A Sordid Mess

Eddie Gallagher’s case has been screwed up from the beginning.  He's the Navy SEAL who was tried for "war crimes" in Afghanistan a while back and eventually found not guilty of most charges.  Did he do some nasty things on the far side of the world and in a situation that none of us can imagine or want to experience?  Probably.  But whatever happened, his failures were made in a combat situation, under unbelievable stress and in the blink of an eye.  But from everything I’ve read and heard, he was targeted and the Navy JAG was determined to make an example of him.  But the JAG officers screwed this up big time.  They put a decorated Navy SEAL in confinement pending trial.  They illegally spied on many aspects of his defense.  I've never heard what happened to the lawyers responsible but in the civilian world they certainly would have been disbarred.  When the President heard about the confinement and directed him to be released pending trial, they put him in a housing situation in which access to his lawyers was extremely restricted.  It was plainly vindictive.  Now don’t get me wrong.  He was no angel and he didn't do himself any favors with his shipmates and some of us veterans by speaking out as loudly and aggressively as he did on social media and to sympathetic news organizations.  He turned into someone who most people just wanted to go away.  But I don’t understand singling him out and probably never will.  Maybe there is something else, but the charges against him were out there for all to see.  And in the end the Navy couldn’t make the case.  In fact, an immunized witness confessed to the worst crime.  What lawyer in the world would let that happen.  It was a mess and one the Navy should have closed the book on and walked away.

So they get him on the posing with a corpse charge (a bogus charge that he might wind up with a letter of reprimand in most cases) and throw the book at him.  Trump clearly had had enough and pardoned him.  So then they decide to take him to a SEAL review board when he is days away from retirement and all this was blessed by the Navy Rear Admiral in charge of the SEALS.  I get that he might have been thinking "good order and discipline" but again, this reeks of vindictiveness.  This isn’t like a FNAEB for a person with wings.  Those things don’t happen when someone has one foot out of the door.  They are designed to take someone who is not performing as an aviator and allow him or her to go to another field where perhaps they are more suited.   To me this was clearly a last, disparate attempt to hurt him.  Once again the President stepped in and said enough.

And in another idiotic chapter in this story, the legal team charged with the prosecution put themselves in for a bunch of awards (medals) when the case was over.  Trump being Trump heard about this incredibly brazen act and cancelled them.  So that didn't exactly endear him to the establishment.

I’m solidly in Trump and SECDEF Esper’s corner on this.  As SECNAV, Spencer can’t go directly to the White House, I don’t care who he told.  So Esper doesn’t have email or text capability while on travel?  Please.  I also think the SEAL Admiral should be fired.  He clearly wasn’t listening.  Simply, Trump is the CINC.  Full stop.  He has the power of pardon and the military must carry out his orders faithfully.  From what I’ve read and heard, the Admiral was obstructive. I'm not a Trump supporter to a fault or no matter what and he sometimes gets things wrong or acts like a jackass, but in this case I think he did the right thing.

And now we start to see articles from so called experts in the media about the rift between Trump and  the military, that the morale in the building is low, that senior military officials are depressed and frustrated.  Here’s the reality.  You can pick any period of time in our history and find similar comments.  In talking to friends in the know and consuming what is probably too much info about today's force, I think that the military is generally happy that they have a CINC that has fought for higher defense budgets, is not sending them willy-nilly around the globe to police the world, appreciates their service at every opportunity, and doesn’t mind cutting through the BS using the power of his position.