Gage Skidmore/Flickr
By Scott Taylor
In recent days U.S. President Donald Trump has embarked upon a bizarre rash of pardoning and protecting U.S. service members who were convicted or accused of war crimes.
In doing so, I’m not exactly sure to which demographic Trump is trying to appeal.
These soldiers were not tried and convicted by some malign foreign actors trying to smear the good reputation of the U.S. military, but rather they were accused, investigated, charged and convicted of these crimes by that very same U.S. military institution in which they serve.
Soldiers in western democracies know that there are rules in war – such as the Geneva Convention, and by abiding by those rules we set ourselves apart from the evildoers who do not.
One of Trump’s most prominent beneficiaries of this presidential protection has been U.S. Navy Seal Chief Eddie Gallagher. This decorated veteran was court martialled last June on a number of charges, including the stabbing death of young wounded Daesh fighter in U.S. captivity in Iraq.
Those accusations were leveled at Gallagher by other decorated U.S. Navy Seals in his unit. While the murder charge was dropped when a prosecution witness, testifying with immunity confessed to the crime, Gallagher was convicted of having posed for photos with the deceased’s corpse.
The ink was barely dry on that guilty verdict when Trump weighed in with a pardon and orders to restore Gallagher to his previous rank and pay grade.
The Navy subsequently undertook a review seeking to revoke Gallagher’s status as a member of the elite Special Forces community. In response to this Trump tweeted “The Navy will NOT be taking away warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business.”
U.S. Navy Secretary Richard Spencer was forced to resign over how the Gallagher case was handled and the controversy continues to dominate headlines.
Obviously Trump as Commander-in-Chief can pull rank in this instance, but such actions actually do a disservice to the reputation of the U.S. military.
In singling out Gallagher for not only protection but praise, Trump had frequently criticized those fellow Navy Seals who testified against him. Trump went so far as to describe the top Seal commanders as ‘morons.’
While Trump was unfortunately exempted from military service in the Vietnam war due to bone spurs on his feet, he does profess to have a great sympathy for the brave men and women in uniform who do put themselves in harm’s way. The crazy thing is that Trump thinks the way to show his sincere support for the military is to pardon and protect the very individuals that the military has convicted and removed from its ranks for violating their institution’s own moral code of conduct.
On 15 November, Trump made good on a Memorial Day promise by issuing two more pardons; one to a convicted U.S. military war criminal; the second to a soldier awaiting court martial on murder charges.
The case of First Lieutenant Clint Lorance, like Gallagher, originated with allegations being leveled at him by his own comrades.
Lorance’s men had been ordered to fire on unarmed Afghan civilians, which left two civilians dead. Following an investigation Lorance was charged, court martialled and convicted of the crime. In his defence, Lorance claimed the Afghans had been revving their motorcycle engines in a threatening manner. Eye witnesses stated the unarmed Afghans were in fact hundreds of meters away. In 2013 the military judge sentenced Lorance to serve a nineteen-year sentence. Trump just set him free.
The case against Major Mathew Golsteyn will never get to trial, despite the fact that he is accused of murdering an Afghan, burying him and then reburying the corpse in an attempt to hide evidence.
In justifying his decision to issue these pardons Trump tweeted “Our great warfighters must be allowed to fight.” And he described major Golsteyn as a “U.S. military hero.”
Without realizing it, Trump is sending the wrong message to his own military; that they are beyond reproach even from their own Chain of Command. Soldiers know the difference between heroic acts and criminal acts. Trump apparently has the two confused.
