Special Warfare Magazine, the official publication of Army Special Operations Forces, made its return after a several-year hiatus to highlight the issue of ethics in their formations. The magazine's tone is critical, while also attempting to move forward with a positive conversation, which is a breath of fresh air in comparison to years past when concerns were met with reflexive denials.
A letter from Maj. Gen. Patrick Roberson states that some of the activities of Special Ops soldiers, which have hit the media in recent years, are not reflective of who SOF is and what America expects them to be. A note from the editor is even more to the point, attempting to establish a framework for a mature, healthy conversation about the issue of ethics.
The editor, Janice Burton, points out that indeed SOF does have an ethical problem, pointing out that the number of Special Forces soldiers who have been detabbed for illegal activities is equal to forty Special Forces teams, which would be around 480 men. It is not clear if this number is reflective of just the war on terror or the entirety of Special Forces history since its inception in 1952.
The tone taken by Special Warfare is not to wag a finger, scold, or shame Army Special Operations Forces soldiers, but rather to have an open and adult conversation about an important topic.
The first article titled "Developing SOF Moral Reasoning" at first glance appears rather academic in nature. The problem with research papers and diagrams is that while the conclusions and research methods may be sound, this type of information has an inability to reach all the way down the ranks to the boots on the ground level where it is needed.
However, it is clear the article's author takes academic concepts about moral disengagement and frames them in the context of actual special operations and specific scenarios that soldiers encounter while deployed. The author, a Civil Affairs officer, is building the intellectual scaffolding needed to push for ethical training to be even more prominent in SOF.
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One helpful aspect of the Robin Sage unconventional warfare training exercise is that students are intentionally put into scenarios that are morally ambiguous. Students are asked to make difficult decisions, and then the scenario is discussed with an instructor during an After Action Review. The correct answer to the test is hardly black and white, but soldiers are taught how to handle situations that may arise during deployments such as how to respond when a partner force commits war crimes.
It is worth pointing out that some students fail these ethical tests so badly in training that they are removed from the course.
The second article titled "Ethics is a Leader Business," acknowledges the unique gray areas that Special Forces operate in as they are often in austere environments relying on a partner force for safety and security.
It also examines team dynamics and how unit cohesion itself can lead to ethical drift. Both of these articles appear somewhat critical of the manner in which Special Operations has attempted to teach and view ethics in the past while attempting to find better training models.
The third article, "All Training is Ethical Training," makes the case that the type of ethical blocks of instruction discussed above could perhaps have a deeper integration in other types of training programs while being careful that such training is not out of touch with the reality that Special Forces soldiers experience on the ground.
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Like the editor of the magazine, as a journalist, I have become weary and tired of the phone calls I receive about destroyed lives in the Army Special Operations community. When the system fails, someone in trouble ends up talking to a journalist, and a lot of times that guy is me.
Domestic abuse, suicides, drugs, affairs, war crimes, even murders of our own soldiers, these calls are unending, but also not representative of the entirety of Army Special Operations. My anecdotal evidence does make it pretty clear that as Special Warfare now acknowledges, we have a problem.
The latest issue of Special Warfare is a huge step in the right direction. Fixing a problem requires the command to correctly identify it, and that step is now completed. However, is this merely an academic exercise or a real movement that will change unit culture? There are a few points I would like to make in this regard.
First, the letter from the editor promises an interview with Dan Gould, a Green Beret convicted and imprisoned for smuggling cocaine but then this interview fails to materialize in the magazine. Without knowing what Mr. Gould has to say, I think that such an interview could reach down to the enlisted ranks in a way that the more academic articles will not. Such an interview would almost certainly highlight that actions have consequences and that Mr. Gould lost the things that mattered the most to him: his Special Forces career and his very freedom.
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Second, Special Warfare takes a top-down approach indirectly asking the question, "how can we get our troops to stop fucking up and embarrassing us when this stuff hits the media?" Indeed, an ethical "worst-case scenario" diagram in one article is "Makes the News and makes SOF look bad." What is missing from this conversation is that SOF takes well-trained, but still young and often immature young men, and dumps them into incredibly challenging and ethically ambiguous situations.
This goes beyond the normal fog of war, or partner forces acting inappropriately. What I mean by this is that there are actual policy decisions made that lead our troops towards moral injury. Special Warfare acknowledges that the soldier faces morally gray areas, but is reticent to criticize the policies that put them there in the first place.
Perhaps it is beyond an official army publication's scope to engage in such political debates but in a conversation about ethics, we cannot bury our head in the sand.
Take, for instance, the policy decision made to partner with Afghan military, police, and paramilitary forces which engage in rape and pedophilia. This issue hit the press when Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland assaulted an Afghan pedophile his unit was partnered with. Martland was ethically sound, he demonstrated values, and the Army punished him for it.
While our soldiers have an ethical responsibility on the ground, do our military and civilian leaders not have ethical responsibilities as well when their policies are placing them in these situations?
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Another example: Special Forces soldiers were detailed to inter-agency programs in Jordan and Turkey to train Syrian rebel forces to fight ISIS. Special Forces soldiers on the ground reported that the Syrians they were interviewing were not moderate rebels but rather jihadists attempting to gain access to American weapons and military training.
CIA and Army officials did nothing, putting the Green Berets in an ethically challenging situation in which they had to decide to train the next generation of terrorists or drag their feet on executing the policy decision that had been made far above their heads.
Both options raise massive ethical concerns, but to my point, if the command cares about ethics why were those soldiers put in that situation to begin with?
There is no scenario in which any of us can imagine in the future that our Green Berets will not be partnered with unviable partner forces overseas due to reactive, reflexive policy decisions made by political leaders facing domestic pressure. As long as this continues, our Special Forces soldiers will be called upon to work in ethically gray areas, and frankly, to get their hands dirty in ways that polite society would prefer not to acknowledge.
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At some point, ethical commanders must decline to put their soldiers in immoral and avoidable situations or resign. We are asking our young enlisted soldiers to establish some red lines, a moral bearing, a code of conduct that at some point is uncompromising. What are the red lines for their leaders when it comes to protecting their men from ethical and immoral behavior? Some officers do this, I know them personally. Others do not.
War is an ugly thing, and unfortunately even the most morally straight soldier will find themselves challenged in combat, pushed beyond what they previously thought acceptable, and will spend the rest of their lives attempting to understand what they saw, and what they did.
With the focus on ethics in Special Warfare magazine, Army Special Ops has taken a brave step forward towards accomplishing an impossible but worthwhile task.
Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR. Want to get more connected to the stories and resources Connecting Vets has to offer? Click here to sign up for our weekly newsletter.
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