War is hell. When we send young men and women into conflict...and worse...when we send them to war and keep them there in far away locations that cannot be defined as Mayberry R.F.D. it is inevitable that problems of good order and discipline arise. Long ago, after many wars fought, a judicial system, independent of our criminal justice system emerged. If you leave your civilian job without telling your boss, it’s not a criminal offense. You may get fired but you don’t go to jail. It’s not the same when asking soldiers to face gunfire in combat. They cannot leave their post...to do so is of a particularly heinous dereliction of duty. One that puts their comrades at greater risk and in a larger sense, one that places the mission and the ultimate security of the country at greater risk. To be absent without leave (AWOL) is a military crime with military punishment.
Killing someone is also a crime. Killing someone in combat is not. Beyond our Unified Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ, there are international laws that govern conflict. They are called appropriately enough, the Laws of Armed Conflict or LOAC. They are governed by both convention and treaty. Both the UCMJ and the LOAC strive to make human that which is very much not human. The execution of violence in pursuit of peace and stability along with our National Security...for the sake of each and everyone one of us...becomes the duty of our military.
When we are asking our human soldiers to do something that is not human, take life, how can we sit in judgement if they make mistakes? One might judge the very act of war to be the greater sin. Any further judgement either ethically or morally between those lanes in the road invariably must become quibbling. Yet we have defined those lanes and hope we don’t get into these arguments that are very cloudy and very grey in color.
Enter Eddie Gallagher...a soldier (more correctly a sailor and Navy SEAL) culled from the very top of the cream of the crop. We train the very elite to be very elite killers. They must take life efficiently and effectively. They must train but they also must teach. And as they rise in rank they must lead those in their footsteps to become the very same elite killers. For the vast majority of Americans we never consider this career path, let alone, think about what the Navy SEAL’s (or Rangers or bomber pilots) do on a daily basis. The closest we come will be the Hollywood version, or perhaps, if we read books, a few here which I recommend. “Heart of Darkness”, by Joseph Conrad, is my suggested reading on this topic, followed closely by “The Passion of Command”, by B. P. McCoy (if you can find it). And if you really want to go deep into why we are here in the first place, “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, by Chris Hedges. War sucks, but we must prepare for war because our planet is not a peaceful place. Eddie Gallagher is one of our front line defenders and crucial to our preparation. And I’m glad he exists, as I do our other special forces and sailors and marines and of course our airmen who must also take life albeit from a far greater distance. Distance makes it no less solemn and somber and of course mistakes are made.
The book on Eddie Gallagher was written long ago. We know that he and those like him (and her), exist. We created them. Gallagher’s actions for most of his career can be characterized as heroic and on the right side of the line...he has defended our country with honor. His family should be proud. The country should be proud. Yet he strayed off the path. For whatever reason. Perhaps he is a psychopath? But more likely, he has a psychological switch, or personality that allows him to rationalize and compartmentalize things that are very traumatic. Without that switch in the human brain, most of us would be insane. Particularly in those we've asked to take human life repeatedly. The human mind works in mysterious ways.
Thus I don't believe Eddie Gallagher belongs in prison...even though he strayed into the darkness of the human soul and ended up, for me and my reading of the facts, on the wrong side of the line. He will refute those facts and claim he never crossed the line...but no matter. The line is there but it has many shades of grey... and it is also wide. And he was far enough into the dark grey that his actions caused the unprecedented action of a few of his comrades to speak up. Not one or two, but as many as twelve. This is not a single whistle blower...something clearly happened outside the normal chaos of war. Those brave SEALs who choose to speak out will also pay a price...but that's a different story. Once the offense was highlighted everything turns to shit. At that point the case gets forever tormented as the bureaucracy, not necessarily a corrupt bureaucracy, but certainly a flawed one, and that monster takes over the case.
I don’t like Eddie Gallagher. I don’t like his smirk. I don’t like his wife pretending he’s a noble human being for killing the teenage prisoner of war. I no longer want him wearing the uniform he has clearly stained with this murder. I wouldn’t want to have a beer with him. His actions cannot be justified. However, he can be forgiven. And his service can still be honored. Trump, however, is not forgiving him for his crime. He is exonerating him from doing wrong.
Those who support him are trying to justify what he did, essentially saying he did no wrong. Instead of saying you did a bad thing but it’s excused, don’t do it again, and then by honoring his past service and moving forward. What’s going on is the politicization of a populist point of view that doesn’t look upon war as evil, but rather the evil of an adversary. They are all evil and deserve to die. I don't want to be a hypocrite here...I certainly am guilty of dehumanizing ISIS. They are scum bags and their ideology is pure evil. And as such, when we blindly view the adversary as evil in this way, and without considering the lanes in the road, the cause becomes less justifiable. When we can’t identify cause and why we are there we lose track of what is and what is not evil. When the cause is evil the adversary is less human. And the dehumanization of the adversary leads to torture, then the taking of trophies in combat, then the killing of non-combatants who are associated (or greater collateral damage), women and children, and then the extermination of races, and then every other atrocity of war one can think of… It’s not that slippery of a slope because fortunately we do have precedent and guidelines within UCMJ, and LOAC. These are training classes either Gallagher either skipped, or stopped going to later in his career.
Eddie can go free. He can continue to call himself a SEAL. He can be forgiven for his lack of judgement. His killing, while not justified in and of itself, can be considered collateral damage from the stand-point of proximity. Just as the strategic fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II, was justified at the level of less than the greater evil and horrors that were going on by that adversary. Two books to consider reading to go deeper into the human heart would include, Kurt Vonnegut’s, “Slaughterhouse 5” about the firebombing of Dresden, and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Vicktor Frankl, if you want to know about the horrors inside a German concentration camp, and why certain actions, though appalling on their scale, can be justified in war. When it is not justified it is a war crime. And those can certainly be put on trial...and have been...
What Trump is saying, what he believes, is the killing of the prisoner of war is OK. The UCMJ and LOAC don’t apply. Trump is not only above our laws he is above all laws. This get’s back to his ability to shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and be exonerated by his supporters. It’s somewhat sickening because it appears to be true. Only one who is above the law themselves can absolve others in a similar fashion. He appears to take demented pleasure in this type of power. This is a very slippery slope indeed and it is also very sickening...
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