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Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

utexas.edu

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Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#111

Post by ratsbane »

jacquesm wrote: post #62
Nrsolis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why there are things called ROEs: Rules of Engagement. A soldier just can't shoot anyone they see. There are very hard limits on who is considered a "combatant" and who is not. A big part of what gets soldiers and Marines on our side killed is ambiguity about who can be shot when they present a threat and who cannot. If you do anything outside of the ROE it can be considered a war crime: http://www.dailyma…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes Have a read. How many soldiers ended up in jail for these? How many commanding officers?

A great book on this subject is The Law of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law in War by Gary Solis (related to nrsolis?) I think it's currently used as a textbook at West Point and other places. I have a copy here. Solis is a clear advocate for rules of conduct in war and for the punishment of those who break those rules but he also does not shy away from pointing out the frequent cases when, as you note, guilty soldiers on the winning side escape punishment. E.g., here is a quote from the book concerning the trial of Ernest Medina, implicated in the My Lai massacre:

The prosecution urged that Medina knew, or should have known, of the massacre, but, in addition to inciting it, he took no action either to stop it or to subsequently bring to justice those who committed crimes. “Even if he did not personally commit any crimes in My Lai, Medina clearly failed to maintain control over men under his command who were committing scores of them.”42 Despite apparently meeting the von Leeb–List standard – knew or should have known – and, for that matter, the Yamashita standard – must have known – Medina was acquitted.43 One civilian nonlawyer who viewed the trial found the case poorly prosecuted.44 Another calls it “a striking example of the extent to which a domestic . . . tribunal will devise a restricted formulation of the superior responsibility doctrine in order to avoid the prosecution of its own nationals.”45 But that ascribes a sinister motive to the court-martial that did not exist. (p.422)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Law-Armed-Conflict-International/d...

I hope this information is helpful.

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#112

Post by Nrsolis »

jacquesm wrote: post #108
Nrsolis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a conscientious objector I've done plenty of thinking on the subject." e.g. COWARD. You abhor violence, eh? That's rich.

Ok, as a true coward befits I'll bow out of the discussion here. Thanks for playing. By your definition, that means you win.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

John Stuart Mill, on the US Civil War, in "The Contest in America", Fraser’s Magazine (February 1862)

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#113

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #17
CatheryneN wrote: post #10

The Navy Seals I have known in my life have been the most honest, bravest, and intelligent people I have ever known. I'm grateful people like this exist in the world.

I can't get behind people trained for the most part to kill other people. The bravest to me are those that refuse to be goaded into harming their fellow human beings at the behest of others. The line between 'brave seal' and 'tool' is a thin one.

[deleted]

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#114

Post by PavlovsCat »

thegeomaster wrote: post #103
PavlovsCat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where am I using Einstein's "authority" to support any of my arguments, except that I don't think it's a naive viewpoint? I agree with him on this, and having read some of his letters and whatnot I don't think he was naive, and I know he thought about people a lot and cared deeply about peace. I don't even care for his work in physics, because that goes right over my head, but find he said and wrote many wise things…

You said: "If that viewpoint is naive, so was Einstein", and then proceeded to reproduce the same quote. You seem to have used his name to give extra weight to the quotation. I am not arguing for or against your stance here (actually, if anything, I think I agree with it), I'm just pointing out that the first sentence was superfluous. If one of Einstein's viewpoints was in fact naive, that wouldn't make Einstein hims…

Replace "so was Einstein" with "then Einstein was also being naive when he said this", would that help? My sympathy for Einstein is personal, and I might have brought up, say, Bill Hicks in the same way; not meaning it as "this is correct because X said so, and many other people think he is generally correct", but "if this is wrong, then at least I am in company I like while being wrong about this".

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#115

Post by Nrsolis »

ratsbane wrote: post #111
jacquesm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes Have a read. How many soldiers ended up in jail for these? How many commanding officers?

A great book on this subject is The Law of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law in War by Gary Solis (related to nrsolis?) I think it's currently used as a textbook at West Point and other places. I have a copy here. Solis is a clear advocate for rules of conduct in war and for the punishment of those who break those rules but he also does not shy away from pointing out the frequent cases when, as you no…

I had an entire semester of instruction on "The Law of Armed Conflict". It's taken VERY seriously by the military.

One example:

In the movie Lone Survivor, the SEAL team of which Marcus Lutrell was a member of is "soft compromised" by a group of goat-herders in the Afghan mountains. They were discovered when the goat herders LITERALLY tripped over them.

Now they were faced with a difficult problem. It was commonly known that the anti-coalition militia used goat-herders as scouts knowing that they would not be molested by coalition forces. Letting them go would almost certainly result in their presence becoming known to the militia. Killing them was against the ROE.

They really didn't have a choice: they let them go. In less than an hour, they were ambushed and three SEALs died. Marcus Lutrell was saved by a local Pashtun. A quick reaction force with two helicopters full of SEALs was repelled by RPGs and another 16 SEALs and other operators were killed.

SO: three goat herders were freed and nineteen men lost their lives because by the ROE, you couldn't kill the goat-herders because they weren't carrying weapons.

Ask yourself if you truly believe you could live with the fact that you freed the people who called the forces that would ambush you and kill your friends.

Our military is willing to follow the rule of law far more often than not. That's a huge difference given the life and death stakes these people are under.

This isn't a movie and there is no do-over. Making a bad decision might get your friend killed or put you in prison. Let's try and adjust our thinking to fit the circumstances these people find themselves in. It's the LEAST we can do as an informed citizenry.

(BTW: I know one of the guys who went in to those mountains to retrieve the bodies of the killed SEALs and find Lutrell. He has no illusions about the enemy he was facing.)

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#116

Post by sillysaurus3 »

jacquesm wrote: post #108
Nrsolis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a conscientious objector I've done plenty of thinking on the subject." e.g. COWARD. You abhor violence, eh? That's rich.

Ok, as a true coward befits I'll bow out of the discussion here. Thanks for playing. By your definition, that means you win.

Try not to let trolls get to you. No one was influenced in the slightest by their comments, so there's no reason to let it get under your skin.

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#117

Post by coldtea »

jebblue wrote: post #41
coldtea wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An article praising soldiers and the "change" they bring IS political (in the general sense). It's just naively political, it doesn't even stop to consider the consquences of the actions it desribes, except on one side. Soldiers = heroes, or "just honest hardworking people doing a dangerous job", is political in itself. It's pro army, for one. Some people for some reason only consider anti-war statements to be politi…

The enemy is always at the gate, they care not that your heart bleeds for their children; they only care about making you and your children bleed so they can take what you have and destroy who you are and what your children could have become.

One would be justified to say that if he was the one being invaded, in his own homeland, and had his children suffer for that.

A citizen of a country with its war fingers all the way around the globe, not so much.

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#118

Post by pavelrub »

jacquesm wrote: post #40
Nrsolis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a horribly naive viewpoint. You've fallen into the trap of making a judgement of someone based on a popular understanding of a particular profession rather than any factual reality. And here are the facts: 1. There is evil in the world. 2. That evil sometimes hurts innocent people. 3. We need some way of protecting innocent people from evil. I'm reminded of the current hullabaloo about Boko Haram and the kidn…

Is there a Navy Seals action underway to rescue the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram? That's news to me, all I know is there were a few rumors. The problem is not that navy seals could not be deployed to do good, the problem is that they are just as likely to be deployed to do harm. Anne Frank has nothing to do with any of this, the dutch army was of no significance whatsoever (but the dutch resistance was). As for me '…

> They are just as likely to be deployed to do harm.

Please name some SEAL missions you consider harmful.

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#119

Post by pavelrub »

jacquesm wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only nobody anywhere in the world was trained to kill other people, our country (and yours) wouldn't need to ask people to sacrifice that part of their humanity in service to their countrymen. You might read Marlantes _What It Is Like To Go To War_. You might find that while SEALs are happy to speak proudly what they've learned in basic training, not so many of them speak happily about what war forces them to do d…

As a conscientious objector I've done plenty of thinking on the subject. My personal stance on this is that I and nobody else determines where and when the line into violence is crossed and that I will not let others determine what my hands are used for when it comes to matters of life and death. Words like 'sacrifice', 'pride' and so on try to put glory where there is none. Navy seals and their various colleagues fr…

That is a very comfortable stance to have, isn't it?. You are very fortunate that there are people out there risking their lives so that people like you can continue living inside their bubble.

Re: Adm. McRaven Urges Graduates to Find Courage to Change the World

#120

Post by MrMember »

facepalm wrote: post #16

I like it (unfortunately I am very far away now from ever being able to be that fit). Leaving aside the uncomfortable notion that it is all for killing people, here is another question I wonder about: what are the survival rates for Navy Seals? Are they better/worse/the same as for normal soldiers? Does all the training help with survival? It would be a shame to go through all this and then be killed in the first hou…

That sort of information is likely classified. In any case I'm not sure how useful such information would be. They go through an insane amount of training that almost certainly would increase their survival rate in an average firefight, but the Navy doesn't spend ~$500k training a SEAL to send them into average firefights. They undertake some of the most dangerous missions in the US military.
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