Rules of Engagement

Event Details

Did Colonel Michael Dane Steele, as General Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff believes, set the conditions for a massacre by cultivating reckless aggressiveness in his soldiers, and by interpreting the rules of engagement in a way that made the killing of noncombatants likely? RAFFI KHATCHADOURIAN, a staff writer for the New Yorker, interviews PETE HEGSETH, a Princeton graduate and former platoon leader under Steele, about “The Kill Company: Did a colonel’s fiery rhetoric set the conditions for a massacre?” published in the July 6, 2009 issue of his magazine. This Forum is part of an ongoing series on the state of the U.S. military.