From "Lone Survivor"(Little Brown) by LPO Marcus Luttrell, U.S. Navy SEal
These are drawn up for us to follow by some politician sitting in some distant committee room in Washington D.C. And thats a very long way from the battlefield, where a sniper's bullet can blast your head, where the slightest mistake can cost you your life, where you need to kill your enemy before he kills you.
And those ROE are very specific: we may not open fire until we are fired upon or have positively identified our enemy and have proof of his intentions. Now, that's all very gallant. But how about a group of U.S. soldiers who have been on patrol for several days; have been fired upon; have dodged rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs; have sustained casulaties; and who are very nearly exhausted and maybe slightly scared?
How about a bunch of guys wearing colored towels around their heads and brandishing AK-47s come charging over the horizon staright toward you? Do you wait for them to start killing your team, or do you mow the bastards down before they get a chance to do so?
The situation might look simple in Washington, where the human rights of terrorists are often given high priority. And I am certain liberal politicians would defend their position to the death. Because everyone knows liberals have never been wrong about anything. You can ask them anytime....
...The entire business of modern war crimes, as identified by the liberal wings of politics and the media, began in Iraq, and has been running downhill ever since. Everyone's got to have his little hands in it, blathering on about the public's right to know.
Well, in the view of most Navy SEALs, the public does not have that right to know, not if it means placing our lives in unnecessary peril because someone in Washington is driving himself mad worrying about the human rights of some cold-hearted terrosit fanatic who would kill us as soon as look at us, as well as any other American at whom he could point that wonky old AK of his.
If the public insists it has the right to know, which I very much doubt, perhaps the people should go and face for themselves armed terrosits hell-bent on killing every single American they can.
These are drawn up for us to follow by some politician sitting in some distant committee room in Washington D.C. And thats a very long way from the battlefield, where a sniper's bullet can blast your head, where the slightest mistake can cost you your life, where you need to kill your enemy before he kills you.
And those ROE are very specific: we may not open fire until we are fired upon or have positively identified our enemy and have proof of his intentions. Now, that's all very gallant. But how about a group of U.S. soldiers who have been on patrol for several days; have been fired upon; have dodged rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs; have sustained casulaties; and who are very nearly exhausted and maybe slightly scared?
How about a bunch of guys wearing colored towels around their heads and brandishing AK-47s come charging over the horizon staright toward you? Do you wait for them to start killing your team, or do you mow the bastards down before they get a chance to do so?
The situation might look simple in Washington, where the human rights of terrorists are often given high priority. And I am certain liberal politicians would defend their position to the death. Because everyone knows liberals have never been wrong about anything. You can ask them anytime....
...The entire business of modern war crimes, as identified by the liberal wings of politics and the media, began in Iraq, and has been running downhill ever since. Everyone's got to have his little hands in it, blathering on about the public's right to know.
Well, in the view of most Navy SEALs, the public does not have that right to know, not if it means placing our lives in unnecessary peril because someone in Washington is driving himself mad worrying about the human rights of some cold-hearted terrosit fanatic who would kill us as soon as look at us, as well as any other American at whom he could point that wonky old AK of his.
If the public insists it has the right to know, which I very much doubt, perhaps the people should go and face for themselves armed terrosits hell-bent on killing every single American they can.
