I am part of a logistical convoy and see a crowd which has surrounded a single individual. They are beating and kicking the individual. The interpreter says from what he can hear the individual is a former government official.
As much as I feel I should help the individual being attacked, I cannot risk stopping the convoy and putting my fellow Soldiers in danger for a civil disturbance. This could escalate into an international issue. Chapter 5, III.,E.,(3) of the Operational Law Handbook (OLH) supports my actions by stating, “Collective Self-Defense as the act of defending designated non-U.S. citizens, forces, property and interest from a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent. Only the POTUS or SECDEF may authorize the exercise of collective self-defense” (Anderson, et al., 2015, p. 89). The video doesn’t give me this authority at this point. The mission is to make it from point A to point B and becoming involved in this issue could affect our relations with the host country. We must always make the, “Distinction between mission accomplishment and self-defense” (Anderson, et al., 2015, p. 89)
Without …show more content…
news reporters, host nation news reporters, or anyone with a recording device for that matter) and the situation could be spun, by stating we are helping a former government official who may have done horrendous things while in office. I think of President Eisenhower as he wrote to General George Marshall explaining his visit to a Germany camp near Gotha during WWII, “The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering…I made the visit deliberately, in order to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to change allegations to propaganda” (General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1945). This quote today is on a plaque outside the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington
As much as I feel I should help the individual being attacked, I cannot risk stopping the convoy and putting my fellow Soldiers in danger for a civil disturbance. This could escalate into an international issue. Chapter 5, III.,E.,(3) of the Operational Law Handbook (OLH) supports my actions by stating, “Collective Self-Defense as the act of defending designated non-U.S. citizens, forces, property and interest from a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent. Only the POTUS or SECDEF may authorize the exercise of collective self-defense” (Anderson, et al., 2015, p. 89). The video doesn’t give me this authority at this point. The mission is to make it from point A to point B and becoming involved in this issue could affect our relations with the host country. We must always make the, “Distinction between mission accomplishment and self-defense” (Anderson, et al., 2015, p. 89)
Without …show more content…
news reporters, host nation news reporters, or anyone with a recording device for that matter) and the situation could be spun, by stating we are helping a former government official who may have done horrendous things while in office. I think of President Eisenhower as he wrote to General George Marshall explaining his visit to a Germany camp near Gotha during WWII, “The things I saw beggar description…The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering…I made the visit deliberately, in order to give first hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to change allegations to propaganda” (General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1945). This quote today is on a plaque outside the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington