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SIR, I SALUTE YOU!
Written by Jim “Gymbeaux” Brown, January 7, 2022
You can
read the story in the link below about Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller
and/or watch the videos he has posted; they both speak for themselves. In the event you choose not to review the
link below, LTCOL Scheller posted a couple of videos that was critical of
President Biden’s withdrawal from
Afghanistan. For these posts, he
was given a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions and basically forfeited
his benefits and pension because of it.
I retired from the U. S. Coast Guard in 1985 as a Lieutenant. I came up through the ranks from joining as a Seaman Recruit in 1965 through Chief Petty Officer, Chief Warrant Officer and then selected as a direct appointment to Lieutenant. During my 20 years of active duty, I have come in contact and was required to know the procedures for handling classified material. I was also trained in following the chain of command and following “legal” orders as was the case for every enlisted member and every officer member of all of the branches of the U. S. Military Services. All that is a given!
When I first saw the videos posted
by LTCOL Scheller my immediate thought was that he had to know what was going
to happen to him for being critical of a U. S. President. In all honesty, I think every member of every
branch of the military, active, retired, and reserve, had similar feelings
about what President Biden did and did not do in Afghanistan; I certainly know
that I felt exactly the same as LTCOL Scheller.
The difference between Scheller and most other members of the military
is that they would have simply carried out the orders of the Department of Defense
and by inference, President Biden. More
importantly, they would have done so and kept their collective mouths
shut. It is drilled into everyone’s head
that they must follow orders. Most
people forget that the law that requires military members to follow orders has
a word that precedes the word “order” and that word is “lawful” order.
The question to me becomes
whether President Biden’s orders to leave Americans and hundreds if not
thousands of Afghan people who had worked with the U. S. Military and/or actually
had U. S. Green Cards authorizing them to return to the United States, behind
while the military left. That order
violates every principle of my being that has long been held in all branches of
the military in that you don’t leave anyone behind. I am NOT a military analysist but on occasion
I do demonstrate some common sense. In
this case, the person or persons issuing the orders that resulted in abandoning
Afghanistan, lacked the smallest grain of common sense. Was it a “lawful order” in the truest definition
of the term? Probably so. If I were on active duty, would I have
carried it out?
That question really gets down to
the “nitty-gritty.” I would not have
been in a position to answer directly to the President of the United
States. There would have been a multitude
of officers between me and President Biden or Defense Secretary Austin. As always, I would have had tremendous
respect for the people within the service that I worked for and whose orders I
would have obeyed. To answer the
question, what would I have done, I would have followed the orders as given to
me by my Commanding Officer.
I could be wrong in my assumption
that most people were sickened by what President Biden and Secretary Austin
did, it was just wrong on so many fronts.
The first person who should have said NO Mr. President, this is just
wrong was Secretary Austin. If President
Biden insisted on carrying out this ridiculous order and if I were Secretary
Austin, I would have submitted my immediate resignation rather than putting my stamp
of approval on this insane order. The
next person in the Chain of Command to the President would have been General
Mark Milley. A lot of military people
have questioned how he was promoted up the ranks ahead of much more qualified
members of the military and his actions regarding Afghanistan puts an exclamation
mark on their concerns; he was unqualified then; he remains unqualified now. His incompetence shone brightly through all
of the chaos when he seemed more interested in imposing critical race theory
training on the military instead of winning wars! Again, if I were the Joint Chief of Staff, I
would have explained to Secretary Austin and President Biden that the order as
given was just wrong and that a lot of people would be killed and for those
left behind, tortured and/or murdered. Then
there was the issue of closing an active Air Base and leaving the millions upon
millions of dollars of top-of-the-line military equipment behind for the
Taliban to just take and eventually use or sell to our enemies to
research. How could anyone in their
right mind consider that a valid military operation/order. Obviously, Austin and Milley did because they
carried it out. Both of them should have
stood their ground and resigned if President Biden insisted on carrying out the
surrender to the Taliban as it occurred.
Therefore, as you can tell, a
side of me totally supports LTCOL Scheller’s actions and I only wish I would
have had the nerve to do what he did by calling out the stupidity of President
Biden as well as Secretary Austin and General Milley. They all deserved the criticism and disdain
they have been given. Should he have
done it? Only if he knew what could and
probably would happen to him for doing it and then decided to do it
anyway. He gave up a lot by coming forth
as he did. Primarily he gave up his heretofore
well-earned military retirement and subsequent benefits. In exchange for what he did, the Marine Corps
issued him a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions. If anyone should have been issued a less than
Honorable Discharge it was General Milley.
In my opinion he is a disgrace to his uniform either for carrying out
the insane order or for not resigning when it was evident that President Biden
didn’t care about the ramifications of his actions. That’s what I would have done; no doubt in my
mind. But you have to have principles
for that to happened and it is obvious to me that neither Biden, Austin nor
Milley had principles on display when they surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban
leaving all those people behind to fend for themselves not to mention leaving
all the military equipment for the enemy.
The debacle of Afghanistan will be taught at the military academies for decades to come. It will be of very little value to LTCOL Scheller, but...
Sir, I Salute You!
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