Lawmakers went head-to-head with the Pentagon this week, accusing War Department officials of quietly shutting down a congressionally mandated program meant to reduce civilian casualties—while doing so against the law.

The political skirmish erupted during a heated House Armed Services Committee hearing, following a new Inspector General report that exposed the Pentagon’s internal moves to scale back and defund the initiative.

The Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan—or CHMR-AP—was created in 2022 after pressure campaigns from watchdogs and the legacy media targeted American military operations overseas.

But two years later, Pentagon leadership has evidently lost interest in maintaining the costly bureaucracy. Lawmakers say the program has been hollowed out, meetings abandoned, and staff reassigned despite a clear congressional order to keep the initiative operational.

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Rep. Adam Smith, the panel’s ranking Democrat from Washington, confronted Army Secretary Dan Driscoll with accusations that the Pentagon had completely defunded the effort.

“You are in violation of the law right now on civilian harm,” Smith charged, invoking the watchdog’s report that the War Department was scaling back compliance mechanisms before any legal changes had been approved.

The Inspector General’s report—released this week—confirmed that Pentagon leaders had submitted a legislative proposal to Congress in May 2025 asking to repeal the very law requiring the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence.

In other words, the Pentagon has already started pulling the plug, and lawmakers want to know why.

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The report also found troubling details: critical meetings have ceased, funding pipelines have dried up, and the Civilian Protection Center’s staff has thinned out as people were moved elsewhere or left.

All this, the watchdog warned, could leave the War Department noncompliant with its own civilian casualty policy, a federal requirement known as DoDI 3000.17.

Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a Democrat who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, argued that the U.S. military’s strategic success depended on maintaining the trust of local populations.

“What became very obvious to me is that what we did lack was a full understanding about how to win the support of local populations,” Crow said, admitting America “ultimately lost the support of the people in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Republican members on the committee, however, see the issue differently. While they haven’t universally endorsed killing the civilian harm initiative, they’ve criticized it as bloated bureaucracy designed to appease international critics at the expense of U.S. combat power.

To many conservative lawmakers, this squabble reflects a broader problem inside the Pentagon—an obsession with optics and compliance over lethality and victory.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll attempted to tamp down the outrage, telling Congress that the Pentagon remained committed to reducing civilian casualties.

He blamed organizational restructuring for some confusion over the program’s status, suggesting the changes were administrative rather than ideological. But congressional skeptics are not convinced.

“I think a good number of members on this committee do not trust the Secretary of Defense on civilian harm,” Smith shot back pointedly.

“It seems like it’s being gutted, and that there is no focus on it whatsoever.” His words captured the growing mistrust between Capitol Hill and the Pentagon—a dynamic that has only hardened in recent years as lawmakers accuse the War Department of ignoring clear legislative mandates.

Critics of the civilian harm bureaucracy point out that America’s adversaries—from ISIS to the Taliban to Russia—have no intention of adopting anything resembling these rules.

The U.S. military, they argue, already does more than any force in history to avoid civilian casualties, with advanced precision targeting systems and strict rules of engagement.

The CHMR-AP, in their view, became a self-imposed handicap that fuels hesitation on the battlefield.

Still, there’s little doubt that the Inspector General’s findings struck a political nerve. Neither the Army nor the Pentagon has offered a detailed plan for what, if anything, will replace the shuttered components of the CHMR initiative.

The watchdog warned that continued defunding could result in open violation of federal law unless Congress formally repeals the existing mandate.

Pentagon officials claim they are still “restructuring” the programs, but their own paperwork contradicts those assurances.

Submitting a legislative proposal to end the requirement altogether doesn’t sound like a reorganization—it sounds like an escape hatch. That’s what has lawmakers from both parties fuming.

The larger question remains: should the Pentagon focus its limited budget on managing perceptions or on winning wars? For conservatives, the answer is clear.

Military success relies on strength, decisiveness, and the ability to destroy enemies quickly—not on another layer of administrative oversight designed to appease liberal activists.

If the War Department wants to rebuild credibility, it needs to stop hiding behind half-measures and conduct itself with transparency, fairness, and a renewed focus on mission success.

The men and women in uniform do not need more lawyers and committees—they need clarity and command. Washington’s political gamesmanship does not protect civilians; American victory does.

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