Rules of Engagement What Are Essay

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According to National Public Radio, after U.S. forces invaded Iraq in March of 2003 Blackwater received another contract, to provide security, as mentioned in the introduction. A terrible incident happened in 2004 in the city of Fallujah, Iraq. Four Blackwater contractors were killed, dragged through the streets on fire, and hanged from a bridge over the Euphrates River (Flintoff, 2007). Some weeks later the U.S. military attempted to capture Fallujah, a stronghold for insurgents, but the U.S. failed in that effort.

The U.S. authority in Iraq (Paul Bremer) issued an order in June 2004 that basically gave Blackwater immunity from Iraq law, Flintoff writes. When you are above the law, there are no rules of engagement. And several incidents subsequent to June, 2004, have brought negative attention to Blackwater. Blackwater guards shot and killed a man in June 2005 and failed to report the incident, Flintoff writes in NPR. A Blackwater guard is accused of killing a security guard working for the Vice President of Iraq (December 2006). And the most notorious incident occurred in September 2007 when Blackwater guards providing security for a State Department convoy opened fire on citizens in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians and wounding 24 others.

Blackwater claimed they fired in self-defense, but an Iraqi citizen who was hit and injured, Hasan Jaber Salman, said (CNN.com) "No one fired at them, they were not attacked by gunman…I swear to God no one did anything to them at all" (CNN.com).

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The FBI report (Johnson, et al., 2007) on November 13, 2007, found that "…at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq."

In December, 2008, five Blackwater security guards were charged with killing 14 unarmed civilians and wounding 20 others (Vicini, 2008). But on December 31, 2009, a federal judge "threw out the indictment of five former Blackwater security guards" because of "the government's mishandling of the case" (Savage, 2010). The judge (Ricardo M. Urbina) called the government's actions in handling the case "a reckless violation of the defendant's constitutional rights" (Savage, 2010).

Conclusion

Deciding what is a proper rule of engagement should not be the job of a member of the armed forces in a hostile environment. That decision should have been made at the command level and should have been explained fully to all personnel prior to their deployment. That said, a commander must be absolutely certain his protocol with reference to ROE is fully understood and fully compatible with the kind of warfare he and his unit are to be engaged in.

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