Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Can America Be The World’s Maine Game Warden?
Recently, one of my esteemed fellow Ricophiles said the following: “Our armed forces should be the most efficient in the world at killing people and breaking things.”
Though I probably wouldn’t use such hair-raising terms, I agree. Sometimes, the only thing that can make a very bad situation marginally better is a whole lot of lethal force, energetically applied.
However, the reality is that our armed forces are already being used for other things … namely, humanitarian response in the aftermath of natural disasters. We should have our troops do more of this, more deliberately, and with a whole lot more fanfare.
As I discovered when my son became a Marine, the military is deployed on humanitarian missions across the world for one simple yet suggestive reason: the American military has an astonishing ability to marshal and deploy large numbers of motivated, skilled, physically and mentally fit young people (mostly men). We’ve developed this ability so as to send these young people into combat, but the skills are transferable to other emergencies, such as when there’s an earthquake in Haiti or a tsunami in Japan.
I don’t know all that much about the workings of the military, but I know about law enforcement, and especially about the work of game wardens in Maine and other states.
My humble suggestion, or fantasy, is that the United States military should serve not as the world’s policeman, but as the world’s game warden.
This is not as pacifistic as it sounds. (I’m not a pacifist.) Game wardens have guns, and they know how to use them. Few are aware of this, but Connecticut game wardens were among the first law enforcement officers on-scene at the Sandy Hook massacre, and in a splendid demonstration of “improvise, adapt and overcome,” they secured the scene, formed a perimeter, and helped evacuate the surviving children. Had Adam Lanza not already been dead, they would have terminated him without hesitation and with extreme prejudice.
Do we have a barricaded gunman? An active shooter? A bunch of Sovereign Citizens? Game wardens have the training, equipment, and flexibility to respond even to novel, ambiguous, or fluid situations with the use of force.
Has a Girl Scout troop gone missing in the woods? Is there a desperate family hoping their drowned child’s body can be recovered? Has a big swathe of Aroostook County gone under water in spring floods, stranding and endangering civilians? Is the continued existence of the endangered piping plover threatened? You name the emergency, and the chances are good that game wardens can handle it.
I vividly remember when, during a flood in northern Maine, a Maine game warden commandeered a front-end loader to scoop people out of the second floor window of their flooded house.
“But how did you know how to operate a front end loader?” I asked. He just smiled and shrugged. These guys can do anything!
Our troops can do anything, too. They can kill people and break stuff, but they can also rescue people and build stuff — they always have been able to do these things. They have always served as first responders, but we don’t acknowledge, advertise, or celebrate this as much as we should.
In fact, I imagine a bunch of our extra battleships being retrofitted (preferably at the Bath Iron Works — jobs for Mainers!) to serve as hospital ships, resupply ships and emergency evacuation vessels. “UNITED STATES NAVY: EMERGENCY RESPONSE VESSEL” should be written in big letters on the side of such ships, and there should be a big ceremonial fuss made when they are launched — the first lady or first gentleman smacking a bottle of champagne upside the hull, lots of Tweets and posts and whatnot — so that the US receives maximum publicity for the good works we’ve been doing all along.
Some of you might object that openly preparing, equipping, training, and using troops as first responders would dull our fighting edge. My response would be as follows: First, we’re already doing it, so why not reap the PR benefits? America needs (and deserves) a reputation for showing up when people are in trouble.
Second, if we need to have a professional armed force in readiness whether we’re actually fighting a war or not, humanitarian responses to natural disasters offer valuable opportunities for gaining experience, so we can maintain at least the ancillary skills that a military deployment demands. Among the issues that plagued the start of the First Gulf War, to name one example, was a lack of practical experience in moving men and materiel from point A to point B.
Third, if American parents knew that a son or daughter who joined the military would be primarily responding to humanitarian disasters (“helping people”), even liberal parents might have fewer qualms. (I speak from experience on this).
This could have the happy effect of increasing enlistment but also enhancing ideological diversity and not only in the ranks, but in liberal-land, as those who have served alongside conservative comrades leave the service and rejoin their families and peers. The wisdom gained from exposure to a wider variety of human situations is sorely needed in liberal-land. (Again, I speak from experience!)
Operation Unified Response, which followed the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, is a good example. Despite accusations from predictable quarters that the US was using the earthquake as an excuse to occupy Haiti, the results were pretty spectacular from the point of view of those we helped, and a source of pride and joy for those who served.
“As we close our time in support of Operation Unified Response-Haiti, I look back with great pride on the contributions the Navy and Marine Corps team made to the people of Haiti,” said Lt. Col. Robert Fulford, the commanding officer for Battalion Landing Team, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment. “We represented the heart and compassion of the United States, directly translating into tangible impacts in the lives we touched — from Petit Goave, Grand Goave, Leogane and Carrefour.”
Helping people — representing the heart and compassion of the United States — is satisfying in a way that breaking stuff and killing people (let alone merely training to break and kill, but never actually doing it) isn’t, however necessary it might be. I’ve met Marines who have served in both Iraq and Haiti, and they talk about Haiti in a very, very different way — helping people who really need your help makes memories that feed rather than drain the soul.
Yes, I know: Blowing things up can be fun (my son, generally a gentle man, found it so). But helping people is joyful. Being recognized as a source of help and a representative of a compassionate nation is deeply fulfilling.
But what about the problem of evil in the world?
Obviously, one could hope that the US’s response to humanitarian disasters might help set a new and different standard for what a superpower ought to be doing with that super power. Apparently, there was chagrin in European circles when the US proved able and willing to help Haitians in a way that the Europeans had not; the world could do worse than enter into a game of humanitarian one-upmanship, where Putin’s Russia competes with the EU and the US for the “most compassionate and least evil” prize.
Still, as I say, I’m not a pacifist. And, as my son assured me, “Every Marine is a rifleman, Mom.”
So every member of the armed forces should continue to be trained in the basic skills of the warrior, even if some might go on to develop a speciality in, say, organizing post-disaster refugee camps, controlling disease vectors, or PTSD-prevention. Just as any large American law enforcement agency has a SWAT team whose specialty is overwhelming force, the military would retain units whose sole concentration would be developing expertise in killing people and breaking things. Should a war break out, they would form the nucleus of what could swiftly be converted into a traditional, kill-’em-all-and-let-God-sort-’em-out army.
I agree that it is futile to expect the military to impose democracy where none existed before (though they’ve done their best when asked, and at times have worked wonders). But in addition to breaking stuff and killing people, our troops are remarkably good — and could be even better — at rescuing and protecting people. Let’s find a few good men, let them do more before breakfast than most people do all day and be all they can be. Let them be wardens.
Published in General, Military
A great and beautiful story Boss.
Doubling down. This lacks good order and discipline.
Vaporizing is not that hard. Strategy, tactics, intelligence, civil, psyop, local governance, logistics – those are the hard parts.
The Germans learned this in WWII. We were superior vaporizers in Korea. It was a stalemate. In Afghanistan, the Russians had overwhelming firepower. They lost. No one was better at vaporizing than we were in Vietnam. We won on the battlefield. We lost the war. Why? In Iraq we were excellent vaporizers – Fallujah was not that easy was it? Nor was the insurgency.
Vaporizing is over rated and these kind of words confuse us. Words are important. Victory, mission, must be carefully defined and the combination of arms and means and methods have to be brought to bear. It is much harder than mutilating people.
I think we all realize that. Vaporizing talk is not what makes us influential. What makes us influential is the successful application of power, diplomatic, economic and military. Often, we are successful whether we can vaporize or not. As I wrote earlier, destroying people is the tail of power, not the dog.
I think we do—Brent especially.
So sweet, Boss! What a good little girl. I hope she’s okay.(Makes me happy.)
BTW y’all are going to like my son’s first book.
It’s really something to interact with people from countries where police officers can’t be trusted. I’ve probably told you this story, but there was a young Russian woman who had fallen in love with an American exchange student when he was in Russia. She came to visit him in Boston, and the pair drove to Maine. They stopped for a picnic and a swim in one of our lakes…and (perhaps because he was unwilling to admit he couldn’t swim that well) he drowned.
This poor girl had no English to speak of (or “with” I guess) and the arrival of a bunch of people in uniforms scared her silly. It was really difficult to persuade her that we were there to help her, that she wasn’t going to be dragged off to prison. It was nice to finally get a translator on the phone to persuade her of what kind smiles, soft voices, cups of coffee and my one piece of Russian (“das vidanya!”) could not.
Yay, Doug!
Weirdly, when I teach death notification Maine Game Warden-style, one of the assurances I can make to my law-enforcement audience is that doing it our way sounds harder but in fact ends up being a lot more satisfying for the officers involved. Guys walk away from “my” death notifications feeling like they’ve participated in a good and loving thing. (That’s not the primary motivation for doing death notification the way we do, but it’s nice to know that doing what’s better for the families also makes things less unpleasant and traumatic for the officers.)
That is an inspiring story. :)
I agree. I read it to my husband. He liked it too. Smiles all around. :)
JM, consistency of one’s convictions is the highest of good order and discipline.
I respect your concern over my bravado. I see the United States as the iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove. I was on the leading edge of the iron fist and I view the President and state department as the velvet glove.
Unfortunately the iron fist is looking a little more like aluminum lately with all of the operational adventures, nation building, and secular social justice experiments our armed forces have been charged with. I am ready to return to the iron fist and will leave the velvet glove diplomacy to gentleman such as you.
You’d be good at either role. IMHO.
I’ll take an aluminum fist. Guaranteed you can knock the snot out of as many bad guys as with an iron fist. Problem isn’t the ingredients of the fist, the problem is will. There’s a whole bunch a folk out there willing to weather the storm of or iron/aluminum fists. Because they know we either won’t punch, or will pull our punches. Knock the snot outta adversaries, they become invested in making it stop and trying to convince us to use our other elements of national power instead of the military.
I do not think we are doing that.
Easy. Don’t make his head swell.
Duty, honor, country. The armed forces and intelligence agencies serve the mission. The mission is handed down. When we serve, we check convictions at the door.
You are a civilian. You understand service. You and I both know that you cannot engage, cannot let loose, without approval or under strict protocol. This is the way unit disciplined is maintained. This is the way we save lives. This is the way mission is accomplished.
Words – tough words – need to be holstered in my opinion. Words (communication) are critical. My Lai was the product of many people thinking they were following orders, orders that were full of tough or loose talk. Hamdania too. Chaos derives from imprecision and hot words.
Discipline in communication helps us focus on the mission, the alternatives, the tactics, appropriate response, the strategy and most importantly, saves lives.
Having said that, every civilian can say what they want. And I respectfully accept that. In this case, my fear is we send the wrong messages.
Cont’d.
Our military and intelligence services need to be above all professional. We are not in the business of killing. We are in the business of deterring and prevailing by other means. We need to be proficient at our jobs, but we need to be even better at the things that avoid violence. If that means shock and awe, fine. If that means shooting fish in a barrel along some Kuwaiti highway, OK. If someone decided to nuke a city, roger that. But, those orders come from on high, serve the mission, have been arrived at with careful consideration. They are not blood lust.
I am sorry. That is the way it rolls for me. Anbar Awakening vs. Fallujah Flank vs. Frontal. Think.
When candidates say we should bomb families or carpet bomb, I think they should have to walk the ground afterward, see and smell the corpses.
The American military is not about brutality, vengeance or gore.
The wind doesn’t blow all day. I think most of us realize that.
Part of strategy is to not tell the enemy everything you know (or both already know) or plan to do. Talking is how Obama lost the war(s). The credible threat of violence is where negotiations start.
Let’s say you’re in a room with a mob boss. The mob boss has an enforcer. The enforcer is 6’8″, muscular, heavily armed, and frowning. That gives a certain color to your discussions.
Now, let’s say the enforcer is a six-year-old girl full of sunshine and rainbows. She’s smiling. Are you going to take the mob boss seriously if this is his enforcer?
Arahant,
No, we all don’t understand that.
And yes we do understand, “The credible threat of violence is where negotiations start.” But that is where that idea ends. If that were the case, we would just show up with an atomic bomb and let her rip. Conflict over. The US would never need to negotiate – just be there, take home the winners cup and prom queen.
Words are important and in this case lead to two fundamental misunderstandings:
If all there was to it was being the best at vaporizing, then there would be no problems would there? No one would dare offend us. But apparently that alone does not work. You see the premise of this post that we are or only need be the best at breaking and killing is rather thin. In almost every conflict we led in these two important functions. Few break or kill better. Our kill ratios in Vietnam suffered for a while, were always superior, and then skyrocketed. That did not seem to deter the other side.
And while I generally respect the author and enjoy her point of view, it is so wrong to fall into the trap that being good at breaking and killing telescopes into other things done well – wrong on so many fronts – and history is on my side as the Prez likes to say. Don’t believe me – check out most of the places we have fought over the past say, 70 years. We were the best at breaking and killing. What was the score? How good were we at that other stuff? The other stuff eats you alive if you are not good at it.
And to be honest, the extended premise that our military should turn it up on rescuing and protecting is not the same as breaking and killing any more than UPS and EMS are similar. They both do pickup and delivery and that is where that analogy ends. Politically it is nice to mix these missions up, practically it has its limitations. Do you want a carrier or LHD designed to project force or receive maimed? We can house people in a school building temporarily, but it is not a home. Being good at killing and breaking requires special purpose assets and training. Mixing missions can confuse and degrade the special purpose. That is not to say we cannot do the first well and the second as best we can occasionally or as part of the first.
But humanitarian missions and such misunderstanding of purpose is what got the European military into its “red wine” and endive salad phase. They lost focus of their purpose because they were often reluctant to say what the job was – deterring, avoiding and winning conflicts. That is what we need to be the best at. And that is far more than breaking and killing. Humanitarian mission is only tangentially related to deterring, avoiding and winning conflicts.
It is important to remember that when you send the military on humanitarian missions they may die, they may offend the locals, they become encumbered in local politics, and they are walking about, well fed, in generally clean gear and deciding which village gets water, food and medicine. This connects the frustrations and setbacks of humanitarian missions with the uniform and flag. Yes, most appreciate the help from a GI Joe with a candy bar. But not all. Better to have civilians do this.
Excuse me for noting some of the talk sounds like Maori Haka. Haka is fine on the football field, after the game or on the street corners of Compton – but you never hear cheering before or under fire and rarely afterwards. People are focused, sober, and quiet.
This is interesting, JM. Should the military not be doing humanitarian relief missions like Haiti? (Not a rhetorical question!). I appreciate the whole of your comments—they are (as usual) so thoughtful. I agree with you that the language we use when describing war and warriors is important, perhaps even in an informal setting like this.
Because so many have taken on the moral burden people like me don’t have to bear, I give the benefit of the doubt to Ricochet’s veterans when it comes to the language they use in describing what they do. As one excused by gender and age from using violence in all but the most extreme circumstances, I know I have not earned the right to use words about war casually.
And you’re quite right: humanitarian interventions aren’t easy or safe, and aren’t a freebie in terms of moral risk either. Lots of things can go wrong. Humanitarian interventions can fail to make things better, or can even make things worse. Frankly, this is true for wardens or anyone else who would attempt rescue in dire circumstances: this is why rescue, like combat, demands courage, including moral courage.
This, by the way, is one of the reasons I think young men and women would benefit by participating in a military that includes a recognized first responder element. They would find out that helping people—doing the right thing— is hard and complicated. Even the most obviously heroic action usually feels…ambiguous to those who’ve undertaken it. (When “my” guys receive commendations for bravery, the looks on their faces are always solemn, never triumphant.) America could, I think, use a few more citizens who know this.
Having said this, the primary reason for using the Marines to deliver aid to Haiti after the earthquake is, basically, that no one else could do it. Not that fast, not that efficiently, not that safely. When game wardens deploy to towns that have met with a natural disaster (e.g. a flood), not only can they pluck people out of upstairs windows, they discourage looters just by showing up. Humanitarian efforts by unarmed NGOs are often stymied by the vulnerability of aid workers to violence; a Marine makes a harder target.
And–though this is merely theory—I think the symbolism of having an American military force that is clearly capable of seizing and occupying Haiti for its own reasons instead “invade” so as to help is powerful. It mattered (I think, anyway) not just that “America” did this, but that Marines did it?
Humanitarian aid workers from the U.S. are always going to be better fed, better dressed and more powerful than the people they are helping (pretty much by definition). And they’ll always be regarded with ambivalence once the immediate, urgent crisis is over, because it is humiliating to need help—for individuals and for countries, at least those with any self-respect left. (“Basket case” countries, like basket case people are another matter).
As the nine-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, the question is always going to be “what is the US going to do about this?” And whatever the answer is—something, nothing—it will be resented by somebody, even if we do it perfectly.
That being said, organizations tend to get better at doing things they do often or over time. We got better at landing on Japanese-occupied islands. We got better at occupying Iraq. If Boss Mongo is to be believed, “landing on” and “occupying” Haiti turned out to be a more similar proposition, at least in terms of the requisite command-and-control structure, than the military itself had realized. This means, arguably anyway, that the lessons are applicable in both directions: “invading” Haiti teaches us useful skills for invading Iraq and invading Iraq gave us useful skills for helping Haiti.
Coupla thoughts:
That’s always a bold assumption.
-The US military is built to incorporate HA/FDR into its operations. HA/FDR falls under Title 22, so the mission is the State Department’s. However, building the capability to conduct these missions into DoS would be redundant, so DOD gets its “orders” from State and then executes.
-That which makes our military the most lethal on the planet is not our incredibly competent pipe-hitters. It is our bureaucracy and the logistics system it enables. Right up to the point of delivery, the people and processes used to get boxes of MREs or boxes of bullets to the front are the same, so it’s good training.
-Haiti was a problem of biblical proportions before the earthquake; there was only so much the US was going to be able to do.
-One complicating factor was that a call went out from the White House to every four star GO/FO saying “this will not be your Commander-in-Chief’s Hurricane Katrina.” All them generals getting personally involved in trying to help did not help.
-A lot of NGOs, charities, and random civilians with backpacks decided they would show up and help; they didn’t. Everyone had to be fed, watered, bedded down, and poop somewhere. No bueno.
Kate,
You do know how to turn a word and persuade the average man.
I am a person who understands how fast things can get out of the control of people in command. I think keeping thinks simple helps.
I said, occassionally our military can and should assist in a crisis. The most important thing they bring is within the first 72 hours – air lift, water, food, warmth, and medical aid. I am much more for professionals getting there fast and doing this.
And as I read what your wrote I wondered – should we ever, could we ever, field a civilian force in white surplus choppers to arrive off the tails of C5-A’s or from another source to respond. And whoever can get there first, military or civilians, should move and then swap the uniformed out ASAP with civilians. We know the Pacific earthquake belt, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia and the Carribean are prime targets of natural disasters. Can we pre-position equipment, refueling and air drop loads ready to go?
The Boss makes a good argument too for the training value of moving stuff.
Or, we could subcontract with Walmart or the Mormon Church to organize it.
I think you misunderstand and mischaracterize the mission of any military force.
The only way a global power can deter anything is for it to be capable of unleashing ferocious lethality without mercy or remorse.
A toothless tiger focused on the professionalism of its support entities deters nobody and encourages those who wish us harm.
Whether spreading their ‘religion’, enforcing sharia, or acting out against neighbors, our primary threat – Islam, knows only the ferocity of the sword. They are unmoved and unimpressed by your pleas for polite professionalism.
Kate,
This is legalistic thing and of no consequence in your post and fine follow-up, but we did not get better at landing on islands held by the Japanese. An analogy might be that Grant did not get better in confronting Lee when he was “on to Richmond.” In both cases we just killed more of our own and had more to sacrifice. When Union troops prepared to assault prepared positions covered with cannon fire at Cold Harbor, they pinned notes on their backs so someone could identify their bodies. That is never a sign that we are getting better. Our most horrendous losses on Japanese islands occurred as they adapted and got better at cutting us down. Eventually, they adopted a strategy of putting up little resistance in the initial assault and then cutting us to pieces after we were ashore when the effect of our naval gun fire and air cover was more limited. That is when it got really nasty.
Not that important – but something to consider. The enemy always gets a vote. Repeating the same strategy over and over leads to enemy adaptation. We bring armor, they bring IED’s. We bring sensors, they bring shaped charges. We caught them with drones at night, they started wearing thermal blankets to hide.
JM, to an extent, we do this. The military, during the first push of aid/relief, will set up a Civil Military Operations Center. The intent of the CMOC is to have civilian and local national personnel side-by-side with the military as soon as possible. As soon as civilian (NGOs, IRC, etc) and local nationals can handle the load, the US Military is out as quickly as possible.
Rule #1: Work yourself out of a job as quickly as possible.
Also, in areas that are prime targets for natural disasters, we help the local nationals organize, train, equip and man Emergency Operations Centers, that’ll be the focal point of future CMOCs.
Lethal power “without mercy or remorse”. That is in the movies. Our enemies fight that way. We are merciful and full of remorse. We don’t shoot prisoners or maim. We don’t bomb villages. We don’t kill civilians. We protect our side down to the villager. We learned this from losing.
When we don’t take care, when we apply force indiscriminately or overwhelmingly or without mercy or remorse, we harm ourselves and needlessly extend conflicts and waste lives. When you do those things, you risk losing control over your command and making enemies. I have observed this up close. Kill a civilian and then send the next patrol out to that village.
As Americans we regret and rethink everything. We still debate the dropping of the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to soothe our conscience. Remorse and reflection are strengths. After action reports. That is a good thing. That is what democracies do. That is why they are often slow to anger and strong to finish. They think. Jus ad bellum. Jus ad bello. This is what makes us better, virtuous in the Aristotelean and Platonic sense. In this way we live to our Judeo-Christian, Roman law, and Common law traditions.
We fight to win. Lethal power is a piece of that. It is often not the deciding piece – which is why I take issue with the words. It should never be the only piece. It is not the reason we have failed to accomplish missions in most cases (Ch’ongch’on River retreat, Chosin, a few fields in ‘Nam, but where else?). And overwhelming force should never deceive us. It should never be be used without careful application. Again, I am not sure there has been a war in the past 70 years where we were not the best at blowing things up and killing. And what was the score again?
I like to listen to James Jay Carafano and Andrew Bacevich to reset my bearings. They are not in sync which makes reading them useful.
BB67 – thank you for challenging me. Thank you for tolerating my feeble thinking at times. You make good points. But, in this case you forced me to reconsider and convinced me my thinking – which comes from the humbling experiences of a young man – is correct. But, I truly respect your resolve. And once the shooting starts – I am 100% with you provided we are extremely careful in how we phrase it.
I didn’t mean that the way it sounded—!!!!!
I yield to your superior knowledge, at least until I go back and find where I read that by the end of the war, we had improved our tactics? I could (obviously?!) be wrong. I like “the enemy always gets a vote.” I suppose the American people always get a vote too (and in a way the Iraqi people do not) so there’s that to consider as well.
Like.
Also, I’ll be with you when the shooting starts, too, but I’ll be kind of useless.