Vincent J. Curtis
18 Feb 2016
At the link is a story from Fox News headlined, “Decision
looms for Army Sergeant who protected Afghan boy.”
The story is that SFC Charles Martland, a Special Forces
(Green Beret) soldier was stationed on a remote FOB in Kunduz province, Afghanistan,
had a mother and her twelve year old son approach him with the accusation that
the local ANP commander, named Abdul Rahman, had bound and raped the boy and
then beaten her.
A medic examined the boy with an interpreter and concluded
that he had been.
SFC Martland and a person I am surmising as his A Team
commander, Daniel Quinn who would rank as a Captain, approached Rahman with the
accusation. Rahman not only admitted it,
he laughed in their faces about it. The
two soldiers shoved the smug police official to the ground, and then threw him off the base.
Rahman then went to their superiors and complained about his
treatment. Martland and Quinn’s
superiors promptly removed them from
their assignment. They were subject to
further discipline.
As a result of this event on his record, SFC Martland was
selected to be involuntarily released as part of a reduction in force. He is fighting it, and that is the reason for
the news story.
The reason I am noting this event is that this sort of abuse
of field leadership happens all too often in the military, and not just the
U.S. military. The politics takes
precedence, and no one has the back of the field leadership, not even senior
army leadership. Often, the senior
leadership are the worst offenders.
The rise of the “Strategic Corporal” is one such example of
political leadership leaving very junior field leadership to shift for itself,
and woe betide the junior leader should something bad happen. He is toast.
The Canadian military has got itself all wrapped up in the
so-called “sexualized culture,” and woe betide the field leader who gets
accused by some recruit or some newbie of exhibiting something of the “sexualized
culture.” The reputations and careers of
field leadership are held hostage to the immature opinions of their
subordinates.
This is a crazy way to run a military. Sooner or later it will cost the military in
terms of the quality of the leadership it retains. The leadership it retains won’t be fighters.
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