The Fighting Season and JAG

[ShootDontTalk]

[rant on]
I just finished watching an episode of The Fighting Season in which the troops were watching two Taliban on a motorcycle carrying an RPG. When the head shed finally decided the guys were hostile, they had to call higher ups and make a case to a JAG lawyer on the phone to get permission to kill the enemy! Of course, the bad guys got away.

The more I thought about it, the madder I got that we're STILL doing such stupid things. 58,220 Americans died in Vietnam and a majority of those died because of a lack of political will which resulted in idiots 7,000 miles away micromanaging the killing of the enemy. We learned a painful lesson that the commander on the ground is far better qualified to conduct warfare than some rear area pogue sitting in an air conditioned office with no physical stake in the outcome.

At least I thought we had learned that. Now I suspect we once again don't trust the men at the point of the spear to decide how to win a war. One thing I know to be true. You don't win wars by consulting a lawyer every time you need to kill the enemy. The blood of too many Americans decries this idiocy.

In my opinion, we would do far better to put the JAG lawyers out in the field by themselves with a handgun and a couple of mags of ammo. When we saw them get shot, that is our signal to kill the enemy. Kill two birds with one stone as it were.
[/rant off]

[Dave2]

In my humble (and possibly uninformed) opinion, the problem is that we send our troops to "represent US interests", "build nations", and do other things that aren't "win the war".