Captain Robert Semrau
Image of Captain Robert Semrau taken from 24 Hours News
The man above, Captain Robert Semrau, is by all accounts a good man and a good soldier. He was recently charged with murder for allegedly killing a “98% dead” enemy soldier on the battlefield. He was acquitted, but was convicted of “disgraceful conduct,” a crime that carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. He is awaiting sentencing. Recently, he went on the record in a gracious, dignified manner to say that he would be happy to serve his country again.
My heart goes out to Capt. Semrau. He saw a badly injured enemy soldier on the battlefield. According to various international treaties, he was under a legal obligation that in my opinion makes no sense: to provide medical aid to the soldier who would have been his target only a short time before. The following is based on a letter I have sent the Prime Minister’s Office. I would like to encourage every Canadian to write to our government to demand justice for this man–and by justice, I mean the application of common sense.
Dear Prime Minister,
Hello; I am writing about the appalling debacle that was the Capt. Semrau trial.
Mr. Prime Minister, this case should never have come to trial. Capt. Semrau, a soldier who served our country with distinction in military operations in Afghanistan, is now facing the prospect of prison and a discharge from the military for allegedly killing an enemy combatant on the battlefield.
It’s bad enough that Canada sends its troops to battle without decent military equipment; it is inexcusable that we send them into harm’s way with fatally-flawed legal equipment.
The application of the law under which Semrau was charged comforts our enemies and paralyzes our soldiers. I do not doubt that hesitancy caused by this trial will now begin to cost Canadian soldiers’ lives. Furthermore, it is obvious that without the 911 and medical services available in urban Canadian centres, the enemy soldier would have died a slow, agonizing death. In this case, the tradition of victors on the battlefield provides an appropriate course of action.
Please do what is necessary to have Semrau pardoned and compensated, and to ensure that no soldier suffers under these laws and conventions that have incriminated a good soldier. In the event that the law is not the problem, then the bureaucrats who brought these charges forward on the basis of the law should be disciplined.
Incidentally, I do not know Capt. Semrau, nor have I ever met him, but I would like to see him supported by the country that sent him to war.
Thank you for considering these comments; please support our troops, and bring justice to this good man and loyal soldier.
I would like to encourage my few readers to write similar letters and to offer Capt. Semrau what support they can.
5 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
July 25th, 2010 @ 2:10 am
I gotta ask if you favour sinking lifeboats escaping from a sinking enemy warship.
I only way I could accept his action is if the 98% dead enemy soldier were, in fact, quite nearly dead and finishing the job could be seen as mercy-killing.
Oh, I guess I could understand shooting an injured enemy soldier if just moments before he had been a threat and one were acting in the heat of the moment. I don’t know the details, but if he had time to think about it, or was seen to hesitate, as if thinking about it, before killing the soldier, he may well deserve the charge.
July 25th, 2010 @ 4:10 pm
Hi Brian,
Good to hear from you again, as always. The “98% dead” comment was from an Afghan–a translator or some other soldier I can’t quite remember–but it seems like everyone agrees that the enemy soldier was indeed, very badly wounded, and certainly would die without emergency aid–which would not in any case be arriving like it does in western urban centers. I believe that the enemy soldier was part of a group that had ambushed Semrau’s group, so the decision really wasn’t cold-blooded and detached at all.
As for the Geneva conventions, I think that this one of them is ridiculous. If the enemy soldier is wounded, it is forbidden to attack him. What if he still has a gun in his hand? He isn’t going to be observing the Geneva conventions in any case (they were the ones who started 9/11 after all). The battlefield requires split-second decisions that mean life or death, and the success of the mission. Regulations like this are going to lead our our soldiers second-guessing themselves, and it is going to lead to a hesitancy to shoot that will at some point cost Canadian lives.
In any case, the tradition of finishing off mortally-wounded enemy soldiers is far older, and is far more widely-recognized, than this modern twentieth century piece of paper written by office-dwelling bureaucrats. It also turns out to be, I think, the most efficient and humane action in a situation (war) that we all would say is something we should strive to avoid except when absolutely necessary.
As for the hypothetical life-boats you mentioned, there seems nothing brave or honourable about shooting them. Again, though, there are questions: are they within reach of shores where they could shoot “our” people? Are they armed? Are they within reach of anything at all? In that case, just leaving them to starve to death on the open seas would actually be the most inhumane, though certainly the “easiest” option. Also, do “we” have the necessary equipment to arrest them and bring them back to a prison camp? I don’t know what I would do in this position, but whatever the case, the situation Captain Semrau was in is far removed from the situation you mention; he was part of a group that had been ambushed on land, whereas in our hypothetical example “we” are apparently safe above the sea in our airplanes or warships, and with full knowledge of the movements of the enemy.
July 27th, 2010 @ 4:42 am
I’m certainly sympathetic to your arguments in favour of Capt. Semrau, and any military lawyer will acknowledge your argument re: aid to wounded enemies on the battlefield as a sticky situation where a lot depends on the case-by-case specifics. As you note, no one would rush to aid an enemy who is still holding a weapon trained on friendlies, and still very much a threat.
I haven’t spent a lot of time looking into the details, but one thing that concerns me is that Semrau’s former commanding general is demanding he get drummed out of the Army. That’s an unusual recommendation, so either Semrau really is way out of line, or the former CG is trying really hard to buttress his humanitarian credentials/save his own skin/look good for promotion.
Hard to say, offhand, without direct knowledge of the circumstances and personalities.
July 27th, 2010 @ 6:01 am
Hi Chris, and thanks for your comment.
I saw the article you mentioned. I think the latter possibility you mentioned is the one that is almost certain to be the case, based on the Brigadier-General’s quoted reasons. Furthermore, the article quotes a witness as saying that Semrau provided help to wounded Afghan soldiers at the scene, so clearly Semrau had no personal vendetta that he was exercising (assuming what the witness said was true, of course). I also remember another article that summarized the allegations of the prosecution:
This is of a piece with the general presentation of Semrau that everyone seems to agree on: respectful in war. I think this Brigadier-General Thompson is trying to wage a bureaucratic war on those who do not adhere to what are perceived to be Geneva Convention standards–regardless of the lack of merits or lack of humanity of those standards and their common application.
July 27th, 2010 @ 6:06 am
Thanks again, Brian and Chris, for your comments. I also think it worth noting that:
(The quotation is from the 24 Hours article linked to in the main post above.)