In late 2019, President Trump pardoned three American servicemembers for war crimes committed overseas. Here’s why that actually harms the military.
This past November, President Trump issued pardons for two convicted war criminals, Major Mathew Golsteyn and First Lieutenant Clint Lorance, and reversed the demotion of another, Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher (of no relation to this here scribe).
Made in the midst of impeachment buildup, the decision caused a firestorm in the military and in veterans’ communities — proponents saw it as evidence that the president was honoring his recurring pledge to “love our military.” Detractors argued that it was an act of political opportunism, one that both attacked the military justice system and normalized the abnormal for a citizenry largely removed from the realities of modern war.
Why yes, dear reader, I am one of those detractors.
The theme of this March-April issue is “Health.” Because I’m a contrarian pain in the ass, I saw this as an opportunity to explore the unhealthy nature of these recent presidential pardons. Our republic is unwell, and these pardons do not help.
No one was more responsible for these three servicemembers’ cases getting the attention of the president than Pete Hegseth, an Iraq war veteran and weekend Fox & Friends host best known for talking to average joes in diners.
Before washing up on the shores of Fox News Island, Hegseth fronted a Koch brothers-funded veterans’ organization and advocated for the privatization of VA health care. Through those connections and a mutual distaste for normal D.C. operations, Hegseth gained the president’s ear. When the nonprofit military justice advocacy group United American Patriots approached Hegseth with their cases, it was only a matter of time before Hegseth in turn brought them to the White House.
During the slow, often public march toward the pardons, Hegseth hosted the spouses of the war criminals on Fox & Friends and made the case that, “The benefit of the doubt should go to the guys pulling the trigger.” Which is a compelling argument, at least in a vacuum, as anyone who’s operated in the messy grays of combat is inclined to grant. I sure am.
Except, well, almost no one involved in these situations actually pulled a fucking trigger, Hegseth. There’s little messy gray involved in these cases, but a whole lot of black and white. Let’s tackle these pardons and their corresponding details one at a time, shall we?
Lieutenant Lorance: On day three as a platoon leader in combat, this former military policeman gave soldiers under his command the order to shoot at three local men on a motorcycle.
After initially balking and missing the men (perhaps on purpose), the soldiers followed the order. Two of the three Afghans were killed. Lorance subsequently issued a false report about the incident. Nine members of his platoon testified against him at his court-martial, and his company commander, Patrick Swanson, recently said, “The tragedy is that people will hail him as a hero, and he is not a hero. He ordered those murders. He lied about them.” Did Hegseth call this guy “a hero” on Fox News? You know it!
Chief Petty Officer Gallagher: Where to begin? Gallagher had a long, distinguished career in the SEALs, and was decorated for valor multiple times. On his eighth deployment in 2017, during the aftermath of an airstrike in Mosul, Gallagher allegedly executed a wounded teenage ISIS fighter with his knife.
This was the culmination of a series of episodes involving Gallagher and excessive force — some in his platoon later testified to messing with the scope of his rifle so he’d stop shooting innocents. Regardless, Gallagher and others then posed with the dead body of the teen fighter for a trophy photograph. After another SEAL changed his testimony deep in the trial, claiming that he had been the one who’d actually killed the ISIS teen, Gallagher was found not guilty of premeditated murder and attempted murder. (The other SEAL had, of course, already been granted immunity by the prosecution. The code runs deep in the spec ops community.) Gallagher was convicted of posing with the body (hard to walk back that evidence) and initially stripped of his SEAL trident — until President Trump ordered it returned, over the objections of his own Navy Secretary, Richard Spencer, who resigned in protest.
Major Golsteyn: As a Green Beret in Afghanistan during a 2010 deployment, Golsteyn allegedly helped cover up the execution of an alleged Taliban bomb maker and/or executed the bomb maker himself after a direct engagement.
He and others then returned to the village that night to dig up and burn the bomb maker’s body. The story only surfaced later, after Golsteyn mentioned it in a polygraph administered by the CIA during a job interview. Though Golsteyn would make different claims about what happened to the bomb maker and how, he was investigated twice and eventually charged with premeditated murder. His trial had been scheduled for December 2019.
It bears repeating: These were not quick decisions made in the fog of war. Every single one occurred in a space where these soldiers could have thought through what was happening and how to react.
We’re 19 years into these everlong wars. A vast, vast majority of American servicemembers who’ve gone abroad to fight them have held the line in near-impossible situations. There’s absolutely been cases where confusion has led to tragedy. There’s absolutely been cases where soldiers were forced to choose between a bad choice and a worse choice, and it’s led to collateral damage and dead and wounded soldiers. There’s absolutely been a whole lot of moral and ethical dilemmas that offer much in the way of complexity, and little in the way of clarity. Such is war. These sorts of wars, especially.
These aren’t that, though.
These pardons do a disservice to everyone who held that line, or attempted to. They impugn every soldier and Marine who exhibited courageous restraint in moments of great confusion and hazard, often to their own detriment, because that’s what duty meant in the moment.
And now these three pardoned war criminals — Lorance, in particular — are public figures. They’ve campaigned for President Trump at fundraisers. They go on Fox News and hold court like they’re modern-day Spartan soldiers or something. It’s a fucking disgrace. And it’s not over. That advocacy group United American Patriots is now making noise about seeking a pardon for Robert Bales, the staff sergeant who straight-up slaughtered a family of Afghan civilians in cold blood in 2012.
I know we live in the upside-down these days, but this is too much. Yes, they’re hard, yes, they’re often confusing, but the rules of engagement matter. Escalation of force matters. It’s what separates us from the enemy. It’s what separates us from barbarism. They’re part of what makes the American servicemember special.
Or used to, at least.
