[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: When Soldiers Say No

Tue Oct 19 07:55:31 PDT 2004

The article below from NYTimes.com 
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When Soldiers Say No

October 19, 2004

>From the safe vantage point of America, it is scarcely
possible to imagine the fears and concerns that spurred 18
Army reservists in a platoon in Iraq to disobey orders to
deliver a fuel shipment to a distant airbase in the heart
of an insurgent zone last week. Soldiers in combat cannot
pick and choose their missions, no matter how grave the
risks they are asked to face. Legal direct orders must be
obeyed. But those giving the orders and the civilian
Pentagon officials running this war also have unshirkable
responsibilities. These include seeing to it that all units
sent on hazardous missions have the equipment and support
they need to accomplish their assignments and return
safely. 

The particulars of last week's incident, including claims
that the platoon had been ordered out in unsafe trucks and
without a proper armed escort, are still being
investigated. Relatives testify to the patriotism and
bravery of the men and women involved, and they report that
the soldiers had told them about earlier, unsuccessful
attempts to bring the chronic equipment problems to the
attention of commanding officers. 

Whatever the facts turn out to be concerning this unit of
the 343rd Quartermaster Company, based in South Carolina,
it is painfully clear that from the very start of the Iraq
war, Pentagon planners have failed to provide enough
troops, armor and training to the young men and women who
are bravely risking their lives for their country. 

It is these soldiers and marines, in both active-duty and
Reserve units, who have paid the price for Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's flawed vision of warfare on the
cheap, which disastrously misjudged the hard realities of
occupying Iraq. By stubbornly overriding the Army
leadership's correct professional judgment of how many
troops would be needed to secure the country, the Pentagon
allowed chaos and resistance to get off to a crucial head
start. The catastrophic effects remain with us today. 

Since then, despite President Bush's public pledge "to give
our troops everything that is necessary to complete their
mission with the utmost safety,'' American forces in Iraq
have been plagued by crippling shortages of tanks, armored
vehicles and spare parts. The Washington Post reported this
week that late last year, when Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez was
the top military commander in Iraq, he warned the Pentagon
that a desperate shortage of spare parts imperiled future
combat operations. The situation has improved somewhat
since then, but remains badly strained. 

When tens of thousands of fresh troops were rotated into
Iraq earlier this year, some Army and Marine divisions
arrived without their armored vehicles. That faithfully and
foolishly reflected the Pentagon's wishful view that the
insurgency was already fading away. A few months later,
when fighting predictably flared up again, many of the new
arrivals riding in unarmored Humvees found themselves
dangerously exposed. New armor was rushed in, but some
vehicles, including those of the platoon that refused to
ride out last week, remain without it. The thrusting of
undertrained reservists into counterinsurgency combat,
including supply and support units like the one in last
week's incident, has been another chronic problem in this
war. 

None of these points lessen the seriousness of uniformed
soldiers' refusal to carry out legal orders. An Army where
discipline breaks down can neither accomplish its mission
nor protect its own troops. Once the facts have been
established, the men and women who refused the mission can
expect to be held accountable. It seems far less likely
that Mr. Rumsfeld and his civilian associates will ever
have to answer for their egregious failures of planning,
imagination and leadership. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/19/opinion/19tue1.html?ex=1099197731&ei=1&en=0863e085712ac5b4

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