Small Wars Journal

It's Time To Remove Lawyers From The War Room

Sat, 05/14/2016 - 2:22pm

It's Time To Remove Lawyers From The War Room by Shawn Snow, Military Times

The Taliban on April 12 announced the start of its annual spring offensive, which they are calling Operation Omari in honor of their former reclusive leader, Mullah Omar. It may be a decisive fighting season for Afghan or Taliban forces.

But the government forces won't be getting all the help they need from U.S. and coalition air power.  There are too many conditions on when and how coalition air forces can go after the militants who are trying to retake Afghanistan. That should change.

Last year, there were record numbers of casualties among Afghan security forces and headline grabbing gains by Taliban forces, including the temporary fall in September of Kunduz, a major population center in northern Afghanistan. There is much blame to go around for the poor performance of Afghan forces, to include disunity within the National Unity Government led by President Ashraf Ghani and his chief executive officer, Abdullah Abdullah.

After Afghan forces took the lead from NATO and U.S. forces in combat operations in late 2014, NATO took on a train, advise and assist mission under Operation Resolute Support.  But the switch has resulted in a huge reduction of coalition air support…

Read on.

Comments

Dave Maxwell

Sat, 05/14/2016 - 9:03pm

I would not blame the lawyers for this problem. The author is mixing apples and oranges and relies on the myth that lawyers make decisions on targeting in the "war room." Lawyers advise. Commanders make decisions. Lawyers advise and politicians decide which organizations are designated as terrorist organizations. If any commander says that he was "over-ruled" by a lawyer then he or she should not be a commander. Commanders can and should take input and recommendations from lawyers just as they should from intelligence officers and logisticians, etc but just as they do not give a veto power over operations to intelligence officers or logisticians they do not give veto power to lawyers. And anyone who thinks lawyers have veto power over operations has never been a commander.

But the real problem with the author's analysis is the idea that we have to "take the gloves off" to fight the war. If anyone advocates not abiding by the laws of land warfare and the taking of an eye for an in the same way as the enemy does they have no business either advising on national security. Sure the emotions in all of us drive us to say things like the enemy is cutting peoples' heads off and we will not water board them. But we need to uphold our values and fight on our terms not on the enemy's terms. And it is not in keeping with American values to fight the same way as the enemy. And I would submit that we do not need to fight like the enemy to be successful and win. Blaming our poor post-9-11 record on the idea that the lawyers are tying our hands or we are fighting with one hand tied behind our back is not only intellectually dishonest it fails to recognize the self inflicted wounds from either poor or simply a lack of strategy.