I walk my hound on a martingale and not a slip lead, but letting go has much the same effect. If I let her go, she’ll run and not look back. ”Cry ‘Havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war” is Shakspere’s way of saying that when you choose war as the means to achieve policy you lose control of outcomes.
At the strategic level this idea was attributed to another Elizabethan, Queen Elizabeth I. If she spent ten thousand pounds on war with France perhaps she would win and impose her will on the King of France. Perhaps she wouldn’t. If she bribed the King of France with ten thousand pounds, however, he would do her bidding.
At the tactical level the unpredictability of war is at least as pronounced. Friction and interaction with the enemy always produce undesired results; or as Forrest Gump memorably put it, “shit happens”. The scatological angle is especially apt in this case, of course.
Pissing on the corpses of one’s enemies is an undesired outcome for US operations in Afghanistan.
A recent British moment was a bit more sanguine. A soldier of the Royal Gurkha Rifles was told to bring back proof he’d killed a Taliban chieftain, and under time pressure documented the kill not with a photo but with the subject’s severed head. This was no trophy-taking: a soldier was doing his best to follow a lawful order. We do send Gurkha soldiers into the field with razor-sharp meat cleavers, and we are vaguely aware that Gurkhas have been known to do something other than a charming and vigourous folk dance with their kukris. Yet while we are very pleased when Johnny Gurkha puts a 5.56 x 45mm cupro-nickel jacketed boat-tailed ball into Terry Taliban, we find it a bit outré when one part of a dead man ends up on the company commander’s desk by way of documentation. (I am told the head was returned for proper burial with the rest of the body.)
Beheading the dead is not part of the campaign plan for British forces in Afghanistan.
As atrocities go, a bit of micturation on the mortal remains of enemies already killed is mild. Doing horrid things to live people is worse, and young men drunk with their power over other human beings do rape and torture and plunder. Single men in barracks, wrote Rudyard Kipling, don’t turn into plaster saints. Men on operations likewise.
Rape is used deliberately as a weapon in some conflicts, but it has been a concomitant of war and even peace support operations in all but a few cases. Other violence against noncombatants likewise.
The whole structure of military command is designed to ensure that combat power is exercised effectively, and that it is exercised appropriately; but make no mistake, when you send soldiers to exert the state’s will you are sending them to deal death and destruction. If death weren’t on the agenda, they wouldn’t bring guns.
The notion that soldiers, sailors and airmen are rather like police but wearing green is dangerously wrong. We emerged from Libya with comparatively clean hands only because photographers weren’t on hand to document the effect of gravity bombs on young Libyans. When you let slip the dogs of war, expect gore to splatter liberally.
Historically, dealing death and destruction has had a harsh effect on soldiers. Doing so without a strong feeling that they’re doing the right thing can be especially corrosive to their military effectiveness and their psychological well-being. Good NCO leadership, from lance-corporals to the Regimental Sergeant-Major, and good officer leadership, again at every level, not only keeps soldiers’ misuse of their power to a minimum but also minimises psychological casualties.
Abuse still happens, though. Psychological casualties still happen.
When you let slip the dogs of war the results are unpredictable. People die whom we don’t intend to kill. People are made legless, armless, blind and insane whether or not they fit the Hague Convention’s definition of combatants.
Fisk of the Independent blames armies for being vile. This is wide of the mark: it’s not that armies are vile, it’s that armies cause unintended damage. Tarak Barkawi, blogging at al Jazeera, hits the mark spot on: governments make policy by exercising armed force. They have to take responsibility for the damage.
The US Marines are a well-officered, well-led fighting force. The Royal Gurkha Rifles more so (but I would say that since I educate RGR officers). If the State’s policy requires that they go overseas and destroy they will destroy as ordered. But the convenient modern delusion that the application of force in faraway places is somehow sterile is hollow. The Marines on whom a world of unpleasantness has descended were wrong to urinate where they did, but the business they usually do with rifles and mortars and artillery rounds is far harsher, and their forgivable errors splash more vital fluids.






