Stardate 20040415.1609

(On Screen): There was a time when I respected Bruce Rolston and considered his comments important, but as time has gone on it's been harder and harder to take him seriously. His posts used to contain substance, but now they largely consist of bile.

Today he posts a link to a news report from Australia which reveals that some Australian pilots in Iraq aborted bomb-runs during the combat last year, and then asks rhetorically why it doesn't merit the kind of condemnation I made for the French in this article.

There's a critical difference. According to the Australian article:

In a remarkable account of how our airmen applied Australian rules of engagement, an RAAF pilot has told The Sun-Herald each of the 14 RAAF Hornet pilots aborted three to four bombing runs because intelligence given at pre-flight briefings did not concur with what they found at the target.

One of my readers wrote to me to explain how ETACs are used in our military. Here's part of what he said:

In combat, they have nearly total control over the mission, with oversight and final mission approval coming from the Army ground commander. During a mission, the enlisted guy says where, how, and when the aircraft will drop its ordnance. A pilot may refuse a mission if it excessively endangers the aircraft, or he believes it endangers friendlies on the ground, but he can't proceed without clearance from the ETAC (enlisted terminal attack controller) on the ground. If he drops without clearance and good guys get hurt, that pilot is in serious trouble.

In fact, it is standing orders that a pilot should refuse to release his bombs if he has serious doubts about the situation. I'm not surprised to learn that Australian pilots exercised this last-minute veto. I am sure that if we had access to the proper records, we'd find that American pilots also refused to drop many times.

Bruce tries to make it seem the same as what the French did in Afghanistan.

I seem to remember France was cast into the jingopundits' outer darkness in part because their pilots did this once or twice in Afghanistan.

That's not what happened. The French squadron command refused to fly major missions against certain targets because the French themselves disagreed with the strategic decision to bomb those areas.

Australian pilots refused to drop their bombs because they judged there was too great a risk that the bombs would strike the wrong things. That means they were following their orders; that is what they were supposed to do. The news article describes this as being consistent with "Australia's rules of engagement", but it's also American doctrine and would have been Coalition doctrine in Iraq.

Our military doctrine does not treat pilots or soldiers as mindless automata who unconditionally carry out orders. They are given assignments, not orders, and are expected to use their own judgment in carrying out those assignments.

In Afghanistan, the French squadron commander refused to put jets into the air to attack a target he was assigned. It had nothing to do with concerns that the target designation was based on faulty intelligence; it was rather that the French government fundamentally disagreed with the strategy being implemented in that campaign and was trying to change it. Feeble though it was, it was a French attempt to try to gain a voice in deciding the strategy for the battle.

That's not the same kind of thing. And after the French refusal, a different air unit got assigned that same target and carried out the mission.

The breathless news report from Australia came from the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia's equivalent of The Guardian. It's hardly surprising that they think this is somehow significant.

But Bruce seems to have a great deal of knowledge of military affairs and practices. He should have known better. Of course, he would have had to forgo an opportunity to take a swipe at America, and to use the word jingopundit.

Update 20040416: TMLutas comments. (Uncomfortably.)

Update: Bruce responds. His final question: "The question is, given only that French quote at the top of the page to go on, why did we then assume French perfidy, and now Australian uprightness?"

Why is it that we must only go on this one French quote? Are we not permitted to consider other French actions, and Australian actions, before concluding that