[Vision2020] "American Heroes?"...

[Don Kaag]

Visionaries:

On another subject, does anyone else object to the Oprahfication of 
America as the news media school, pirhana-like, around the freed P.O.W. 
story?

By and large I am proud of the conduct of our troops in Iraq.  They 
have shown as much humanity and compassion to both civilians and to 
their enemies in a war zone with people shooting at them as possible.  
And they have, by and large, done a superb job.  But I am unhappy with 
the news media's characterization of the eight former P.O.W's as 
"heroes".

Heroes don't get captured.  They do something above and beyond what is 
expected of them.  The gunship pilots who got shot down and captured 
tried to evade capture when their airplane broke and crash-landed, and 
they got caught before they could be rescued, and that's the breaks of 
the game, no problem.  But the  five recently-liberated members of the 
507th Maintenance Company come across as the "Gang that Couldn't Shoot 
Straight".  But they didn't shoot at all, except for PFC Lynch, who 
actually shot her rifle and put up a fight. The other five just rolled 
over and surrendered.

Perhaps only the other former military folks on this net can appreciate 
this, but there are a set of rules for American military people called 
"The Code of Conduct" that very carefully lays out what your 
responsibilities are when facing possible capture by the enemy.  One of 
the most important is, "I will not surrender if I have the means to 
resist".

According to the news accounts, when everyone but Lynch tried to shoot 
at the Iraqis, their weapons didn't work.  Why is that?  Having run a 
tank company in the field, I think I can explain it.  These were 
"non-organic maintenance troops" (That means that they fixed broken 
vehicles that the mechanics assigned to the units the vehicles belonged 
to either couldn't fix or didn't have the parts to fix.)  What they do 
in garrison is to fix stuff in higher-level maintenance shops.  What 
they do in the field is to follow along, as they were supposed to be 
doing in Iraq, and police up and fix whatever was left on the 
battlefield for them to take care of.  In other words, these are Army 
soldiers who rarely if ever get shot at.  The last time they probably 
fired their basic weapons, M-16's or Baretta 9mm pistols, was in boot 
camp.  All of that aside, they are soldiers, and soldiers are supposed 
to be prepared to fight the enemy.  They were in a shooting war.  Iraq, 
as we all know, is a dusty, dirty place, with lots of wind.  My 
suspicion is that these soldiers arrived in country, threw their 
weapons into their maintenance vans, and never looked at them again 
until they were ambushed, because they were busy turning wrenches.  And 
then, because they had neglected the necessary daily maintenance of 
their personal weapons, when they needed them, they were full of sand 
and dirt, and wouldn't fire.

That is pathetic.  But there is plenty of blame to go around.  There's 
an old military adage, "Things get done right that the Boss checks."  
Somewhere in their parent unit right now, hopefully, there are a 
Maintenance Chief, a Company First Sergeant, an Executive Officer and a 
Company Commander standing tall in front of someone's desk, and having 
punitive letters placed in their files.  If they had done their jobs 
and taught their personnel to read a map, work a GPS system, and to 
clean their weapons on a regular basis, their troops probably would not 
have become P.O.W.'s in the first place.

Becoming a P.O.W. does not make you a "Hero", it marks you as either 
unlucky or inept.

Regards,

Don Kaag