2 September 2016 MILITARY REVIEW EXCLUSIVE ONLINE

The Ironic Hindrances 

of Slaughter

A Case Study in Mission 

Command and Moral Autonomy

Lt. Col. Peter D. Fromm, U.S. Army, Retired

If you affect valor and act with violence, the world in the 

end will detest you and look upon you as wild beasts. Of 

this, you should take heed.

–Emperor Meji

The military has reveled in the notion of being 

a “band of brothers and sisters,” and rightly so. 

Camaraderie is the backbone of all worthwhile 

human endeavors, especially combat in a good cause. 

However, the time-honored traditions that make the 

military professional and the good soldier different 

from others depend on the operational ethics that 

have always separated the criminal who kills from one 

who kills with moral authority. We honor the soldier. 

The brigand, the bandit, the pirate, and the knave have 

always had an image morally distinct from the soldier, 

especially the citizen soldier and the professional. Even 

Soldiers from 1st Platoon, Bandit Battery, 3rd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 101st Airborne Division on top of a bunker at Forward 

Operating Base O’Ryan, 6 October 2005, Balad Iraq. (Photo by Spc. Tristan Kerbo, U.S. Army) 
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Mission Command and Moral Autonomy

when soldiers did not and do not live up to the ideal of 

honor, our tradition has persisted in making the ideal 

plain. Our literature, our poetry, and our desire to remember our sacrifices always turn to the good soldier. 

When Shakespeare makes the English King Henry 

V exhort his “band of brothers” to heroic action, he 

honors the soldier’s common faith, the moral standard. 

However, that ideal in literature stands in contrast to 

the real-world English terror-rides, called chevauchée, 

that Henry’s soldiers actually made upon the French 

population during the Hundred Years War.1 Agincourt

is synonymous with valor against the odds, yet history 

remembers that the English army’s chevauchée operations made the righteousness of Joan of Arc a real 

military possibility. History honors her above all other 

soldiers in the conflict. 

Honor can only be given and received if a soldier 

deserves it. Therefore, in Shakespeare’s panegyric, the 

author makes the English King espouse a mature understanding of the Just War Tradition, and he presents 

it in argument to his soldiers while in disguise trooping 

the line.2 This Henry V is the heroic military leader of 

literature, the one soldiers aspire to every time they 

allude to our “bands of brothers and sisters.” We should 

not lose sight of the context in which the phrase was 

born. The military reality was that English depredations led to a strategic loss by rallying the French peasantry, and the French King and the nobility were able 

to boot the English off the continent with the moral 

superiority they held. They ended the war victoriously 

despite a century of almost unbroken tactical losses.

Disiciplined Initiative. In mission command, the 

ideal is that the local commander wields the decision 

making authority to do what is best for local conditions 

within the commander’s intent. However, carried to the 

most effective level of the ideal of disciplined initiative, 

in a military sense, each and every soldier would understand in detail the commander’s vision, the mission 

at hand, and what is necessary for him or her to do to 

make that vision come about. 

As war is a moral undertaking, a moral contest, 

decisions naturally carry a moral quality, an ethical 

quality. In our age, this ethical aspect of military action 

suggests that effectiveness in an operational context is 

forever and intractably connected to moral effectiveness, or what we might call “right action.” The honor 

involved in more than a decade of great sacrifice and 

its dissonance with the dishonor evident in acts of 

gratuitous cruelty visited on the natives of the conflict 

(and the concomitant strategic ramifications) have 

pushed the military into institutional reflection. This 

reflection has manifested itself in an examination of 

what really is the “profession of arms” and what really 

is its ethic. This ongoing effort runs parallel to recognition that the operational efficacy of and need for 

disciplined initiative in “mission command” warrants 

full attention in modern operational environments. 

Operational autonomy devolved to any level will also 

include responsibility for right and wrong. This relationship is a practical, logical matter of primary importance in the age of instant information dissemination, 

an age in which atrocity and hypocrisy are not only 

bad but also hard to keep secret. The time to make the 

connection with moral autonomy is now.

Moral Autonomy

Timothy Challans demonstrates how the military 

can use moral autonomy to achieve right action in

Awakening Warrior: Revolution in the Ethics of Warfare.3 

Moral autonomy is not so much the idea that one acts 

independently, but more 

than that, one does so 

with moral authority 

stemming from reasoned 

principles. Moral autonomy, in ethics, is the ability 

to act on principle, not 

merely because of one’s 

character, one’s sympathetic imagination, one’s 

reliance on tradition and 

values, or one’s reference 

to example. 

These non-principled 

elements of morality 

may factor into decision 

making as important and 

helpful, but only principle 

undergirds them all, and 

under duress, principle 

does not depend on external buttressing. In combat, one may come to see 

the rules of engagement as 

Lt. Col. Peter D. Fromm,, 

U.S. Army, Retired is currently the Deputy G1 for 

U.S. Army Japan at Camp 

Zama, Japan. He holds a 

BA in social science from 

San Jose State University 

and an MA in philosophy 

from Indiana University, 

Bloomington. During his 

career, Fromm served 

with the 1st Battalion, 75th 

Infantry; the 82d Airborne 

Division; the 1st Cavalry 

Division; and the 2d 

Armored Division. He also 

taught English, philosophy, 

and ethics for several 

years at the U.S. Military 

Academy, West Point.
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Mission Command and Moral Autonomy

ironic hindrances, and when this happens, however internally, a soldier can lose his moral compass and his right 

to honor. Navigating in a world of ironies, it may be 

hard to avoid becoming morally jaded, numbed to the 

ethical reality in which military operations must occur. 

However, military leaders cannot ever allow such ironic 

detachment to overwhelm the ethics of the profession 

and the need to act on principle. Nowadays, this means 

squad leaders have to be experts at operational ethics. 

The onus is on commanders to keep the discussion on ethics going and keep it relevant, much the 

same way the Army is trying to do with the Sexual 

Harassment and Assault Response and Prevention 

program. Command climate in an operational environment has a lot to do with sloppiness in sloughing off 

risk to noncombatants just as in the past the military 

sloughed off the risks of sexual assault onto the vulnerable within the ranks. I have no doubt the vast majority 

of American soldiers would do well, are doing well, in 

operational environments; the point is to minimize 

error (or crime as the case may be) not only for the sake 

of moral honor and but also for strategic effectiveness. 

This conversation about operational ethics needs 

to be continuous and needs to be more visible to be 

effective. A morally jaded soldier still has to fight for 

strategic victory. With this in mind, command enforced 

ethics education should conscientiously prepare the 

squad leader for the day such principles will be needed. 

Military commanders should be fully engaged in aiming 

for such strategically sound action, and that means an 

ongoing commitment to education and honesty. Moral 

autonomy, in this sense, is a serious professional obligation as a soldier attribute, most importantly to rightfully 

accrue honor but also to attain strategic success. Worth 

reiterating is that moral autonomy will be essential for 

favorable strategic outcomes of future operations.

Regarding values and tradition, as an institution, 

recognizing the need for sympathetic imagination at 

the heart of morality is a good thing, but that recognition is only part of the equation—especially because 

“sympathy” (sometimes understood as compassion) 

will be, inevitably, misunderstood, misapprehended 

by soldiers in war. The Army has to make operational 

autonomy synonymous with serious moral responsibilities based on principles that transcend sympathetic 

imagination. This realization has to connect to strategic 

awareness. Obligations to persons, both noncombatants 

and enemy soldiers, must be met not as psychological 

ironies but as ethical realities that depend on one’s ability to exercise moral autonomy. Respect for moral obligations and right action must occur regardless of one’s 

loss of moral compass on an irony-laden battlefield. 

Proper ethical execution of military operations, 

in the future, will be necessary for success. Operating 

more effectively will depend heavily on getting 

low-level Army leaders to act with moral autonomy, 

to be unafraid of being loyal to the legitimately ethical 

principles of international law, of the institution, and 

of the Nation’s founding Constitution (principles of 

honesty, fairness, respect, restraint, and transparency 

where morality demands it). Simply being loyal to the 

appearance of ethics via the mouthing of “values” will 

not be enough. By operating more morally in accord 

with specific principles, the Army will do business 

more efficiently, especially from the ultimate standpoint of strategy. 

Case Study: Bloody Bill Anderson

The Kansas-Missouri border war leading into the 

American Civil War was a laboratory of the principles of disciplined initiative. In their book, Bloody Bill 

Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerilla, 

Albert Castel and Tom Goodrich detail the brief 

and sanguinary career of William Clarke Quantrill’s 

former subordinate, and late-war competitor, William 

Anderson. Anderson’s men demonstrated, in a handful 

of battles, the positive tactical effects of principles of 

disciplined initiative. But as the authors point out, his 

“bushwhackers were not soldiers, at least not in the 

normal sense. They killed because they liked to kill, 

and they were merciless.”4 By default, they exhibited the 

varied goals that the U.S. Army would like to reach in 

preaching the virtues of mission command for small 

units, especially nowadays for the infantry squad.

Centralia, the tactical paradigm. In September 

1864, William Anderson took his company of mounted 

guerillas to eastern Missouri in search of loot and revenge, but ostensibly to disrupt the rail network supplying Union troops and to cause distractions in anticipation of General Sterling Price’s invasion from Arkansas, 

which intended to maneuver toward Saint Louis. 

What is important from a “mission command” context is that Anderson’s guerillas were all highly mobile, 

they all carried multiple multi-shot revolvers (their 
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Mission Command and Moral Autonomy

favorite weapon), they communicated through a system of signals, and they all knew what to do when the 

time came. They were all prepared to act independently 

in combat in support of tactical superiority aimed at 

operational success.

However, from the standpoint of moral autonomy, 

they were untrammeled by any sense of the laws of war 

or of common humanity. This too was part of what 

they regarded as military effectiveness, as the more 

trouble they caused and the more terror they spread, 

the more Union troops would be distracted from Price’s 

invasion. Still the main motivation appears to have 

been the sheer joy of savagery and the desire to steal 

what they could. What they could not see was that 

their lawlessness was a critical strategic mistake.

The Battle of Centralia is the apotheosis of both 

the tactical and morale dynamics that bore military 

fruit for the Missouri bushwhackers at Lawrence 

and Baxter Springs in Kansas. Among the guerillas’ 

battles, Centralia therefore best illustrates how mission command principles of disciplined initiative can 

work in action. 

A Union commander, Major A.V.E. Johnston, 

with a company of 155 soldiers was near Centralia 

when Anderson’s men were ravaging the town. He 

came into town and witnessed the slaughter that had 

occurred there and learned that Anderson’s company had just departed. Johnston decided to pursue 

even after a Confederate sympathizer had ironically 

advised against it.5

Johnston followed the Confederates, thinking 

to catch them and force a battle in which his muzzle-loading Enfield rifles would outrange the guerillas’ 

revolvers. However, Johnston’s soldiers proved no 

match for the raiders. The guerillas acted instinctively in taking advantage of their weapons and their 

skill-enhanced cohesiveness—they were a band of 

brothers.

As Anderson’s Confederates skirmished with 

Johnston, the contact drew some of the Union troops 

away. Johnston paused cautiously to regroup before proceeding each time. From the descriptions of 

the battle, it is clear Johnston was carefully keeping 

control of his company, wary of being tricked into a 

disadvantageous position. Nevertheless, the guerillas 

patiently drew the Union soldiers onward without 

ever revealing their true strength. As Castel and 

Goodrich describe it:

Intent on holding formation, Johnston and his 

officers failed to note the small but ever deepening 

ravines on either side of them and the increasing 

amount of brush and weeds that grew there. The soldiers reached the top of the ridge. Spread out before 

them lay a broad, open plain sloping gently a quarter 

of a mile to a belt of trees along Young’s Creek. From 

the trees, their horses moving at a slow walk, emerged 

lines of bushwhackers.6

There were around eighty of the Confederates 

currently facing Johnston’s 115 men. Johnston dismounted his force and formed a line, sending his 

horses to the rear with twenty-three of his soldiers. 

He was at this point confident he could defeat the 

Confederate force. He arrayed his infantry in a double 

row and told them to fix bayonets. The Confederates 

dismounted, checked and prepared their weapons, 

removed the Union uniforms they wore as deceptive 

camouflage, rolled up their sleeves, and then remounted. Then they waited. 

Johnston became impatient, but soon Anderson 

gave the order to advance. His cavalry came on slowly 

in a perfect line. Then another line of bushwhackers 

emerged from behind the first, but containing twice as 

many riders. Around the same time, lines of cavalry 

emerged from the ravines on either flank of the Union 

infantry. The Union troopers were terrorized by this 

sudden double-envelopment, and the one shaky volley 

they fired from their muzzleloaders struck only two 

or three of the 250-odd enemy bearing down on them 

at a gallop.7

As Castel and Goodrich say, the raiders opened up 

with their pistols at forty yards, and in mere seconds, 

they were over and through the Union line heading 

for the horse holders, all of whom were slaughtered.8

Most of the soldiers in the Union line broke and tried 

to flee. Johnston and a few others stood and fought 

to the end. It was over quickly, and no prisoners were 

taken, all captives being gruesomely butchered with 

knives almost immediately. 

From a mission command perspective, it was a flawless operation. All Confederate sub-unit commanders 

knew exactly what to do and when to do it. All individual Confederates performed the minutest details for 

preparation and attack without having to be told what 
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Mission Command and Moral Autonomy

to do. In action, they behaved similarly to Mongols 

confronting Russian infantry during the Middle 

Ages—all cooperated toward attaining the objective. 

There were no mistakes and no fratricides in 

this fight, probably owing partly to its small scale, 

but most likely because of the efficiency with which 

the Confederates acted. Once the order to attack 

came, every bushwhacker acted on his own initiative. 

Anderson’s raiders were “professionals” in this sense, 

that they knew their weapons thoroughly, prepared 

thoroughly, understood the tactics, were expert equestrians knowing how to maneuver on the enemy, and 

they all understood exactly what had to happen to minimize their own casualties and to overrun the Union 

line. The irony is that many were drunk, having just 

ravaged the town and looted its stores, but their intoxication does not seem to have degraded their lethality 

or their way of fighting—an illustration of how deeply 

forged and practiced their methods were.

The bushwhackers lingered on the field only long 

enough to strip the dead and mutilate the corpses, 

and they returned quickly to the town to finish off the 

soldiers Johnston had left behind and any male civilians 

who stood in their way as they resumed drinking and 

looting.9 In the end, they had lost only three men, two 

killed outright in the charge, one mortally wounded. 

Ten others suffered wounds. The sole Union survivor of 

the massacre in town who was “reserved” for a prisoner 

exchange (Tom Goodman), managed to observe that 

the guerillas “possessed more in the way of military order and discipline than he had expected,” and that “they 

were adept at caring for the wounded.”10 To maintain 

silence, he said, “they spoke to one another with strange 

hand signals and waves,” and they made the woods their 

home, navigating by stars and by observing the way 

moss grows on rocks to navigate when the stars were 

not visible.11 These bushwhackers moved in dispersion 

but converged uncannily whenever “a fight was in the 

offing.”12 All of these observations indicate dreamt of 

virtues in realizing mission command.

Centralia, the strategic failure. After Centralia, 

the Union Army made every effort to eradicate the 

bushwhackers. Pro-Union terrorist groups also became 

far more active. The loss of the battle and the massacre 

in town were bad enough, but the dismembering mutilations that accompanied these events were stunning 

beyond compare, on par with the worst things seen in 

modern conflicts. The bushwhackers had also consistently exploited the customary laws of war to surprise 

their adversaries, routinely using Union uniforms to 

gain the upper hand. They demanded surrender and 

then tortured and slaughtered those who did. Finding 

and eradicating the bushwhackers and all resistance 

to the Union became the main effort in Missouri. A 

Union force soon caught and killed Anderson, then 

photographed and mutilated his corpse. 

The blowback from Centralia contributed to defeating Price’s failed invasion at the Battle of Westport in 

October, but for the secessionists, it also led to the murder 

of anyone suspected of being a Confederate sympathizer. Reprisals back and forth after Centralia accounted 

for the depopulation of several counties in Missouri. By 

November, less than two months after the battle, Missouri 

had become a wasteland. Castel and Goodrich sum up the 

Battle of Centralia and its aftermath:

The Civil War produced many slaughters and 

many of them had much higher butcher bills. But 

few of them were as one-sided as this one three 

miles southeast of Centralia, Missouri, and none 

equaled it in gruesome, obscene viciousness. It 

was the war’s epitome of savagery . . . . Quantrill 

. . . spread the word that he intended to go to 

Kentucky and would welcome good men to 

accompany him. Bushwhacking in Missouri, he 

declared, was “played out,” whereas the Bluegrass 

state offered fresh fields of opportunity—meaning plunder. Moreover, should the war end—and 

it could not last much longer—the chances of 

being able to surrender without being executed 

as bandits afterward would be much better in 

Kentucky than in Missouri.13

Said another way, Quantrill understood that things had 

been taken too far in Missouri, that it was a strategic 

failure for him even if he did not understand its ramifications for Price and hope for the Confederacy in the 

western war.

Postscript. What Bloody Bill Anderson rendered 

at Centralia and elsewhere was similar to what the 

English chevauchée tactics rendered in France—strategic 

failure. In almost every sense, Anderson’s actions were 

those of a terrorist, not a soldier, and his practices led 

to final defeat and helped contribute to a bitter reconstruction after the war. That the bushwhackers were 

effective as a Confederate military force can only be 
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Mission Command and Moral Autonomy

claimed at the tactical level, where their habits of disciplined initiative proved immensely successful. Since 

their moral methods contributed to failed operations 

and an abortive strategy, one must conclude—yet 

again—that military effectiveness has a moral component. From the standpoint of operational ethics, 

to honor these men, thinking of them as soldiers, is 

wrong. Few do. The bushwhackers were detrimental 

to Confederate strategy in the west just as chevauchée 

tactics of the English proved detrimental to their cause 

in the Hundred Years War.

Philosophy

The reality we live with and that which we desire 

to live with depend upon the actions we take and the 

lapses we allow. Just as tactics serve strategy, actions 

serve moral reality. Moral legitimacy serves political 

legitimacy, and war is wholly political. Therefore, the 

manner in which U.S. soldiers attain military objectives connect directly to the political and ethical reality the Nation aspires to. In this relationship, means 

connect to ends. 

In this endeavor, one has to be wary of flawed 

arguments. To make the mistake of thinking that 

“taking the gloves off ” is justified by the end we envision is the same thing as putting the cart before the 

horse. The institution is bigger than the individual 

is, morally speaking, and the actions of individuals 

in the name of the institution have to conform to a 

larger, loftier set of principles (and values, as the case 

may warrant). 

Defending the Constitution of the United States 

“against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” as military 

leaders are sworn to do, will entail action consistent 

with the principles espoused in the Constitution. 

Getting operations right includes getting ethical legitimacy right, as a strategic concern. The Constitution 

binds us to respect the treaties of the Nation, and that 

respect entails a commitment to principles enumerated 

as human rights. Being loyal to institutional obligations, 

legitimately held and time-tested principles of right 

action, regardless of one’s individual feelings, is what 

the oath entails.

Mission command, as a way of doing business, 

must therefore include an ongoing education in these 

principles. The ethos and the ethics of the profession 

cannot be assumed away. Nor can a hope for right 

action be left up to values and law training alone. The 

reason for focusing better on ethics education about 

principles is that gaming the law will not do—and 

this often becomes the default position for those not 

imbued with principles, those for who the discussion 

is not much more than the layering of platitudes in 

unit training schedules. 

Nor is there room for ironic detachment from ethical 

principles in this relationship—leaders, at least, have 

to be fully engaged in the integrity of morally correct 

action, eschewing a check-the-block mentality about 

abiding by the law of armed conflict. Even if they feel 

themselves ironically detached from the values embodied in adherence to principles, they cannot detach 

themselves from the obligation to act in accord with 

them. The Army and Marine Corps should make their 

main concern educating the force at the squad leader level and stewarding constant ethical operational 

awareness through education.

Notes

Epigraph. “Primary Documents,” Japan at War: An Encyclopedia, ed. Louis G. Perez (Santa Barbara, 2013), 532.

1. Patrick J. Shrier, “The Hundred Years War: An Analysis of 

the Causes and Conduct of the Longest European War,” Military 

History Online, July 15, 2007, accessed 7 July 2016, http://www.

militaryhistoryonline.com/medieval/articles/hundredyearswar.aspx.

2. William Shakespeare, Henry V. Act IV, scene i. In the scene, 

John Bates, Alexander Court, and Michael Williams—all soldiers at 

Agincourt—confront the king on the moral legitimacy of the battle 

and its likely effects. 

3. Timothy Challans, “The Fully Reflective Life and Military 

Ethics,” in Awakening Warrior (Albany, NY: State University of New 

York Press, 2007), 177.

4. Albert Castel and Tom Goodrich, Bloody Bill Anderson: 

The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerilla (Mechanicsburg, PA: 

Stackpole Books, 1998,) 1.

5. Ibid., 88.

6. Ibid., 89.

7. Ibid., 91.

8. Ibid., 92.

9. Ibid., 93.

10. Ibid., 105.

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid., 106.

13. Ibid., 133.