiers on Christian holidays and Christian soldiers taking duty for Muslim soldiers on Muslim holidays and much more). The actions of the Philippine Marines are also painful to read because we had seen so much improvement in the Philippine military’s methods of operations since 2001. But his views, rightly or wrongly, will be forever etched in his mind based on his tragic experience and we should read this and learn from him. But I know he will accuse me of being one of those commanding officers but regardless I will pay attention to what he has written, especially his concluding paragraph.
QUOTE: What bothers me most isn’t that Jack and Chris died. Everyone who signed on the line after 9/11 knew what could happen. No, what tears my insides up is that they didn’t have to die, that our task force got it wrong, and no matter what justification commanding officers give or what the official story says, this was a preventable mistake—and two men didn’t come home because of it. END QUOTE
Conclusion:
QUOTE: It was Max Weber who told us that politics is the “strong and slow boring of hard boards.” The sentence that follows, and the one almost no one quotes, is that the work “takes both passion and perspective.” In wars like these, I’ve come to realize that we have proceeded with an excess of passion and a lack of perspective. Jack and Chris died because of our lack of perspective, and while they won’t come back, my faint hope is that we can learn from the mistakes that have cost families and nations so dearly. END QUOTE
I liked the quote at the end of his article, “It was Max Weber who told us that politics is the ‘strong and slow boring of hard boards.’ The sentence that follows, and the one almost no one quotes, is that the work ‘takes both passion and perspective.’ In wars like these, I’ve come to realize that we have proceeded with an excess of passion and a lack of perspective”.
I think Justin’s observations about the bad timing of the operation to take out the kidnap for ransom group is correct. No doubt it created negative sentiment, but ultimately there is considerable doubt if that is the reason Sergeants Shaw and Martin were lost to an IED. I won’t dwell on that, these two men were Soldiers serving on freedom’s edge who gave their all for the cause. As for popular sentiment in the Southern Philippines, positive and negative sentiment ebbed and flowed for our collective efforts over the years. That is the nature of these operations, in many ways it is a competition for positive perception. The word competition means others are looking to shape the perception of our actions as negative.
A lot of mistakes were made in the Philippines over the last few years, but that is a small part of the whole. The greater whole points to a positive trend over the long term. That progress is due to a lot of hard steady-state work by the Philippine security forces, U.S. military, USAID, NGOs, and concerned Filipino citizens all taking action. Again, it is a competitive environment, so it isn’t linear. There are a wide range of actors violently opposed these efforts to build a peaceful environment. Terrorists were never the only “bad” guys down there. This was never a problem that could be solved overnight, and it could never be solved by tracking down and neutralizing so called high value targets (that were anything but high value).
I think a serious error, or a serious flaw in our mindset since 9/11 is reflected by the mantra, “intelligence driven operations.” This dumbs down operations to finding red and then applying force against red. We can do this for a decade and make no progress as noted in all of our current and recent conflicts. Operations should support strategy, and intelligence should inform, not drive operations. If Justin’s assessment is correct, the operation conducted on Eid was an example of a short sighted intelligence driven operation. If everyone understood the long term aims (part of strategy) and the operational environment (yes, the social, political, religious factors) a risk assessment informed by context could/would have been conducted and it would have seemed apparent that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. I am still of the mindset that 90% of our shortcomings are based on our shortcomings in developing strategy. Our forces are phenomenal at the tactical level, but as someone once said (it wasn’t Sun Tzu), tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat.
He’s absolutely right that governance is the problem, and his supervisors were absolutely right that a US task force had no capacity or right to step in and try to force a change in governance. That was the essential contradiction of the mission from the start: Philippine sovereignty and the basic parameters of the mission made it impossible for the US force to address the root causes of the conflict.
I think this is an important piece by Justin Richmond. It takes courage to share the lessons of war, especially those where we have lost friends and family, and even more so when they are lessons on where we all, Mr. Richmond included, need to do better.
Couple of points up front, I never served in the Philippines so I can’t comment as eloquently, or with as much credibility, on OEF-P operations, or JSOTF-P improvements over the years. That said, I did my fair share of time in “garden spots” around the globe, and unfortunately, have also experienced, as most of you have, the pain of loss of our warrior brothers. After nearly a decade of service I did some work across Africa with special operations forces as a contractor, and then joined the federal government focusing on civil-military issues, primarily in post-conflict environments.
Mr. Richmond’s key points are that, during his time in the Philippines, as with my time in Afghanistan or elsewhere, we, generally, weren’t doing it right. We did miss out on cultural dynamics, understanding true ethnic, social, gender, and economic cleavages within the societies in which we were operating, unilaterally, or partnered with host nation forces. certainly there was a tremendous amount of tactical success at the team level, but as we aggregate up beyond the tactical level, our gains become less obvious. The Philippines has, on the surface, turned out better than the debacles Iraq and Afghanistan, but the tension is just below the surface and the place remains a powder keg, just waiting for one event, or one malign actor, to blow the roof off all over again.
While the loss of SFC Shaw and SSG Martin is tragic to their friends and family members, there have been thousands of tragic losses across the services since 9/11 – each with a unique story behind the sacrifice, and truth be told, lessons learned in each one of them as to where we can, and must, do better.
With all due respect to COL (Ret) Maxwell’s NCO buddy, his comments about disrespecting or not taking into account the feelings of Shaw’s and Martin’s family is disingenuous – when did we stop asking ourselves what went wrong? When did we stop trying to do better? The circumstances around their deaths will not make their loss any more or less tragic for those left behind. I believe Mr. Richmond’s examination of the surrounding circumstances simply helps us to do better – to reduce the likelihood that future operations like this, directly or partnered, will take place because we are better armed – mentally, operationally, culturally. The reflection piece is a painful reminder of the cost of war, even when done right. SFC Shaw and SSG Martin’s legacy could be to help us keep Mr. Richmond’s points in mind so we don’t lose future operators in a similar manner.
The only point I may critique in Mr. Richmond’s piece is that, while “Jack and Chris didn’t have to die,” its war, and bad things happen to good people. We will never know if it was simply their time, or if the op had been cancelled out of an awareness of the cultural factors at play they would have made it home with the rest of their team mates. What we do know is that there are lessons in their sacrifice. And if we throw stones at the messenger, fail to heed his valuable and astute warnings, and think parochially in defense of our operational units, structures, or Departments or Agencies, we miss the whole damn point.
I hope folks re-read Mr. Richmond’s piece in an effort to pull the lessons learned from his effort. His sharing was, in may ways, soul-searing and courageous. While I didn’t know SFC Shaw or SSG Martin, I know many men and women like them, and continue to serve (in a different capacity) with them in harm’s way. For me, Justin’s piece will help me do my best to ensure the teams, the JSOTFs, the CJSOTFs and their interagency partners continue to get it right.
We are much further along than we were in 2006 in Afghanistan, or 2009 when Mr. Richmond was in the Philippines, but these lessons are always important. Thanks, Justin, for sharing such a personal incident, and for linking it to your efforts over the past 6 years to improve our efforts in this space.
We don’t have it exactly right just yet but we are getting there.