I didn't really get a good view of the news footage of this incident. I saw the fuzzed out version from accross the room and really couldn't see what was happening.
Let me begin by saying that I have never been in military combat. I have never been in a gun fight of any kind.
I have done some sims training, and been through a few shoot houses that had hostages and non-combatants. However probably the most enlightening thing like this I ever did was a video shooting range: I don't know what you call it, but it is like watching senarios on video tape projected on a large screen on a shooting range. As the senarios play out, you have to decide whether or not to draw, whether or not to shoot, whether or not to get behind cover etc.
Something that I quickly leanred is, that when you have a split second to decide what to do and you are pumped up, you sometimes make a wrong decision or one that seems right at the moment, but later turns out to be the wrong decision. Based on this experience, I would have to assume that all this is greatly magnified when you butt and those of your buddies are on the line. When you are in the middle of on-going, active combat. When you are in an area where the people were given fair warning to get out. Where it is a logical assumption that the people who decided to remain are your enemy. Where you, yourself had been recently wounded.
I shot that course quite a few years ago. The only senario that I remember now is one that I am sure many on this board have seen. You are a police officer responding on a call of a possible sniper on a freeway overpass. You arrive and find a man on the overpass, as reported. The man starts walking toward you. You issue a comand to stop and put his hands up (or whatever you choose to say). The guy ignores you and keeps walking toward you. His right hand goes behind his back. His right hand suddenly starts forward. You fire two shots center mass. The video tape contiues with two holes in the target. The man is holding a card that says: "I am a deaf mute".
I can very easily see how I could walk into a room that contains people I consider to be my enemy lying on the floor. They don't understand English and I don't understand their language. One man suddenly starts to roll over or turn around. I don't know if he is armed, has a bomb strapped to himself, or he was lying on a greande. I have a split second to react. I have been recently shot by a man looking just like this one.
Based on what I imagine the situation to have been, I am going to fire.
How many times on this board has someone used the phrase: I would rather be judged by 12 than carried by six ?
It is a great American past time to armchair quarterback. Some people actually take this seriously and make absolute statements about what they would do or what should have been done. I do it myself, but I realize that my doing it from the comfort of my own house, with plenty to eat, plenty of sleep, minimal stress is entirely different than actually being there at the tip of the spear making the same decisons based on a fraction of the information we have now. I find it very productive to do this in my own job. I review calls I run in my head after the fact and armchair quarterback them. What could I have done differently ? What could I have done better ? What other information could I have gathered ? Were my skills up to snuff ? I often even review calls with my partners to see if I had tunnel vision and missed something important, or was there something I never even thought of or never knew ? But in cases like the ones we are discussing, I don't think we have the capacity to put ourselves in that guys shoes and know what actually happened, how fast it happened, what frame of mind he was in, what circumstances surrounded the incident etc.
Most of us make mistakes. Some more than others. One thing that I find interesting is that some people pay a greater price for their mistakes than others. In your job, you may make a mistake and it is no big deal.In other jobs, a mistake may cost someone their life. In neither case was the mistake intentional. I am sure that in this case, the young Marine wishes it hadn't happened: if for no other reason than he is in trouble for it. However, in his job, mistakes are a lot more dramatic than most people's jobs. And, his job and his mistake are going to be much more widely known and second guessed. No matter what happens, he will pay a heavy price for that split second decision. And the same people that complain about this incident would also complain if he was killed. One thing I am sure of: the people that have been there and done that will be far less critical of him than the armchair commandos who got their experience on a video game.
I had lunch today with two Korean war era Marines today. Both of them can't believe that this has become an issue. These are men that are now well along in years and have had many life experiences. Time has had it's chance to soften their viewpoints on life. Neither condemed this Marine in any way. Instead they comdemed the media for making a circus out of it. One guy looked down at the table, took off his glasses and said in a low voice, I would be doing life in prison right now............ and his wife grabbed his arm and said she didn't want to know about it. Not that it matters at all, but that guy left the Marine Corps. after the war and became a very succesful businessman. Raised a family and is now a multimillionaire.
