“I would concur with Girlene.”
Jude24, well, I do declare, we have some agreement! I have seperated out this sentence above so you can copy and paste in all your replies to me. Just teasin’ ya. :-)
I was looking for a thread that Captains Journal had written about Marines’ room clearing training. The jist was that the Marines have no other training when it comes to “taking a house” and clearing it. I’ll keep looking. Anyway, during this process, I found a series of Captains Journal blogs I thought you might find interesting. Here is an excerpt from one that in my mind is quite relevant to the discussions about ROE, counterinsurgencies and Haditha.: http://www.captainsjournal.com/
....”Setting up the choice between Luttwak and FM 3-24 [counterinsurgency Field Manual] as the only alternatives is false. There is a middle ground that avoids intentional collateral damage while also encouraging robust offensive operations against the enemy. Security is more important in a counterinsurgency than winning hearts and minds. If the population knows that the U.S. forces will not shoot into a home (from which fire is coming) for fear of collateral damage, then they can never stand up to the insurgents, and the choice is clear. The U.S. cannot or will not protect them and they must submit to the insurgents. The presence of insurgents in their home or neighborhood becomes de facto security strictly because of the ROE.”....
The Captains Journal website is very thoughtful and thought provoking. He has written a lot about ROE and the fallout in the field with the latest versions. Now it looks like he’s tackling Counterinsurgencies and Just War issues.
Woops, met to also include you, Red, in the previous post to jude24. Sorry I took so long to reply - busy times.