Will Lorance verdict have a “chilling” effect in combat?
I’ll admit that I didn’t pay too much attention to the trial of 1LT Clint Lorance who as a cherry 2LT with 5 days in command of a platoon ordered his men to shoot three Afghans on a motorcycle because it was one of those things that you had to be there to pass judgement on his decisions. I still don’t have an opinion whether he was guilty or not, that’s for the courts, the courts that apparently decided that he is guilty. The discussion in the Fayetteville Observer yesterday was whether it will effect the troops in regards to their reaction time under similar circumstances. In regards to the circumstances in the Lorance case, the Observer reports;
No weapons or equipment typically carried by insurgents were found on the bodies of the two men who were killed. The third man ran away.
The 28-year-old 82nd Airborne Division officer also was convicted of threatening to kill local villagers, ordering a soldier to shoot toward villagers to harass them, asking a soldier to file a false report saying that villagers shot at the outpost, and obstruction of justice for efforts to cover up the circumstances of the two deaths.
Two members of his platoon testified that they had seen no reason for firing at the men but had done so because Lorance ordered it.
I’m guessing the members of Lorance’s platoon had more than 5 days in the conflict and given the information in the article, it sounds like an anxious newbie Platoon Leader not listening to his NCOs, and you know that was probably the first time in history that ever happened (that was sarcasm, if you didn’t recognize it). One random soldier is quoted in the article;
“I’ve seen guys not pull the trigger when they should have because they feared the repercussions to their career,” said the soldier, who declined to give his name.
The soldier, who said he had been a forward observer during two deployments to Afghanistan, said some of those soldiers who hesitated were then shot themselves.
“Everybody’s scared of repercussions, even if you know you’re right,” he said.
He said the Lorance case will only increase that fear.
If the Lorance case was anything like it’s been described in the media, I don’t think it will have much effect on the troops, except anxious newbie 2LTs. According to members of the platoon, they didn’t see a need for any of the actions that the LT took, and I’d bank on their experience before cleaving to a decision of a 2LT. This is not to bash 2LTs…I’ve known some of the best 2LTs ever to serve in the Army, but you have to realize that some of them take their responsibility very seriously and would err on the side of caution, even they really don’t have to. But being in war isn’t like having a license to kill everyone. That’s why there’s a set of rules of engagement that the troops follow and it appears that Lorance disregarded his ROE.
Category: Military issues, Terror War
I am not a direct combat veteran, however as a Senior Enlisted man who has lead such warriors … I can say and I have instructed, “when in doubt and in the absence of a life threatening situation … it is better to be a good witness than a good shot!”
I am sure what did him in here is he asked subordinates to coverup the incident. It is hard to convince a court martial panel that you believed you were acting reasonably under the ROE when you’ve lied about what it is you did.
Just guessing, but I’d say it seems that the adrenaline rush that gets you wired up for something got the better of him. Either that, or he didn’t have an ounce of common sense working.
Ok I have a stupid question (I’m sure is VERY stupid) the article says
“No weapons or equipment typically carried by insurgents were found on the bodies of the two men who were killed.”
Well errr that sounds like they found another weapons now I’m not saying dude was right or wrong but is it very common that everyone is packing over there?!
At least in the “old” Navy, a sailor’s “effective” rank was his job title. During my first tour, I was in a position to “break in” many young Ensigns (the Navy equiv of 2LT). You couldn’t “order” the young officers around, but you sure could let them fall on their face.
The smart 01’s learned to listen to their experienced NCO. The rest were in for a hard career.
Combat makes the penalties for ignoring the wisdom of experienced NCOs all the more severe.
He was no cherry. He was first an EM and had a deployment to Iraq. He thereafter got his college degree and joined the officer ranks. As for waht he did or didn’t do, I have no opinion. I am sorry for him and his family.
Decisions ALWAYS have consequences – either reward or punishment.
2LT are apprentices, that’s why they have NCO assigned to teach them. Or was Lorance given a sergeant instead?
What was the ROE?
It’s common for people to have bolt action rifles and AKs in their compounds but it’s also very common for insurgents to use motorcycles to ferry supplies and personnel around the battlefield, not to mention the likely possibility of a VBIED which would be weird since there were two people on the bike. I’m curious about what weapons they Did(n’t) have, not knowing more details it’s hard to say one way or the other. BUT if his joes didn’t see a threat then I’m more likely to believe them than the Lt. I’m finding myself agreeing with #2, he would have a much better case if he didn’t try to cover it up…
*three people on the bike
a butter bar screwed up, why is this news? i thought we just hit them on the nose with a news paper, now we put them on trial?
i knew the guy named mulson, he was a LT with 4/31 10th mountain. he was coming back in from a patrol and came across an IED, but didnt want to miss lunch. he told a private to throw it in the back of a hmmwv and drove onto post with it. when they got there, they didnt say a word about it, pulled up between the d-fac and the battalion building. Lt Mulson ordered the private to ground the IED behind the trucks, then go down stairs and find out what they wanted done with it. the IED went off and took the kids arm with it. this is why LTs should never be listened to in the first place! the guys that fired on the motorcycle should have gotten smacked around for listening to an butter bar! i am opposed to filing charges on anyone in a combat zone short of blatant intentional criminal acts. accidents happen, people get shot that didnt need to be, but that is war. LTs are going to be stupid, thats why they are LTs.
i recall a Duffel Blog story about a captain facing charges for leaving his LT in a car with the windows up.
“Everybody’s scared of repercussions, even if you know you’re right,”
This a million times over. There is a culture within the military that actively seeks examples to make and this LT sounds like he got the short end of the stick. I’ve seen it personally and you better believe most trigger pullers have this shit at the fore front of their mind when operating.
CYA is #1 priority if you’re pulling triggers for the United States and that includes law enforcement.
I think we’re missing the story here. This LT didn’t make just one or two very regrettable decisions. Every one of us who has been a squad leader or more has done that in the field. The problem here is that day after day he gave his men orders to act in an oppressive and intimidating manner; even to the point (possibly) of murder. My guess is that his fear and instinct for self-preservation (and preserving his men’s lives) was running in overdrive. The mark of a good commander of any rank is that he gives rational, justifiable orders under fire; rather than letting his raw instinct or fear drive his decisions. It appears this LT did not do that. Repeatedly. The pattern is the real problem; not just one regrettable act.
I well recall a six week period that we operated out of a position outside the Burj (south Lebanon), right under the view of a two story house in the summer of ’84 (during the LA Summer Olympics). Our command refused to clear the family out and destroy the house, despite our obvious fears that we were constantly vulnerable to observation and fire at any time. (As it is, all the fire we took came from other places, not that family’s house.) I truly sympathize with the fear and daily stress this causes. I sympathize with the burden this LT must have felt, worried about getting his men home alive one day. But his *pattern* of repeated decisions indicates he was probably not suited for that sort of command.
Here’s the earlier story in the Observer with the pattern of relevant facts to the case:
http://fayobserver.com/articles/2013/08/01/1273331?sac=fo.military
Medic, hes a LT, they are all idiots. im pretty sure it is a job requirement
@13 That article really breaks it down. I’d been watching this story for a while, and at first glance/early on it looked like he was subject to overzealous prosecution. The cover ups, falsifying statements, enticing platoon members to file false reports? That was enough right there to have torpedoed his career. Not to mention the other crazy shit he ordered his platoon members to do – all in a span of 5 days. Real hard to plead your case to the courts with that kind of evidence. I do feel bad for him and his family. His background shows a stellar highly motivated soldier. He never should have been put in charge of that platoon – at least not without a very seasoned ‘take no BS’ Plt Sgt to stop the nonsense before it happened.
@ 14, Smitty – I know that was tongue-in-cheek; but I have to say that I served under some very good officers at times. They were all LTs at one time or another, eh? Actually, my first platoon commander, a young LT, was a model of compassion, discipline, and plain good sense. That’s why he raised up a good group of soldiers; and continued to improve himself along the way. Sounds like LT Lorance was overwhelmed by the situation, and unable to respond appropriately. The whole story is very sad. There are no winners in this one.
I’ll echo what others have said about NCO mentorship of young officers. However, one thing I’ve noticed about “Mustangs,” to borrow that Marine term, is that some think that because they came from the ranks, they don’t need the input of their NCOs. This could be one of those cases.
A couple of dead Afghans? Really? That’s the problem?
Maybe someday we’ll stop fucking around when we send people to die in foreign lands and go back to fighting foreign nations like we did from 1941-1945 when we burned entire cities full of civilians to the ground. If your country harbors those who would kill my countrymen you should expect a quick death by bullets, bombing, or artillery. If your nation allows foreign NGO militias to operate with impunity you should expect to be considered complicit in the acts of that NGO, you should understand you are an accessory to all that NGO has done and will do.
Every city in Iraq and Afghanistan should have been burned to the ground and tens of thousands people living in those cities should have been killed during that fire bombing. A swift and terrible campaign as practiced by Curtis LeMay should be conducted against any nation that harbors those who fly planes into our buildings. More dead Iraqis and Afghanis won’t bring our dead back to life, but the message that fucking with the US will lead to a total, devastating destruction of your nation will be sent to all the appropriate shitbags in the middle east.
This LT might not be a sterling example of our best and brightest but 20 years for killing a couple of Afghanis is ridiculous, we are not killing nearly enough of these fucking people and when we leave the message we will send is that we are weak and have no stomach for killing and no endurance to conduct a war against those who will kill us. If you think that message won’t have repercussions down the road you must be some kind of fucking idiot.
His side of the story is on the web:
http://www.defendoursoldier.com/About-the-Case.aspx
So what happens to the Soldiers who followed the illegal order? No action taken if they testify against Lorence?
And yeah rush this one and Bales to trial while letting Hasan wrangle over cutting his beard while collecting $200K in pay.
bah
“Lorance was convicted of committing at least one crime every day he was with his unit at a small outpost in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan last summer.”
This guy is a fuck-up. He was in a leadership position and he blew it on more than one occasion. The system then bit him. It is suppose to. His cover-ups more than did him in.
@18 – Your last comments made me think of the comments I’m sharing, those of General James “Chaos” Mattis:
“I’m going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.”
“Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they’re so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.”
“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you Fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
All are appropriate, but that mindset in today’s military environment are clearly long gone.
@21 This particular LT might be a bad guy, I don’t know. The alleged cover-ups seem to indicate something wrong….but I do think we are far more concerned about how the Afghans feel than whether or not our troops are safe, or even our civilians are safe.
I don’t give a f#ck about the Afghans, or the Iraqis or a host of others in the middle east who cheer every time an American dies. Those people clearly don’t respect us, and they firmly believe we are not strong enough to take the fight to them for the long haul.
Based on our current activities and political statements I am inclined to agree with the Taliban/Al Qaeda mindset that the US no longer possesses the fortitude required to deal with an enemy who doesn’t mind killing civilians in any setting. I long to see the current military leader who will opine as did Curtis LeMay that what they intend to do is a war crime, but is still necessary to implement the will of our nation. Our politicians certainly are mostly weak kneed cowards these days who blanch at the thought of actually killing our enemies…they think a drone strike here or there sends a message, well it does send a message….just a different one than our politicians believe. Drone strikes tell our enemies we will use an airborne IED to kill a couple of their guys in a similar fashion as they use them on our guys and their own civilians. Not exactly a message of overwhelming force to our enemies….
after 9/11 we should have bombed afganistan back to prehistoric times (the stone age would have been upgrades). another terrorist attack, another middle east country bombed to hell and back, repeat process as needed. if we had a spine, and let those who would wish us harm know the consequences of their actions, they would stop attacking us. let the world say we are evil, but we will be strong and free.
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”
I’ve always understood this to mean that while it’s ugly to conduct a total war against an enemy it’s better than pretending you can avoid it by talking….
Reminds me of a buddy of mine in Iraq, he was an E5 who got moved to a Bradley commander slot after one of our E6’s lost his shit.. My E-5 buddy and his gunner were just sitting in the turret one early morning on the back end of a 24 hour IED observation post about 8 months into our deployment.. The gunner saw some haji fishing in the euphrates by himself on this shitty boat.. The gunner asked my friend if he could shoot the guy because he hadn’t killed anybody yet and was worried he wouldn’t get the chance to which my friend responded “I don’t give a fuuuuck” In a long drawn out Missouri drawl..
The gunner shot the guy (with his M4) and watched him fall into the water deader than fried chicken, a few weeks later the gunner who was teetering on the edge of losing his mind at the beginning of the deployment completely lost it, having his weapon taken away and being sent to battalion to talk to the brain ranger for among other things cutting himself and popping muscle relaxer pills like they were fucking tic tacs..
I don’t blame either one for what happened, the American people and these shitball politicians seek up monsters to fight their wars for them and then when one of them acts out, they try to act outraged.. Just one more reason why I will never risk my life for this ungrateful country of shitbags ever again..
At 0200, while on QRF (Quick Reaction Force), we were called out to secure an area where a civilian convoy had been ambushed. We were to set up a hasty road block and wait for the Area Security Teams to come out and investigate the ambush. My team had set up south of the area on Hwy 2 and had about eight to nine vehicles in line when all of a sudden the rear vehicle about 100 meters away pulls out of line and at a high rate of speed moves towards our location. Thoughts come to mind:
VBIED (VEHICLE BORNE IED).
It’s getting closer.
Insurgent forcing civilians to drive.
It’s getting closer.
Civilians doing stupid.
It’s getting closer.
Fellow troopers on ground.
It’s getting closer.
Do we take them out.
It’s getting closer.
Do we take car’s engine out only.
It’s getting closer.
I jump behind the open door of our vehicle and fire at the engine block and direct my gunner to do the same with his 50 Cal. The vehicle is stopped, the two civilians are shook up, and after checking we find that they were not a threat, just doing stupid. Go figure. Was this the right action to take? In this instance it was but what about the next time. In that split second you do what it takes to protect your fellow troopers and yourself.
Blacksheep, ive been in numerous incidents similar to yours as the .50 gunner. i always shot the occupants, not one regret about any of it. it is better to ere on the side of your men’s safety than to risk the worst case scenario
OK i get it whenever we talk about a LT we have to throw in the obligatory should listen to his PSG, dumb LTs etc etc but really in this case that does not apply. I seem to recall a very simple conversation with my first smoke about this exact kind of thing, went along these lines: Sir i will advise and recommend things but at the end of the day when bullets start flying there is not time for that and i will execute your orders without a moments hesitation because thats the only way it can work.” lets be honest one person is ULTIMATELY responsible for the platoons actions right or wrong, the PL, not the smoke, not the section chiefs, the PL. something along the lines of “responsible for everything your units does or fails to do” from my very first initial counseling. Thats why LTs have the commission. It is just as much a burden as a privilege and it comes with responsibilities. I felt bad about this case until i saw the attempted cover up. seems to me that LT Lorance forgot something: Mission first. we have convinced ourselves with the idea that the risk of harm coming to our soldiers is NEVER justified so we become overly protective and forget that sometimes risk and even deaths are the price for accomplishing our mission. That is special burden that falls upon military leaders, to be willing to see the men you are responsible for killed by your orders and is by far the hardest part of being an officer. LT lorance forgot that he had responsibilities in addition to bringing his soldiers home and instead placed them in the position of killing innocents not by accident which is horrible enough but deliberately. he is ultimately responsible for his orders and though we were not there he was judged by a jury of his peers not a bunch of civilians, being in combat is not an excuse to do what ever you feel like. if he violated the ROE then this is a just punishment. as… Read more »
LebbenB: I think you’re correct in Lorrance being prior service. I believe I’ve read elswhere that he’d served previously in Afghanistan as an MP.
Not too many officers do 2 different tours in a combat zone as a 2LT.
@25. What you just described–as you described it– was murder. I truly hope that some facts were omitted or that some info was added that did not, in fact, occur.
I think what cooked this LT’s goose and resulted in the lengthy sentence was that he told his subordinates to cover up what happened. Hard to convince a court martial panel that you honestly believed you were acting within the ROE when you’ve already lied about what actually happened.
I remember a court martial over a “borrowed truck” during the initial invasion of Iraq. The defendants claimed military necessity. As I recall the sentence for “theft” was minor but they got near the maximum for false statements and related charges.
It would be interesting to see how the sentence here was apportioned between all the charges.
John Lilyea, I think is indicative of a training problem with the US Army and the military in general. Maybe these cowards need to stop murdering innocent Arabs and committing rape and randomly violating the right of Afghans, Iraqis and whatever other peoples this nation whose right this country decides to violate.
#32; Thanks for not reading the post or any of the comments and making wide jumps to conclusions.
THETRUTH: your opinion might be more credible if you could express it in proper and technically correct English.
Then again, maybe not. I think we got the gist of your unintelligent rant – even if you expressed it like an anti-American asshole living somewhere in SoCal who might speak English as their second language.
@32.
Clown.
ALCON:
THE TRUTH is speaking while not thinking. And if thinking … is not very intelligent. Perhaps THE TRUTH can kiss my US Navy MCPO royal Irish ass.
That is all.
@32…thanks again for bringing nothing to the discussion. The adults are talking, so why don’t you go play somewhere else, little boy?
Hey THETRUTH, you must have just read “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Am I right? Sure. And I bet you’re related to that deader-than-a-door-nail John Murtha, aren’t you? You sound like a swell guy. Stop back often.
I guess we covered about everything there is to say about THETRUTH.
“Two members of his platoon testified that they had seen no reason for firing at the men but had done so because Lorance ordered it.”
Who’re those retards? Army just exists to put beer and skittle in their pockets, someone else is responsible for their actions.
@40. “Who’re those retards?”
They are US soldiers who were following orders that were not clearly and uneqivocally unlawful.