Another fine post from Jason illustrates what I think is one of our primary problems in Iraq – hell, just about anywhere in modern warfare, when you get right down to it:

Along the way we passed an intersection on the banks of the Euphrates river, with several fruit and vegetable stands underneath an overpass. As my vehicle, towards the end of the convoy, approached the turn, I saw a man turn and walk away back toward the crowd, behind one of the stalls. He was wearing a coat, a red scarf around his head (in the Palestinian style), and most significantly, carrying a stockless AK-47 across his shoulder as if he were Opie carrying a fishing pole.

There was nothing about him identifying him as a policeman or security guard, authorized to carry a military style weapon. I hadn’t seen policemen wearing head wraps before, either. He was moving away from us. His back was turned, and he was not, himself, an immediate threat.

My first instinct was to jump from the vehicle and capture him, yelling “Kiff!!!” (“Halt!!!”). But that’s problematic in a vehicle with no communications. If I jumped out, the two vehicles behind me would stop, but the rest of the convoy would keep rolling, and I’d be left with me, one gun truck by itself, an ambulance crew, and a chaplain. Hardly the force I want to gather if I’m going to be out picking a fight.

I was also worried about getting hit from the flank by an unseen buddy of his. If he’s an Ali Baba, he’s not working alone.

My second instinct was to drop him on the spot, center of mass.

No, that would be a stupid idea. I didn’t have a clear shot. I would have had to fire left handed. I was in a moving vehicle. He was standing right next to a market. There were kids around, and if I fired, everyone else might have fired wildly in the same direction and we’d have a Fallujah-like moment on our hands.

So I stayed put, kept an eye on him, got the soldier behind me to keep an eye on him—probably too excitedly, in retrospect, and scanned for his buddies.

A few seconds later, I realized that although he could easily have done so, he was making no effort to conceal his weapon. I lowered my rifle, scanned the overpass and anywhere else he might have buddies hiding, but we let the man go. We took no action.

The time elapsed between the spotting and the decision to move on was about five seconds or less.

When we got to brigade, I went into their ops center and gave a report to the intel officer, so they could send a patrol to investigate.

It was nagging at me for a couple of hours. Did I make the right call? Would another convoy run into a deliberate ambush because I let this guy go? Would WE run into it on the way back?

I mentioned it later to the NCO who was behind me and said, “I don’t know…maybe I should have shot him on the spot.” I’m not sure myself how serious I was about that statement. But the sergeant said “No. We’re not kids. That’s something a dumbassed kid in the 82nd would do, and you would have caused a massacre, because everybody would have shot in the same direction.”

He was right.

I found out later that it was an Iraqi security guard who works at that intersection all the time. He wears an armband, but apparently had put his overcoat on, concealing the armband.

The decision to live and let live, in this case, turned out to be the right one.

This time.

This time. But at the time and under the pressure who really knows, and how is one supposed to know it, in a situation where crucial and risky decisions like these have to be made in mere seconds? A tough call, always – and that’s how it always is. If there really is a true and applicable similarity to Vietnam in the Iraq conflict, this is probably it.

Our troops in the field rely on their training, the instincts developed by such training, and in the end their own simple humanity to keep them and their fellow soldiers alive. But so many times there is no clear-cut “right” answer, and so much rides on simple luck. It’s very humbling indeed.