Cards Drawn: Reject Information & Leave for Dead
Our governments get a lot of criticism for their actions in countries they should have nothing to do with. More recently, the United States, Britain and France received a great deal of backlash for bombing Syrian research, storage and military targets for Syria’s alleged chemical attack. The information was so concrete to leaders of each of these countries, that even General Mattis, who had 24 hours earlier said he needed more proof, was convinced Syria was behind the attack. Russia, on the other hand, tried to convince the world no attack actually occurred and that it was all staged.
The very sad truth, is that none of us can confirm the attacks. Unless you are qualified to detect the traces of chemical attacks, and can travel to Douma- you simply will not have an answer of the truth on this. All we, or our governments, can do- is look at what little evidence we really have…and make up our own minds.
I learned this first hand when I attended the National Youth Leadership Forum. While I attended this fascinating trip, high school students from around the country were separated into smaller groups where we would get to interact with one another as different members of the government, and media. We had mentors that would also facilitate a live role-play of what goes on in the government during times of crisis. While we were there, we each got to participate in role-specific talks with representatives of each branch. My role was the Secretary of Defense. I was tasked with studying the Tri-Border Area (TBA) in South America so that I could be prepared to deal with the subject as a member of the cabinet. Our goal was to come up with a strategy to deal with problems going on down there, with what limited information we had.
But while we were in the meeting, a facilitator came to me and passed me a note. He whispered in my ear: It’s up to you what you do with this information. Sometimes the Secretary of Defense doesn’t say a word, sometimes they do. Every bit of information passed to me I was told the same thing “It’s up to you what you do with this.” And every time my response was the same: Imma tell the “Cabinet”.
After everything was done…I wondered if I should have. Our group was praised as doing one of the best jobs the facilitators had seen. So you might wonder why I wondered if I should say anything at the initial memo. It’s because, the story was fake. I mean, obviously it was fake, but I mean- it turned out that the scenario was a lot of misinformation. I was told that our citizens were captured by enemy forces in the TBA, and they were making some crazy demands. As a cabinet, we went to the media to ensure that we were keeping our people informed of what we were going to do to get our people back. We gave them enough information to keep them from making up their own stories, but not enough that our enemy would know our plans to get them back. We had already started the process of sending in troops to retrieve them. But just before they were to launch….the citizens we thought were captured by the enemy turned up- having just gotten picked up by local authorities for a completely legal reason.
It was nothing. I could have easily rejected the information…but what if I did, and condemned innocent people to death?
Our government relies heavily upon the information given to them. The scenario wouldn’t have changed. If I had said to my own guys “I need more evidence before I take this to the president”, the information would have flowed the same way. The scenario was set up to give me more evidence that this was actually going on. And I would have had to act upon that information regardless. It’s the same for our governments. They operate in a chamber that is removed from the actual action. They are given an opportunity to reject what information they have, and leave the possibility that innocent lives will be lost. But they risk being wrong when they accept the information, and their actions are based on fabricated evidence.
It is because of this (as well as other reasons) that we have rules of war. Governments study strategy that deals with everything using diplomacy to military actions, but it should always become apparent to us that no answer will be perfect, and that we cannot expect our governments to be infallible. We can only hope that our government is in earnest doing what they believe is righteous, rather than what is beneficial to them.