Our Commander-in-Shame
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020, in Phoenix, Ariz. (Yasamin Jafari Tehrani / The Corsair)
America left World War II as the undisputed leader of the world in promoting democratic values and freedom around the world, having turned the tide and delivering the knockout blow to the Nazis of Germany, the Fascists of Italy, and the Imperialists of Japan.
The following decades did not age nearly as well in the pages of history. What followed was a stalemate in Korea and two of the most disastrous and tragic decisions in modern world history, the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts. Despite the horrendous death toll and incalculable suffering caused by those American foreign policy decisions, we were still able to argue that we were the good-guys.
Through the My Lai Massacre and Agent Orange, through Abu Ghraib and Blackwater, America was still able to tell the world we had intended good, even if it resulted in bad. We were only trying to stop the evil communists, believing in a domino theory that turned out to be false. We were only trying to go after the terrorists who had planned and executed 9/11 and their harborers, even though Bush and Cheney invaded the wrong country. Despite abysmal presidential leadership and isolated instances of wrongdoing at the platoon or company level, we could argue that we still held the torch of freedom and democracy to light the rest of the world. We can no longer say that.
President Donald Trump’s recent decisions to intervene in three separate cases of military justice have up-ended generations of sacrifice and blood spilt around the world. By pardoning former Army First Lt. Clint Lorance and Maj. Matt Golsteyn of separate war crimes, and interfering in the trial and punishment of Chief petty officer Eddie Gallagher, Trump has turned American exceptionalism into American shame.
Over all else it’s about leadership. Whether that’s training stateside or overseas, doing real-world missions, or deliberating in the White House, leaders set the tone and the parameters of what’s acceptable. The Geneva Convention can say whatever it says, but the actual guidance comes from the leaders on the ground. Those leaders take their queues from top military brass, who in turn take theirs from political leaders in Washington.
The fact that two of the three war criminals were officers makes it that much worse. While non-commissioned officers (NCOs) are the backbone of our military, they are still enlisted service members. Officers are the ones technically in charge, tasked with planning missions and having the final say. Consequently they should be held to the highest standards, although that is obviously not always the case.
The most flagrant of Trump’s absolutions was that of Gallagher, who as a Navy SEAL was part of the Special Operations community. There is no higher standard than for those in the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Forget about all the training and the physical requirements, it’s about the culture. A culture of utterly destroying any enemy of the United States, by whatever means necessary, so long as it falls within the parameters of the Geneva Convention and the rules of international armed conflict.
For those who attempt to create a false equivalency between America and ISIS, who question why we don’t use the same tactics they do, I’ve got breaking news: we’re not ISIS. When you lower yourself to that level, indiscriminately killing every civilian on every mission, raping and pillaging whatever your heart desires, you become the terrorist. If anyone needs a reminder of what the world was like before the Geneva Convention, they should watch the recent Peter Jackson documentary They Shall Not Grow Old. American lives aren’t saved by actions like Gallagher’s, they’re lost because of it. Letting him off scotch free sends a messages that others can do the same.
People like Gallagher are a disgrace to the country, a disgrace to the uniform, and a particular disgrace to those who have served in SOCOM. He was so ill-equipped and dangerous in his job that his own men re-zeroed his weapon without his knowledge, meaning they changed where the rounds coming out of his weapon would hit. They did this because he would regularly shoot at civilians, mainly women and old men, and their attempts to report him up the chain of command were extinguished by the garbage leadership in that particularly SEAL team. Altering someone’s zero can easily get people killed, as normal missions usually involve tight-quarters room clearing where the difference between hitting an enemy or a friend may be feet or inches.
The picture in the New York Times of Gallagher and his men standing proudly for a picture around a dead kid who had been fighting for ISIS is the epitome of pathetic. Forget for a second that it’s technically illegal. They didn’t even fight the kid themselves, the Iraqis were doing the dying and the killing against the Islamic State in that area. That particular ISIS fighter had been mortally wounded and taken far behind the front lines, to where Gallagher and his men were stationed.
Gallagher finished off the child ISIS fighter by stabbing the wounded teenager after he was well down the rabbit hole of darkness. The kid had already been trached, in what must have been a good opportunity for the medic to get some live tissue-training on a near corpse. Gallagher holds the dead kid’s hair as if he’s showing off the rack of a dead buck, wearing his cool-guy baseball cap as he grins for the camera. As one of the SEALs on his team later put it, “I think Eddie was proud of it, and that was, like, part of it for him…The guy is freaking evil.” Gallagher had nicknamed himself Blade, and he obviously wanted to be able to say he had gotten a knife kill. On a kid that was for all intents and purposes already dead. Super cool dude, you’re an American hero, now go brag about it to some strangers at the bar.
To be clear, war is about killing and death. Our military is trained to effectively and efficiently identify and neutralize threats. For those who have walked the walk, war is business. Seeing your friends and people who you consider family shot, blown up, or killed isn’t “fun.” Having to kill people who turn out to be civilians and not armed combatants, but at the time posed an eminent threat to the assault force, is not “fun.” Having to play by the rules of international warfare while the other side doesn’t isn’t “fun.” Dealing with the guilt of not being able to do more in certain circumstances isn’t “fun.” It’s called the real world. Gallagher and his boys hiding behind 20-foot high cement blast walls, far away from the action, while he poses with a dead kid who he didn’t even fight, isn’t “fun.” It’s just sad and pathetic.
When Trump campaigned in 2016 on killing the families of suspected terrorists, he showed himself to be the keyboard warrior he was. When he campaigned on torturing suspected terrorists, he proved he was a Twitter gangster. When Trump as president accused U.S. Special Operations, led at the time by retired Adm. William H. McRaven, of knowing where Osama bin Laden was and purposely doing nothing about it, he cemented his status as a Call of Duty special operator. Not one person in his family has ever worn the uniform.
The flag is merely a political prop for his rallies, as we see when he literally hugs and kisses it like some child hanging onto mommy’s skirt. It would be hysterical if it weren’t such a utter disgrace. He’s the Commander-in-Chief and the head of our Armed Forces, not some red-nosed clown riding a tricycle while juggling. Even worse, Trump has spread the disease of fake patriotism across the country, enabling and cheering on others to practice the same type of bumper-sticker patriotism he does.
As Trump said himself, his personal Vietnam was battling sexually-transmitted diseases in the trenches of the New York City nightlife. As he bragged about on the Howard Stern show in 1998, “It’s very, very dangerous out there…It’s Vietnam. It is very dangerous. So I’m very, very careful.”
It won’t be Trump or Gallagher who suffers from the decisions they’ve made and the actions they’ve taken. It will be some eighteen-year-old fresh out of basic who drives over a roadside IED left by someone whose family member was killed without warrant. It will be the 30-year-old NCO whose second baby is on the way, only to come home in a box because somebody in a far off land had access to a television or the internet, and heard what Trump had done. It will be the 50-year-old Major who is killed by an insider attack at a ceremony on some foreign military base in some place far, far away from the safe-space comfort of the Oval Office.
Actions have consequences. The worse possible leader is still a leader, solely responsible for what they personally do and don’t do. There’s no draft-deferment for leadership. Unfortunately we will have to wait until the next administration for a chance at having a leader who can understand this basic American principle.