The Omaha World Herald July 07, 2012
For Marine's family, grief mixes with anger over U.S. war policy
By Matthew Hansen
The family of Lance Cpl. Hunter Hogan blamed military strategy — and the nation's commander in chief — for continued deaths in Afghanistan on Friday, the day they laid the 21-year-old Marine to rest in York.
Steve Hogan, Hunter's father, buried his son in York Friday afternoon and then released a statement that blasted the military's rules of engagement in Afghanistan. Those rules have handcuffed Marines like his son as they try to wage war, he said, adding to the danger they face in some of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.
“The policies of this current administration and the rules of engagement are a huge factor with these casualty reports,” Hogan said in a statement. “The limited air and artillery support our men receive ... as well as the approval to return fire are hampering and adding to the danger they are in daily.”
The criticism echoes complaints from some Nebraska and Iowa troops as they return from the Afghan War. They say that they aren't allowed to fire at Afghans who they believe have just triggered roadside bombs. They say they often can't fight at night, or call in airstrikes, because of military leaders' fear of doing anything that angers the Afghan population.
But other troops and military experts argue that the rules of engagement, first tightened by Gen. Stanley McChrystal under President Barack Obama in 2010, are part of a large and comprehensive counter-insurgency strategy that has made the American effort both smarter and more effective.
Reducing civilian casualties is both the right thing to do and diplomatically crucial to keeping the Afghan populace with the coalition forces and against the Taliban, said a leading Afghan expert.
And, on the ground, Marines usually can act and react as they see fit, said a Nebraska Marine who deployed and fought in arguably the most dangerous spot in Afghanistan in 2011.
“The people fighting insurgents will always have to follow more rules than the insurgents do. That's sort of a fact of life,” said Joseph Trevithick, a defense analyst for GlobalSecurity.org, who has researched and written about military rules of engagement in Vietnam, Somalia and the post-Sept. 11 wars.
“There is probably a broad sense of frustration ... but this will always be (the coalition force's) burden to bear, because you can't cede the moral high ground. That just isn't an option.”
In the statement, Steve Hogan pointed out that far more American troops have died in Afghanistan under President Barack Obama than under President George W. Bush.
iCasualties, an independent group that counts military casualties, says 1,399 American service members have died in Afghanistan since 2009, when the current president took office. Between 2001 and 2008, 630 Americans died in Afghanistan.
“Let the military run the war. They are the professionals,” Hogan said in the statement. “Or get our people out of there. How many more black walls full of names are we going to build?”
Hogan, whose hometown was Norman, Ind., died June 23 while conducting operations in Helmand province, the Department of Defense said, and a representative of the Patriot Guard Riders says his unit came under sniper fire.
The father's statement, delivered to the media after the funeral, is believed to mark the first time that an area family that has lost a loved one has publicly spoken out against the country's political and military leadership. Some 146 service members with Nebraska or Iowa ties have died in Iraq or Afghanistan, according to a World-Herald count.
But this isn't the first time that a Nebraskan or Iowan close to the war has expressed frustration with the rules of engagement.
In April 2011, a roadside bomb exploded under an armored vehicle carrying Iowa National Guard troops as they patrolled north of Kabul.
Almost immediately after the explosion — which destroyed the vehicle's front half but resulted in no injuries — the Iowa soldiers spotted a man sprinting away from where they believed the blast had been triggered.
“We've got a triggerman running towards the valley,” reported an Iowa voice over the radio.
The gunner frantically and forcefully asked for permission to shoot — he had the runner in his sights — but that permission was denied after a quick and heated back-and-forth with the truck commander.
The incident left the gunner and others in the convoy suspecting that they had just let an insurgent scamper away after trying to kill them.
The incident was witnessed and reported by a World-Herald reporter and photographer embedded with the Iowa Guard. Iowa guardsmen involved in the incident couldn't be reached for comment this week.
Ross Wimer, a Marine from West Point, Neb., also can recall situations where the complexity of a situation — and the caution of military leaders — seemed to make life more dangerous for American troops.
Wimer deployed to Sangin, Afghanistan, with the Marines' 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment in October 2010, traveling to a small, southern Afghan district known as one of the most dangerous spots in the country.
Nearly every day, Wimer and his Marine unit would leave their tiny and primitive combat outpost and wade into serious danger. At least 25 of the battalion's approximately 900 Marines died during the deployment. Nearly 200 were wounded, many of them losing limbs to improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
During day patrols, Wimer and the other Marines found nearly 1,000 IEDs, he said.
On many nights, the Marines watched through their night-vision goggles as shadowy figures dug holes in the ground, and on several occasions they opened fire. At some point, the order came down: Stop shooting at night unless you can positively identify an insurgent.
“We knew what that person was doing ... burying an IED for sure,” said Wimer, who is now out of the Marines and enrolled in college. “But the command would say, ‘You can't be positive. They might be a farmer.' Ridiculous.”
Wimer, while frustrated by those incidents, says he also sees the other side of a strategy that repeatedly emphasizes making sure an insurgent is always actually an insurgent.
The underlying idea espoused by Marine leaders is this, he says: Kill one civilian in Sangin, and suddenly the Marines have 1,000 more enemies there.
Wimer said he couldn't speak about Hogan's specific situation in Afghanistan — Hogan deployed a year later to a different part of Helmand province — but said the rules of engagement in Sangin were often easy to interpret, because it was often easy to identify the many Taliban fighters in the area.
“The bottom line is, you gotta decide for yourself on the ground if something is going on,” Wimer said. “The No. 1 unofficial rule of engagement is, ‘Am I in danger? Are my fellow Marines in danger?'”
The bottom line for Tom Gouttierre, director of UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies, is that the McChrystal-designed counterinsurgency strategy, which includes the stricter rules of engagement, is better than what came before.
Gouttierre, who has lived in or studied Afghanistan for 48 years, said Afghan regard for the United States, sky-high when the U.S. military swept out al-Qaida in 2002, is damaged every time Afghan civilians die during an airstrike or firefight.
McChrystal's strategy, later instituted by Gen. David Petraeus after McChrystal's ouster, paired the limiting of Afghan civilian casualties with an increased focus on Afghan history and culture. Deeply understanding Afghans — their individual motivations, and how and why they form alliances — helps American troops better navigate dangerous situations, he said.
This hasn't always worked: In June, commanders again tightened the rules for use of air power after a NATO airstrike reportedly killed 18 civilians in eastern Afghanistan.
“War is so full of danger,” Gouttierre said. “My sense (from meeting with McChrystal and other military leaders) is that the more we know, the more we stack the odds in our troops' favor.”
Trevithick, the defense analyst, said a return to tactics used in Vietnam — when U.S. leaders designated free-fire zones in certain parts of that country — would be a mistake, as it turned large swaths of population against the American effort.
But he also said frustration with the current rules of engagement is understandable, especially since it's hard to articulate what exactly the overall objective is in Afghanistan.
“If people felt like there was a clear-cut mission, maybe they would look at these restrictions differently,” he said. “But as it is, when we can't really see a reason why (the coalition forces) are doing what they are doing, then it makes sense to focus on people dying and say, ‘Why?'”
© Copyright 2012, The Omaha World Herald
