U.S. Army Techniques Publication 3-39.33: Civil Disturbances | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Army Techniques Publication 3-39.33: Civil Disturbances

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63 pointstaivare38 comments

tldr; The mission is to avoid aggravating the local population any more than necessary, and they may be angry for good and valid reasons. Hurting/shooting people tends to anger people and turn the military presence there untenable(costly in material and lives).

okay, I mixed in a some background from other publications in the tldr, but whatever.

of course : " One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine... " - From a Soviet Junior Lt's Notebook

one take away from the videos of the police in Ferguson recently, they point their guns in the protester's directions more often than not, as in they are dialing up the antagonism. Real soldiers would never do that, you only point at whom your going to shoot.

Wanna be soldiers become cops because its easier than making it through boot camp

Wow, lots of absolute statements there.

"Real" soldiers do sometimes use weapon-mounted optics for observation and target ID. They don't always end up shooting the people they're looking at.

Your statement about cops simply reveals your ignorance about law enforcement.

>> "Real" soldiers do sometimes use weapon-mounted optics for observation and target ID. They don't always end up shooting the people they're looking at.

I've yet to hear a vet tell me that's an acceptable crowd control tactic. Not everything the military does is crowd control, and when they engage in crowd control they don't use all of the tactics that an infantryman at the front lines might use.

To put into less hyperbolic context : when a 'target' is standing seven feet from you, you shouldn't need to aim a sniper rifle at them to identify them through its' optics.

A police sniper with a magnified scope isn't there to provide "crowd control" in the sense that you're describing, i.e., getting up close and personal with a crowd. They'd be providing overwatch from a distance.

That said, using binoculars would convey a much less threatening impression than observing through a weapon-mounted scope. On the other hand, we don't know exactly what the tactical situation was when that sniper was aiming at the crowd. Unless you do, you're not in a position to say whether he should have been aiming at people or not.

This.

Armed forces use scopes to gather information; this is acceptable.

Police under the influence described by the Stanford Prison Experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment) Aim weapons at civilians to assert dominance that they feel they must exert.

The action is the same, the reasoning is different.

Agreed. I'm also taken aback by the recordings of unprovoked hostility from the cops. To reporters, mind you. If this is how they are acting towards the media, how badly are they treating the minorities in their communities who have little to no power to fight back?

Keep in mind: the standard for justifying the use of lethal force for a cop is whether the officer had reasonable belief that he/she was protecting himself or others from serious injury at that moment. The scope is narrow - it does not take into account if the cop provoked the fight in the first place.

They're fearful, the cops. Not excusing it but this is not only the community lashing out at their lack of power, but the authority lashing out at the same. I don't want to psychoanalyze this but I think the whole thing is part of a bigger picture where authority in America is trying to maintain control of a public that is, according to almost any poll you find, is seriously disillusioned with their leadership. And they react with the deft touch of your typical large institution.

I think they are fearful and it must be stressful to have to do an admittedly dangerous job under immense public scrutiny, media attention, and the disillusionment of their communities they're supposed to serve.

But Ferguson's disillusionment is not an abstract dislike of authority, it can be concretely traced back to its history. When we talk of disillusionment we need to talk about years of police abuse and mistreatment of citizens: racial profiling, trivial arrests and police brutality. And they continue to justify the community's scepticism by withholding information (the officer's name), clumsy attempts to manipulate the narrative (the unrelated story of the robbery) and attempting to shut down the media.

Not all cops are bad, but it whatever institutional policies exist to hold cops accountable is non-existent; they haven't earned the community's trust.

This is another reason to standardize police forces. Allowing counties to determine whether their units have to be monitored by dash cams/personal cams is a mistake. We need a more unified police.

Being an MP is an easy way to get into law enforcement.

And they are too dumb to make it as PE teachers.

Ignoring the content, I was mildly taken aback to find two spelling errors in the first couple of pages.

Aren't these policy manuals written by supposedly smart people? And as government documents handed out to thousands of people, don't they get professional editing?

It's a small thing, but it leads me to think "broken windows." If correct language is one of the details that's considered undeserving of professional attention, then what else is?

> Aren't these policy manuals written by supposedly smart people?

No. Not smart in the sense you'd have it. They are smart in the sense that they found stable jobs in government where they can write policies like this at a desk and get a stable income, good healthcare and lots of vacation days. They are smart in navigating a govt type of bureaucracy (which involves lot of ass kissing, towing the official party line, not sticking out, doing the minimum to get by).

What experience do you base this statement upon? I serve in the military and can tell you that the writers of military doctrine are typically senior (O-4 and above) officers with post-graduate degrees. These are people who have devoted many years of their lives to military professional education. Like any manual, the possibility for a typographical mistake exists. There is an official channel for readers to submit errors that they find. In this case, you can submit your errors to the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence at Fort Leonard Wood via DA Form 2028, which can be mailed or emailed:

   Send comments and 
   recommendations on DA Form 2028 (Recommended Changes to > > Publications and Blank Forms) to 
   Commander, MSCoE, ATTN: ATZT-CDC, 14000 MSCoE Loop, Suite > 270, Fort Leonard Wood, MO 65473-
   8929; e-mail the DA Form 2028 to 
   <usarmy.leonardwood.mscoe.mbx.cdidcodddmpdoc@mail.mil>; or    submit 
   an electronic DA Form 2028.

I'd rather have them focus more on content and less on spelling. Especially when we are talking about the procedures for avoiding killing lots of people. Priorities are important in life.

>Often in the media, protesters can gain sympathy for their cause by prompting authorities to take physical action against them.

"blame the victim" right from the start (2nd paragraph). I guess that sets the tone for the army people who are normally pretty isolated from social issues and don't have very well informed opinion of their own.

>The level of violence is determined by the willingness of demonstrators to display and voice their opinions in support of their cause and the actions and reactions of the control force on scene.

"the willingness of demonstrators to display and voice their opinions in support of their cause" as a major leading factor determining level of violence - blame the witness again, these hippies/african-americans/whoever brought it upon themselves. If you think about it - a willingness to display and voice your opinions is a major existential threat to the established order and, given such level of the threat, violent response by the established order would be a reasonable (from the order's POV) thing.

Major point here seems to be as usually is to take all responsibility issues on the part of enforcers/army out of picture and just make them follow the orders with full surety that they going the right thing. Typical brainwash.

Nice, you totally cut and pasted out of context:

>>Often in the media, protesters can gain sympathy for their cause by prompting authorities to take physical action against them.

>"blame the victim" right from the start (2nd paragraph). I guess that sets the tone for the army people who are normally pretty isolated from social issues and don't have very well informed opinion of their own.

Sentence immediately before this in the same paragraph "During unified action, U.S. forces should never violate basic civil or human rights. Most protesters are law-abiding citizens who intend to keep their protests nonviolent, but some protest planners insist that the event involve violence."

>>The level of violence is determined by the willingness of demonstrators to display and voice their opinions in support of their cause and the actions and reactions of the control force on scene.

Again, the sentence before this one: "Violence can be the result of demonstrators beginning to conduct unlawful or criminal acts and authorities (who are responsible for the safety and welfare of all) enforcing the laws of the municipality, state, or nation."

You're biases are clear.

the key items are naturally embedded in the "context" so an argument like yours can always be made, yet these key items are the ones that's getting ingrained in the minds of their target audience. Basic skill of good copywriting.

to the rayiner below - there is no argument that protests are crushed much more violently in the rest of the world (may be except for a couple of countries like England and Germany). There is a reason i left Russia where just calling for a protest is a felony these days :)

By your reasoning, you can take any quote out of context and use it to make up an argument.

I don't know anything about your experience, but I suspect you have no idea what the hell you're talking about. The fact is that protests out in the rest of the world aren't like protests in San Francisco. I was once in Bangladesh during a "hartal" (general strike). People staying in our hotel were shuttled to the airport under armed guard. Last year, almost 100 people were killed in these sorts of protests. And Bangladesh is a very safe, stable country compared to the ones where the U.S. military usually intervenes. That's the context this manual must be read in.

What does how other countries deal with protests have anything to do with the US Army's guide to dealing with protests?

I agree it was a biased statement, but the key issue is that if you roll out soldiers to address a civil disturbance, you need to figure out what they are going to do.

If they are there to prevent escalation, they need to take the abuse hurled at them and suck it up.

Saying "We come in peace and respect you, stand by while we crack your skull open with a truncheon" doesn't exempt your conduct. If standard operating procedure calls for escalation from skull-cracking to rifle fire into a crowd to machine gunning of the crowd, we have a problem.

"if you roll out soldiers to address a civil disturbance, you need to figure out what they are going to do."

One of the interesting things I learned participating in a number of protests in recent years surrounded by veterans is that they were shocked at the local PD's willingness to violate basic human rights in ways that they'd never have been allowed in the Army / Marines / etc..

One of the concerns I discussed with a friend this weekend regarding the current / recent situation in Ferguson is that police with military equipment are doing things that are simply not acceptable for soldiers at war, such as outright pointing their weapons into a crowd in order to get people's attention, as well as the unchecked use of teargas which I also saw in Oakland.

I don't look forward to encountering any group of soldiers in a demonstration, nor do I doubt the Army has policies that are frightening, but one of the most frightening things about the militarization of police is that police are civilians who do not answer to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, nor do they require proper training on how to interact with the public as military. Many of them are vets, but not all of them had such duties while in the service.

This is why you often hear the perception that these police are 'dressed up to play soldier' because as horrifying as it is that a city would send soldiers in to repress its' citizens, it's an order of magnitude worse because they aren't trained to have any restraint and the protest they are policing is _directly_ against them and their presence in the area.

John Oliver touched on this in his recent segment.

The Army, is given training in Escalation Of Force. The police, who are being given all these toys because terrorists and drugs, do not have that training.

This is why you hear about the police shooting and killing unarmed civilians, deploying teargas in residential areas, and walking around pointing their weapons at people instead of the ground.

Frankly they shouldn't have that gear at all, but if you're going to give it to them at least train them properly with it first.

"Frankly they shouldn't have that gear at all, but if you're going to give it to them at least train them properly with it first."

Absolutely 1000% what I was trying to get across.

I don't want to see the national guard in my neighborhood, but I would rather see them than the Alameda County Sheriffs or CHP armed with the national guard's equipment.

The horrifying part is that the police leadership is willing to throw the policemen into the breach, overarmed to a degree that just begs for escalation.

It's hard to fault the individual policemen -- when someone starts tossing molotov cocktails, your view of reasonable force is going to be different.

Just like in any large institution, there are written explicit rules and there are unwritten rules. Quite often unwritten rules are the opposite of explicit written rules.

The explicit rules are there to provide a background of what is acceptable in PR-speak. The unwritten ones have to be inferred. For example when they say:

"Oh protesters often try to provoke us so we commit violence. And well we are nice little soldiers, and we want to abide by the Constitution"

You can read that literally or you can read that as an advice -- make sure to plant undercover people in the crowd of protesters. Who will initiate violent and provocative actions, so that you can respond properly and squash the protest.

And that is exactly what is done often.

In fact most successful navigators in the bureaucracy who climb to the top, have a very good instinct of understanding these unwritten rules.

P.S. Another, made up and hyperbolic example could be say during the Vietnam War. There could have been a rule written "Make sure to count the number of captured Viet Cong when you disembark from the helicopter. And make sure to never to harshly interrogate them during transport and threaten to throw them overboard". See a nice rule of what not to do. Except that is also a rule-book for those that understand things a little deeper of exactly what to do.

It's not like this is a hypothetical -- the US military is deployed all over the world, and routinely faces protesters. Do these confrontations result in violence more often than, for example, ones involving US domestic police forces?

> Do these confrontations result in violence more often than, for example, ones involving US domestic police forces?

Well if domestic police force could use drone to blast away protesters they would rather do that then get down and dirty. But alas they actually have put on their tactical vests and drive the APC to the scene...

The U.S. Army doesn't simply use drones to blast away protestors though, so I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

There have been many soldiers who have died because in their race to follow proper "Escalation of Force" procedures, the other guy blew them up or shot them before they could get to the point where the soldier was allowed to use deadly force in self-defense.

When the U.S. Army finally went to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Gen. Honoré told his subordinates that he would get the paratroopers serving under him shot, before he would allow soldiers to walk around with body armor, weapons un-slung, or to open fire at anybody. They were quite successful in helping to restore order, and they didn't have to open fire on anybody; this was contrasted with police efforts beforehand, which had been limited to "stay in your homes".

So go ahead and talk about Vietnam all you want. You should probably throw in Kent State too! But this is 2014, and the Army should be evaluated on what it's doing today and into the future.

> The U.S. Army doesn't simply use drones to blast away protestors though,

What does it do? How many large protests have there been in Afghanistan or Iraq? I don't anything large happening there. You know why. Because anyone trying to organize protests in a war zone get killed "enemy combatants".

> the other guy blew them up or shot them before they could get to the point where the soldier was allowed to use deadly force in self-defense.

Ok, let's talk modern day if you don't like Vietnam. What the fuck was a US soldier doing in Iraq to start with? Was there a draft? I don't recall there being one.

If Iraqi Army was in the streets of New York you bet you'll see their soldiers getting below up to bits with IEDs just as much even if not more.

> Gen. Honoré told his subordinates that he would get the paratroopers serving under him shot,

So Gen. knows how to spew propaganda. Hell, he wouldn't be a good general if he didn't.

> So go ahead and talk about Vietnam all you want.

I will. It provides a solid historical basis. We can go further back too.

> the Army should be evaluated on what it's doing today and into the future.

What is it doing today? Have the found any WMDs yet? They sure spent a lot of time, money and lives looking. If that doesn't spell "failure" I don't know what does. It is both economic, moral, political and social.

Let's chat some more. How about that Abu Ghraib? What was that all about. A few bad apples. How about the apples down in Cuba. Also a few bad apples.

What happened in Mahmudiah? Raping children. Bad apples again. What the fuck where they doing there to start with.

There is more. But I just get angry writing about it. So I think I'll stop here.

I was just being nice talking about Vietnam. But ok if you want to talk about recent event, fine let's talk about.

> What the fuck was a US soldier doing in Iraq to start with? Was there a draft? I don't recall there being one.

A draft has nothing at all to do with whether the invasion in 2003 was a legal use of armed force or not, under U.S. domestic law or international law. If that invasion was illegal without the draft, then it was also illegal with a draft. Being a conscript doesn't make your participation in an otherwise illegal invasion magically legal.

But. Even if you disagree (as I do) with the justification for invading in Iraq in 2003, there are and were plenty of legitimate reasons for U.S. forces to be there to restore security after the U.S. fucked everything up.

In fact, the current government of Iraq and the Kurdish pesh merge invited the U.S. back in to conduct air strikes to beat back ISIS (who prominently came to power after the U.S. military left...), much to the acclaim of practically the entire world, including the U.N., including Pope Francis, including Iraqis themselves. I'll bet even Iran was happy.

But that U.S. intervention was just as legal as the U.S. presence in 2005. You can't have your cake and eat it too, man.

> So Gen. knows how to spew propaganda. Hell, he wouldn't be a good general if he didn't.

It wasn't just the General. The Democratic mayor of New Orleans was quite complimentary as well: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/honore.profile/

But either way, no offense but your idea that an Army General (or soldier in general) is simply locked into being a bloodthirsty monster by virtue of the system they operate in is just as crazy as the idea that being a black single mother must make you a welfare queen, or that being a gay homosexual must mean that you like home decorating and keep up with fashion.

> Have the found any WMDs yet?

The Army never said there was WMDs to find, so what's that have to do with anything.

> How about that Abu Ghraib?

Reported to the world by the Army? That Abu Ghraib? I mean, if you want to bash on the Army, you should bash on the Army for refusing to promote the Major General who investigated the conditions at Abu Ghraib after it was leaked to the world and came back with a report damning of the entire setup of the U.S. presence at the prison. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/06/25/the-generals-re...

There's plenty of bad apples, alright, but they were wearing stars on their collars, and suits and ties, and included officers and civilians. Not just generals, but Rumsfeld, and Congress too. Should we disband Congress then? Install a benevolent dictator?

Gen. Taguba points it out best himself: "From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service. And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values...".

OK, so there are a bunch of senior officer shit bags... does that make integrity, service, honor and duty bad things? No, it doesn't, and in any event soldiers get immersed in those values to a far greater degree than local and state police forces.

It was those same values about sacrifice and integrity that led a junior enlisted soldier to inform the world about the Mahmuydiah atrocity you pointed out. That wasn't caught by a human rights activist, it was caught and reported by a soldier.

So if your viewpoint is that an entire institution must be put to death for the crimes of its members I'm going to have to disagree. Should all libertarians have to answer for the slayings contracted by DPR? Should all Socialists have to answer for Stalin and Mao?

I see no blame anywhere in the article, and claiming that:

> army people [...] are normally pretty isolated from social issues and don't have very well informed opinion of their own.

is both untrue and offensive.

EDIT, never mind I see you took the bold stance of commenting from a throwaway.

Clearly you are not familiar with Military culture. Military and their families live, eat, party, go to theaters, go to school, shop,... on Military bases that civilians have limited if any access to. Some are stationed in foreign countries or are on float (working on a ship) for months. They are definitely separated from the rest of us.

No, that's simply not true. I've said this on HN several times through the years but it is still and will always be true: the US military is a slice of Americana. Virtually every subculture represented in America can be found in the US military. We live in your neighborhoods, eat at the same restaurants, watch the same TV shows, and send our children to the same schools as you. We are you.

Military bases have places to go to, yes. But they certainly do not seclude or sequester themselves from civilian life.

Indeed, if military servicemembers actually could be relied on to stay on base many senior officers would be inordinately pleased.

But do not confuse being able to walk on base with a complete isolation with the civilian sector; servicemembers still have civilian friends, parents, relatives, spouses, children, in-laws, social acquaintances, often co-workers, and the list goes on and on.

As far as being on a ship (with access to email, news, and Facebook...) for months, what do you think happens to civilian mariners, or astronauts, or offshore oil rig workers when they're gone for months? Are they necessarily isolated and socially inept too?

Impressive cherry-picking ability you have there.

> I guess that sets the tone for the army people who are normally pretty isolated from social issues

What? That isn't true at all.

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