WHAT DO THE FAMILIES OF FALLEN HEROES REALLY NEED TO KNOW?

There is a clamor now demanding the families of the four soldiers killed in Niger be told exactly how and why they died

On October 4, an American Special Operations task force accompanying Nigerien troops was ambushed by some ISIS-affiliated fighters. Four American soldiers were killed and two were wounded. The body of Sgt. La David Johnson was not recovered until two days later and was found a mile from where the ambush occurred.

Now Congress wants to know why the task force was there and who, if anyone, screws up. Early reports say the fallen heroes were victims of faulty intelligence. I believe this is political posturing by members of Congress, but they do have the right to know. But what about the families of the fallen heroes, what do they really need to know?

There is a big clamor going around now demanding that the families be told exactly what happened and who screwed up. I believe it has been media generated.

Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democratic congresswoman in the mold of Houston’s loud-mouthed Sheila Jackson Lee, happened to be with the widow of Sgt. Johnson when President Trump made a condolence call. Ever ready to trounce on Trump, she claimed that the president told Mrs. Johnson, that her husband “knew what he signed up for … but I guess it still hurt.”

Wilson bellowed that he president was insensitive to Mrs. Jonson with that remark and she was so mad that she wanted to take the phone and cuss Trump out. Insensitive? What’s insensitive here is Wilson politicizing the tragic death of an American hero.

This is not the America of my generation. During WW2 there were thousands of GIs who died because someone fouled up royally. Some military experts claim the bloody invasions of some small atolls in the Pacific were unnecessary.

During the Korean War thousands of American troops died because of a colossal error in judgement by presidential-ambitious Gen. Douglas MacArthur. He ordered our troops to advance to the Yalu rRver because he was sure the Chinese would not come to North Korea’s aid. He was dead wrong and so were thousands of American soldiers.

During the Vietnam War, U.S. commanders ordered a frontal infantry assault on Hill 937 which became known as Hamburger Hill because of the way our troops were ground up by entrenched North Vietnamese troops. When our brave soldiers finally took the hill, they were ordered to return to their base, leaving Hamburger hill to be reoccupied by the North Vietnamese.

The families of WW2 soldiers who died in combat were not told the details of their deaths. They were told their loved ones died as heroes in defense of their country. The Korean War gold star families were not told their loved ones died because of the presidential ambitions of the commanding general. They were told their loved ones died as heroes in defense of their country. The families of those killed on Hamburger Hill were not told they died needlessly fighting for some obscure hill in South Vietnam. They were told their loved ones died as heroes in defense of their country.

President Trump was right when he told Mrs. Johnson that her husband knew what he signed up for. That was not insensitive, that was telling her that her husband was a hero who knew he might be killed when he joined up. Only a scumbag like Frederica Wilson can turn a fine gesture into a media-aided political firestorm.

And Mrs. Johnson is complaining loudly that they refused to open the casket so she could view her husband’s body. Perhaps a little history lesson might help Mrs. Johnson. Many WW2 gold star families never had the opportunity to bury their loved ones in American soil. Thousands of fallen American heroes are buried in American cemeteries in France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and the Philippines.

So what do the families of our fallen heroes really need to know about their tragic deaths. Not why their loved one was where he was and not that he died because someone fouled up. Just like in WW2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, all they need be told is that their loved one died a hero in whatever place he died in defense of his country.

Somebitch, what this country hasn’t come to. Those who disrespect our flag and country by refusing to stand for the National Anthem are praised for therewith taking a stand against social injustice. Smart phone videos and the media keep the country focused on the occasional police shooting of blacks instead of focusing on daily black brutality which kills far, far more blacks than police brutality. The country is literally going to pot. And every breath our president takes is excoriated by liberals with the aid of an eager anti-Trump media. Sadly, this is not the America of my generation.

(A shorter version of this was published in the October 28 edition of Big Jolly Politics.)

Here is an outstanding comment in BJP by one Jeff Larson:

In a war, lots of things can happen. The bigger the war, the more likely it is that someone will die due to someone else’s mistake. It happens because people are only human.

In the Cold War, many soldiers died under circumstances that could not be revealed to anyone who did not have a clearance and a need to know. Declassifying that information could in some cases conceivably provide the Soviet Union with a causus belli, and that wouldn’t have served anyone, including the next of kin of the deceased.

Certainly some similar missions continue today, although we would hope on a much, much smaller scale and with much less frequency. Generally people who perish on such missions “know what they signed up for”, not only in the sense of enlisting in the first place, but in applying for and completing a grueling selection process for progressively more elite units, and by acquiring ever more sensitive security clearances. Generally, the people who die in this service are not “cannon fodder”, but the “tip of the spear”, people who are extraordinarily skilled, fit, and qualified, and who knowingly take extreme risks in service to their country.

However, let us be clear, the nation is not at war. To those who would counter that technically we are at war, I would say that the two AUMFs that were issued over 15 years ago have in any honest sense expired, and should be rescinded immediately. It seems extremely unlikely that anyone could be serving under any rational interpretation of those AUMFs in Niger. And no, just because some outfit calls itself “Al Qaeda in Sub-Saharan Africa”, that doesn’t mean that it has any plausible connection with the Al Qaeda that killed thousands of Americans in 2001. That organization has effectively been destroyed; those who cling to their twisted beliefs have as much culpability for what happened on 9/11 as the American Nazi Party does for the Holocaust. Condemn them? Yes. Treat them, militarily and legally as the terrorists that they are? Sure. But we should not pretend that we are legally “at war” with them, because if we follow the Constitution, we are not.

And with that in mind, it is completely appropriate that the US goverment be as transparent as possible with not only the families of the deceased, but with the rest of the American public as well. It may be that the reason our servicemen are in Niger is rightly and properly a state secret, one whose disclosure would do harm to America. If so, we should quickly admit that they were on a “classified mission”, draw the veil of secrecy over the matter, and make a full disclosure to Congress in a closed-door session. But if this is not a matter that must be kept secret for reasons of national security, then it is the public’s right to know, and whatever is known about it MUST be disclosed. As citizens responsible for governing ourselves, we cannot maintain our security by blindly trusting our incumbents to wage war in the dark. We must understand our own strengths and weaknesses in order to evaluate policies and candidates for office. Do you think it appropriate that Carter’s aborted rescue of the Iran hostages would be kept a secret indefinitely? How about Iran-Contra? The Battle of Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down)? At some point, the public MUST know what’s going on. Neither it, nor the families of our fallen servicemen, need to know every detail of every miscue, no matter how small. But whether or not we have hundreds of soldiers in a particular country? That needs to be disclosed, and it seems obvious that it was not disclosed to many Congressmen.

The rantings of a Florida Democrat are unimportant here. Regardless of what she demands, we need to do the right thing.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jeff, that’s an outstanding and well thought out comment.

You are right, the ISIS-affiliated and ISIS-inspired insurgencies we are helping the governments of Central Africa, Yemen and the Philippines fight are not the al-Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11. But if these insurgencies succeed, much of Africa and Asia will be in the hands of Islamists, and that will be a security threat to the United States.

As for the families of the four heroic soldiers who gave their lives in defense of this country, they don’t need to know every detail of their tragic deaths. Mrs. Johnson doesn’t need to know why it took two days for her husband’s body to be recovered and why it was found a mile from where the ambush occurred. All those details are important to the military but will not bring back the lives of their loved ones.