What Pete Hegseth Doesn’t Understand About Soldiers
Lethality alone doesn’t win wars.
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In the summer of 2014, I was leading a company of Green Berets—from the 5th Special Forces Group—in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province. President Barack Obama had recently promised an end of combat operations in the country, and the Taliban understood the tactical implications of his statement, believing that the drawdown of coalition forces meant they could now operate with impunity. They further believed that during the holy month of Ramadan, our Afghan partners, too tired from fasting during the day, would not conduct large-scale operations against them. My company, along with commandos from Afghanistan’s 5th Special Operations Kandak, decided to surprise them.
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Over the course of a week, we would assault Taliban strongholds, striking enemy forces when and where they believed they were most secure.
During one of these operations, in Dasht-e-Archi district, a combined American and Afghan team had just stepped off the helicopters when Taliban machine-gun crews opened fire. Our soldiers responded without hesitation, killing several enemy fighters and capturing a Taliban machine gunner. At that moment, the team leader radioed me. He was suddenly confronting a scenario that every Green Beret officer prepares for during the Special Forces Qualification Course: His foreign counterpart was about to commit a war crime.
The machine gunner was severely wounded and, in the dark colloquialism of our profession, circling the drain. An Afghan lieutenant argued that the fighter didn’t deserve mercy; his commandos should finish him off. The impulse was understandable in the lieutenant’s heightened post-combat state; the proposal was also illegal and morally reprehensible.
The team leader helped talk the Afghan lieutenant down. The Talib would not be executed. Our medics worked to stabilize the man who had just tried to mow them down with a PKM machine gun. This decision was less about what the fighter deserved and more about the kind of soldiers that my men were, and that we wanted our Afghan partners to be.
