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FRIENDLY FIRE
In the article “Friendly Fire and the Limits of the Military Justice System” by LTC Davidson (Naval War College Review Winter 2010) I note on page 138 he states "The apparent lack of success of the military justice system does not appear to be a function of how the law is written but rather of how it is applied." I think this is an unsupported conclusion since the justice system is but one cog in the machinery that implements the will of the commander on the battlefield. As far as the very real lack of success in prosecutions, too often the adversarial nature of trial will reveal shortcomings that placed a servicemember in a position of imperfect knowledge - things the commander should recognize but which an investigation into the specific member's actions did not reveal. I would thus argue that the military justice system is successful when an Article 32 investigation or a subsequent trial develops lessons that improve the force.
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