Army kicking out decorated Green Beret who stood up for Afghan rape victim

[Ooh-Rah]

I know FOX loves to run these type of stories "soldier wronged by big govt"...but will one of you guys with a green tag PLEASE respond to this and reassure me that Sgt. Martland is being booted for more than just what he is accused of in this story? There has to be more to this than what is written....

LINK

EXCLUSIVE: The U.S. Army is kicking out a decorated Green Beret after an 11-year Special Forces career, after he got in trouble for shoving an Afghan police commander accused of raping a boy and beating up his mother when she reported the incident.

The case of Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland now has the attention of Congress, with Rep. Duncan Hunter writing to Defense Secretary Ash Carter challenging the decision.

"I am once again dismayed by the Army's actions in this case," Hunter, R-Calif., wrote in a letter to Carter.

Martland is described by many of his teammates as the finest soldier they have ever served alongside.

But his Army career changed course during his second deployment to Afghanistan in 2011. After learning an Afghan boy was raped and his mother beaten, Martland and his team leader confronted a local police commander they had trained, armed and paid with U.S. taxpayer dollars. When the man laughed off the incident, they physically confronted him.

 

[Viper1]

I know FOX loves to run these type of stories "soldier wronged by big govt"...but will one of you guys with a green tag PLEASE respond to this and reassure me that Sgt. Martland is being booted for more than just what he is accused of in this story? There has to be more to this than what is written....

LINK

EXCLUSIVE: The U.S. Army is kicking out a decorated Green Beret after an 11-year Special Forces career, after he got in trouble for shoving an Afghan police commander accused of raping a boy and beating up his mother when she reported the incident.

The case of Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland now has the attention of Congress, with Rep. Duncan Hunter writing to Defense Secretary Ash Carter challenging the decision.

"I am once again dismayed by the Army's actions in this case," Hunter, R-Calif., wrote in a letter to Carter.

Martland is described by many of his teammates as the finest soldier they have ever served alongside.

But his Army career changed course during his second deployment to Afghanistan in 2011. After learning an Afghan boy was raped and his mother beaten, Martland and his team leader confronted a local police commander they had trained, armed and paid with U.S. taxpayer dollars. When the man laughed off the incident, they physically confronted him.

After reading the article a couple things: 1) This is not the first time conventional force or sister army units investigated SF actions based on an Afghan complaint. It happened to me. It won't be the last. Another reason why trust is important, and not easily given.
2) I hesitate to believe what the article says about how Quinn and Martland had no other choice to get their point across. There was a fairly well known process for removing Afghan commanders for corruption, war crimes, etc. It was a packet which went through U.S. and Afghan channels. Sometimes it was arduous and fruitless, and other times it was swift. We used it four times with 50/50 success. For the lower level leaders it was swift but the higher ones e.g. police chiefs were always hard to remove. Burden of proof was always high but child molestation was a surefire way to piss off the locals depending on the area you worked in. Where I was at, local Afghans had no patience for a "bacha-bazi." In other areas it was more accepted or common place. If local Taliban commanders were discredited in this way they couldn't stay in the AO for long...discrediting government officials is more messy.

Anyway you slice it, the situation is a poor one. Tough environment to work in for sure. I can envision how the reporting chain went from conventional force, up the chain to BDE level across to the higher SF ranks, possibly with incorrect information or embellishment, and those two were swiftly punished. Bad turn of events, bad consequences from laying hands on an Afghan.

 

[DA SWO]

RFC NCOER should be a career ender, nor an ETS ticket for a SOF NCO.

SOF isn't getting smaller, and the ops tempo is staying the same so the Army just lost a body that will take 2 years to replace and another 4 years to season.

Hopefully 19th or 20th SFG will pick him up.

 

[Il Duce]

He got selected for QMP by a board, it is a drawdown method for Army forces. That means if he doesn't go, someone else does.

 

[AWP]

A shove? A shove has you kicked out? Shoving an Afghan at that? There's no way this is the story and I say that with zero knowledge concerning the process. I have a hard time believing this wasn't embellished or being used as an excuse (as in Il Duce's post) for something larger. Merely shoving someone warrants a discharge? Nonsense. Where's the Paul Harvey moment?

 

[Il Duce]

The way I interpreted the story was the QSP/QMP board selected this NCO for separation. Those boards have started up the last couple years since the drawdown - similar to the SERB/OSB boards on the officer side. HRC convenes a board and they look at all the NCOs of a certain rank who were not selected for promotion and evaluates their potential for future service - usually through their potential for promotion. The first criteria used is a screening for derogatory information - DUI, GOMOR, relief for cause. After that they screen for the strength of their records. NCOs deemed to have the least potential for future service/promotion are identified for separation until they get to the number they need to get rid of for accession purposes.

Sounds like this NCO received a bad NCOER or GOMOR for the incident in AF several years ago. That was enough to make him a non-select for promotion, then the QSP/QMP board found he was unlikely to ever be promoted so had minimal potential for future service as compared to his peers. The purpose of the boards is to get rid of a certain quota of NCOs at certain ranks and MOS' so if it wasn't him it would be another 18 series NCO - possibly one without derogatory in their file.

It's undoubtedly an unfortunate situation for the NCO but it's what everyone in the military has to deal with eventually. Everyone has the maximum rank they're going to reach, then they're going to have to leave. No matter how much you love the military it's never going to love you back, and when your service is done it's done - something I think makes @ritterk recent post on family, relationships and their importance even more poignant.

To me it's incredibly unfair for Rep. Hunter to cherry pick individual cases on the QMP/QSP/OSB/SERB boards and take the Army or HRC to task. Those boards are executed by records scrub - which is the fairest way to do it. If we want to reform something it should be our evaluations process. If evaluations weren't so inflated and so dependent on the opinions of one or two individuals we could have a system where people might make mistakes and recover. Instead we push towards a zero-defect culture in written records where sub-standard performers can squeeze by but superstars who have single-incident mistakes are done.

 

[Rabid Badger]

SFC Martland did what any of us would have done. Please support the SF Regiment as we stand with this True Hero and Warrior Elite.

SFC Charles Martland

 

[Etype]

After reading the article a couple things: 1) This is not the first time conventional force or sister army units investigated SF actions based on an Afghan complaint. It happened to me...

Me too.

All they have to do is run to the district center and fuss.

 

[Totentanz]

Threads merged.