Terrorism

Panetta Warns Military Over Afghanistan Misconduct

THOM SHANKER
Monday, 07-May-2012
• May 4, 2012: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta speaks to soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga. (AP)

 

WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned on Friday that the spate of high-profile episodes of misconduct by some troops in Afghanistan not only discredited the entire armed forces, but also damaged America’s chances for battlefield success.

Mr. Panetta said episodes involving a few soldiers who “lack judgment, lack professionalism, lack leadership” could have far-reaching consequences.

“The reality is that our enemies are losing on the battlefield, and they will seek any opportunity to damage us,” Mr. Panetta said. “In particular, they have sought to take advantage of a series of troubling incidents that involved misconduct.”

The military has been stained by disclosures that young soldiers defiled insurgents’ remains in Afghanistan, that Marines urinated on Taliban corpses and that other troops burned Korans in violation of Islamic practice. When added to the massacre of villagers attributed to an Army sergeant, these episodes have cast American soldiers in a harsh light before the Afghan public.

Addressing troops at Fort Benning, Ga., Mr. Panetta said these well-publicized episodes “can impact the mission that we’re engaged in, they can put your fellow service members at risk, they can hurt morale and they can damage our standing in the world.” He added, “And they can cost lives.”

Those concerns were reiterated by the military’s top officer, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said Friday in an interview that such misconduct “diminishes the extraordinary work the rest of the force is doing.”

He said the military had an ethos that “holds us to a higher standard,” and he disclosed that, as chairman, he was studying how a decade of nonstop conflict had affected the military as a profession.

General Dempsey dismissed one explanation for the episodes: that the military is exhausted and stretched to the breaking point. Instead, he said the tempo of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan — and the style of deployments — had disconnected the traditional chain of command.

Recent lapses in discipline “do not represent a tear in the fabric of the profession,” General Dempsey said. He did acknowledge, though, that “mentoring has suffered a bit.”

For example, the counterinsurgency mission in Afghanistan has pushed troops out of large bases — where they would serve under the supervision of senior officers — and distributed them to remote forward outposts under the watch of noncommissioned officers and junior leaders.

This decentralized deployment pattern has placed a “new burden on junior leaders to be even more observant, more aggressive, more responsible” for the performance and behavior of young soldiers under their command in the field, General Dempsey added. “We have to reconnect leader to led, and hold leaders accountable at every level,” he said.

Both General Dempsey and Mr. Panetta stressed that the episodes represented only a tiny fraction of the force. But given the barrage of reports of negative behavior by the ground forces, the top officers of the Army and the Marine Corps also have been meeting with their leadership to urge a renewed focus on discipline and adherence to orders.

Gen. James F. Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, wrote a letter to his service’s generals, commanders, officers-in-charge and sergeants major on March 23 to emphasize the importance of taking action to halt episodes that discredit the military and damage the mission.

And Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, also has been speaking to his service’s officers and noncommissioned officers about the urgent requirement for the Army to increase and sustain discipline among younger officers and enlisted personnel.

“I need every one of you, and all of your fellow service members, to always display the strongest character, the greatest discipline and the utmost integrity in everything you do,” Mr. Panetta said at Fort Benning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Top Stories