WASHINGTON -- Just back from Bosnia, a U.S. Army lieutenant stood before a class of West Point cadets last year for a lesson on clear, cold reality.
"I tell my men every day there is nothing there worth one of them dying for," the lieutenant told the would-be junior officers. "Because minimizing -- really prohibiting -- casualties is the top-priority mission I have been given by my battalion commander."
The blunt talk contradicted what the cadets had been studying: Minimize casualties, yet complete the mission. Now they were being told that protecting their troops was the mission. The next generation of Army officers came face-to-face with the new, topsy-turvy world of the U.S. military.
This cautious approach to combat and peacekeeping operations -- "casualty aversion" -- is a growing trend that is not only jeopardizing the success of missions where U.S. troops are involved, such as Bosnia and Kosovo, but also corroding the military ethos of self-sacrifice and protection of noncombatants, say active-duty officers and military analysts.
"Sometimes soldiers are obligated to take risks to get the mission done," explains Maj. Tony Pfaff, a philosophy instructor at West Point, who described the cadet scene in a study he co-wrote in December, "Army Professionalism, the Military Ethic and Officership in the 21st Century." Without risk, he argues, soldiers become "hard-working technicians, not soldiers anymore."
He and others say that military leaders and politicians fear a public reaction against the spilling of American blood. But polls show Americans will support deadly military operations, as long as the reasons are clearly explained and the United States sees it through to completion.
Firsthand experience
Pfaff saw firsthand this no-casualty emphasis as an infantry officer in Macedonia in 1994. He recalls that missions could be canceled because of extreme weather, lest hypothermia or other difficult conditions injure the troops.
If protecting U.S. troops becomes the mission, Pfaff and others ask, how can America train soldiers to fight and win the nation's wars? It is one of the reasons, they say, that young officers are abandoning the profession of arms in droves. Ordering soldiers to avoid firefights is akin to telling firefighters to stay away from burning buildings, he says.
