Demoralizing The Troops

Character witnesses have described Capt. Semrau as a courageous and dedicated officer who risked his life to treat wounded Afghan soldiers during a November 2008 mortar attack in the Panjwaii district.

When, during Captain Robert Semrau's trial, the entire jury was moved to Afghanistan, an Afghan Armed Forces commander, on seeing Captain Semrau, called him his 'brother', and clasped him warmly in an embrace. Clearly, Captain Semrau had won the trust and admiration of his Afghan counterparts. That cannot have been as a result of his unsoldierly-like conduct, but rather in recognition of his sterling qualities as a member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Yet the military adjudicator had the unmitigated gall to sit in boorish judgement on this man and declare his conduct an insult to the Canadian military code of conduct, and that his reputation and his behaviour were morally bankrupt. In fact the disgraceful conduct was on the part of the military itself, and most particularly Lt.Col Perron, who instructed Capt. Semrau to reflect on his decision to act as he had.

Lt. Col. Perron claimed Capt. Semrau's conduct to have been utterly "unacceptable". In so doing he betrayed his own lack of sensibility and compassion for an Afghan Taliban who was clearly in extremis. By all accounts the man's life was quickly ebbing away. His condition was clearly beyond medical intervention. He was suffering in obvious pain, and close to death. (On the other hand, because of confusing testimony, it is entirely possible the man had already expired.)

The Afghan military group to which Capt. Semrau and his team were attached in an advisory capacity recognized how imminent death was for the mortally wounded insurgent, and offered him the last rites as a Muslim before covering his head. And the jury of his peers that sat in judgement of Captain Semrau, after hearing all the testimony, including absent evidence, found him not guilty of second-degree murder, attempted murder and negligence of military duty.

Their finding was an innocuous - and perhaps puzzling under the circumstances where pressure was evident - "guilty of disgraceful conduct". He put a mortally wounded combatant out of his clear misery, sending him to the release of death. This expressed his own code of honour as a military man, as someone who would wish the same to be done for him, under like circumstances.

Lt. Col. Perron reiterated Captain Semrau's conduct to have been "unacceptable". He stated "the code of conduct clearly states we must offer assistance to wounded enemies who do not pose a threat to us." And that, precisely, is what Captain Semrau did. He responded to the plight of a man who had been horribly wounded by a helicopter gunship, and who was clearly on the verge of death.

The disgrace in this unfortunate matter rests on the Canadian military which chose to represent Captain Semrau as a disgrace to his uniform.