The video says he didn’t have any combat experience.
Elsewhere I read he was an enlisted man who worked his way up to senior level sergeant, did 15 months in Iraq in a combat zone, then was sent to officer training. Afghanistan was his first duty station after graduating as a lieutenant, but he was clearly not as green as they made him sound.
There seems to have been a lot going on that day, with multiple motorcycle teams shadowing them, some armed, most with radios, one they searched was carrying explosives. So that may have influenced his decision to fire on the men. At the same time, it was his own men who turned him in. So for me the whole thing is a bit murky.
It is indeed, and it happened under Obama’s watch, when everything was murky. That’s why I am unwilling to say what I think the truth really is. I’d love to side with Trump for pardoning him, but these men also deserve the respect of being heard out. They served in the Grand Canyon of sh!t holes. That’s worth something.
Yeats said, “They must, to keep their certainty, accuse all who are different of a base intent.” That’s the trap that the Left has fallen into, and they are eating their own. Let’s wisely avoid it ourselves.
I never went to Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam. I never fired a shot except at the range. So I owe those that did the respect of keeping an open mind and hearing their stories.
Wikipedia says:
Military career
On his 18th birthday Lorance enlisted in the U.S. Army.[1][9] He was deployed first in South Korea for two years as a traffic officer, and then in Iraq, where he served for 15 months guarding detainees.[1][6][12] After graduating from college with his bachelor’s degree, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 2010,[1][13][12] and subsequently promoted to first lieutenant.[6] In March 2012 he was deployed to a small outpost in southern Afghanistan with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, of the 82nd Airborne Division.[1][14][12]
I’m not seeing any combat experience there.
Rest of the wiki is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Lorance
Looks to me like both groups could be right, based on what they knew at the time. Read it and make up your own minds. I have no combat experience, and only a bit of training in what the USAF calls “force protection.” Last little bit of that was in 1996 or 97, and we did not have the communications capabilities it looks like they had, so what experience I have is about useless for their conditions.
I am senior NCO, and I know our lieutenants were taught to pay attention to their senior NCO’s. I presume that is also still true in the US Army. Comments from the Battalion Command Sergeant Major noted in the article would have had considerable weight in a young officer’s response. And having worked for at least one young lieutenant who thought himself the reincarnation of General George S. Patton, I can at the same time understand how his troops could feel otherwise.
I supported the pardon for Lt. Lorance. And I have to support the positions of his former enlisted men, too. I believe the decision cycle he faced did not give him a great deal of time to consider, and he did the best he could with what he knew. I happen to know that the military teaches that the wrong decision make quickly is more likely to be good than the right decision made too late. Also, gotta say, I doubt my Lieutenant would have accepted responsibility for his men’s action under those circumstance. Lorance did. That is probably what shielded them from being held responsible by a court martial. It is too bad that it didn’t shield them from their own disapproval of the actions they took under his command.
Sometimes life sucks, and there is nothing you can do about it.
WRM, MSgt, USAF(Ret.)