Static Zombie

Nobody get's left behind has been a policy for many special forces units, for a long time now. It is one of the things that hold them together and helps with morale.

While a cost-benifit analysis sounds nice it is pretty damn hard to apply to people. How much is a person worth? Is person X worth less than person Y? Which one is better to leave behind than the other?

Based on what you said, if someone gets taken hostage, a rescue attempt should never be made, because rescue attempts always involve more than one rescuer.

It's a tricky question, and sometimes the results can be a disaster, but I don't think leaving people behind would be better. Actually, I'm pretty sure it would, in the end, be worse. If you make people feel like they don't matter at all, why would they fight as hard as they can? Why would they try not to reveal secrets if they know they will never be rescued? Didn't we not rescue a lot of people in Vietnam? I don't think that went over very well.

There are always going to be one way missions, and the soldiers involved will go anyway, but those are isolated cases and they will know what to expect ahead of time. As a general rule though... no. I just don't see it.

My point wasn't that we should never mount rescues. It was that we shouldn't ALWAYS mount rescues.

And we especially shouldn't risk living soldiers just to recover dead soldiers. There's a point in the film where the general asks how much longer the mission will be, and the captain tells him that they're cutting apart the cockpit to get at the dead pilots and he's not sure how long it'll take. Here's where the general could have said "The pilots are dead, I don't want to risk more men. Get out of there." Instead, he reiterates "Nobody gets left behind," putting more soldiers in harm's way for the sake of recovering remains. That cost-benefit analysis is a no-brainer, and the general blew it.

Well, I agree that recovering bodies is above and beyond. You certainly shouldn't leave them if you don't have to, but risking lives to recover them (once you are sure of their ID of course) doesn't make sense.

If they are alive though... much tougher call. How do you tell someone's wife and kids that they weren't worth rescuing? "Sorry kid, dad was a good guy and all, but we had to leave without him"? It is done, no matter what the credo may say - sometimes there is simply no choice and people do get left behind. That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do though. When it comes to peoples lives there is never an easy answer.

I haven't seen the movie so have will take your word on the general being an idiot.

Peter, don't quote me, but I believe the movie was based on a true story...

Michael

Yes, it was. When I said the general took full responsibility for the raid's outcome, I was referring to the real-life general.

The book is, as it is so often the case, a much better work. It covers quite a bit more ground about the operation, the politics, and the elan of the men and boys that belong to the Rangers.

Is leaving a dead body behind rational? Yes. Are we rational? No. I wouldn't leave my dead mother behind to be ripped to pieces by an angry mob, although that would be rational. And for these men, that is the type of bond they have. Let alone any religious requirements (I believe Jews need to bury the remains, no matter how few or how badly they look).

There is also the issue of telling Mom and Dad, "yeah, we left your dead kid in the chopper. If you catch CNN you can see what they did to him." Which, indeed, is what happened with the people from Durant's Black Hawk (It might have been the other chopper, but I am pretty sure it was his).

People might think the general was an idiot, but he was a man of honor. He didn't blame the DoD, or faulty intelligence, or anyone else. The raid was his responsibility, and he took responsibility for its failure. If only more people were like him!

Alfredo Lorente
(Never served, but know people who have risked their neck to allow me to be be a proud liberal.)

i absolutely would leave my dead mother behind rather than risk lives to recover the corpse.

Jason faced the choice between Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla was a monster that guaranteed would kill some of his crew, but also some of them would live. Charybdis was a chancy whirlpool --either all of them would live or all of them would die.

The Greeks treated the Illiad as their Bible, and their answer was face Scylla and take the deaths as a necessary loss. Watch a few TV shows and it's obvious our culture's choice is instead Charybdis: All or nothing, leave no one behind.

The thing that stunned me in Black Hawk Down was the massive amount of casualities the Somolias take. They're being shreaded to pieces in every scene, and its realistic. The highest estimate I've seen is 9000 total Somali casualites, more conservative and most commonly agreed on is 500?1,000 Somali killed, with total Somali casualties probably running over 5,000.

All for 18 US killed and total casualites US of around 80. Trading 80 casualities for 5000? 500-1000 dead for 18?

George is right -- as a nation, we want to have our cake and eat it too. However, that doesn't change the fact that if we want our armed forces to have the elan and espirit du corps (sp?) they show, we need to let them know that they are valued.

One of the reasons we have such a professional army is because it is all volunteer. Do we want to tell these men and women "thanks for your interest, but don't expect us to give a rip about you?" If that is the goal, we might as well go into a conscript model. (Not that there isn't some benefits to throwing the jail population into the Marine Corp -- discipline, honor and respect are lessons that are being forgotten daily in this country.)

Something else that is important, but tangential. The two snipers willingly gave their lives to protect Durant (sp?). They knew they would likely end like the rest of Durant's crew: dead. But as part of that brotherhood, they chose to risk their lives in an attempt to rescue one of theirs. It certainly was ruinous to them, from a cold and calculating perspective. It was also noble and courageous.

A criticism of the on-going Gulf War, when we were operating against SH was how units would operate individually, without the support of friendly units close by. While we had radios and robotic bombs, our soldiers didn't have other buddies close by. When things got hairy, they were by themselves, hoping that the combat support would get there in time. As is to be expected, morale suffered. (This came from an article on Wired, I believe, talking about the new methods of war. I think the issue was June 2003, but could be wrong.)

In essence, yes, at face value, the "leave no one behind" makes little sense. And in a protracted firefight, it *is* better to push forward so that the rear echelons can take care of the wounded and dead. But for the Rangers, SEALS, Delta Force, Green Berets, et al, leaving men behind causes much more damage than not. George's numbers alaso tell a tale: when fighting a mob, a small, well-trained force can cause quite a bit of damage and suffer very little punishment in return. Something the movie didn't mention either is that the ammo our boys had was armor piercing, so it usually took two or three shots to drop a "skinny" (the name the soldiers gave tothe Somalis). And, finally, to George's mythological point, again, by any traditional yardstick, we won that firefight in Somalia. But like in Vietnam, what we lost was the will to fight*.

Alfredo Lorente

*After Tet, the Viet Cong was decimated. All the VC objectives for Tet were abject failures. But even though we "won" the on the battlefield, we had no will to keep on fighting. And this statement has nothing to do with the value judgement on wether Vietnam, Somalia, or even the Second Gulf War are morally justified. That's a kettle of sharks and I am not going there...

Look gentlemen,
part of the Ranger Creed reads, "...and under no circumstances shall I ever leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy". There is a bond. A bond so tight that no civilian will ever have the honor to understand something that may sound idiotic to the "brass" or civilians that deem an American body as an acceptible loss. There is no such thing and Blackhawk Down depicted that nicely. I'd be damned if one of my "brothers" were ever to be touched by the hand of our enemy...dead or alive, they will come home to their loved ones. it makes us more willing to go into the helms of hell knowing that at least we won't be burried there, or, better yet, drug through the streets.
Airborne Infantry Sniper...C/Co 2/505 Parachute Infantry Regiment 96-2000

I WOULD SAFEGUARD THE LIVING BEFORE ATTENDING TO THE DEAD. ITS SIMPLE,THE DEAD SOLDIERS CAN BE RETRIEVED LATER

Really? Do you really think, after going into the combat zone and angering the entire population, they'll feel free waltzing back in and asking for the bodies back? The "leave no man behind" policy is designed to boost morale, so soldiers know that even if they don't get out of a firefight alive, they'll be brought home to loved ones. An army is made up of people, not robots. Would you go on vacation and leave your brother or sister at the airport by themselves, penniless because someone stole their luggage? No, of course you wouldn't. So why would you even consider leaving behind someone you've trained beside for years, shared everything from a foxhole to beers with? A unit is in many ways like a family. In many ways, more than a family. You don't leave people behind.