Members of SEAL Team 7 Alpha Platoon described their platoon leader, retired Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher, as “toxic” and “evil,” according to video recordings of the interviews obtained by The New York Times….
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The NY Times explains why Donald Trump in his anti-anything government (and Defense Dept.) has made a terrible mistake in his choice of a ‘hero’….
Combat video, text messages and confidential interviews with members of the Navy SEALs obtained by The New York Times reveal chilling details about the conduct of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher.
Trained as a medic, sniper and explosives expert, Gallagher was the consummate leader of Alpha Platoon, SEAL Team 7, part of the Navy’s elite commando force. But when his own men said he committed war crimes, it sent shock waves up the chain of command — reaching all the way to the commander in chief.
Gallagher’s case continues to roil the Navy even after his acquittal on the most severe charges, and the public debate on Fox News and Twitter has widened the rift between President Trump and some top military leaders.
What exactly happened in Iraq in 2017 that so alarmed Gallagher’s brothers in arms? And why has the case resonated with Trump and his political base?
On this episode of “The Weekly,” members of SEAL Team 7 tell Navy investigators that Gallagher was a reckless leader with a disturbing hunger for violence. They say they spent much of their time protecting Iraqi civilians from their battle-crazed chief instead of going after ISIS….
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Edward Gallagher retired from the Navy with full honors on Nov. 30. He lives with his wife and family near the beach in Florida. The Navy recently returned items seized during the murder investigation, including a custom-made hatchet he took with him to Iraq…
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Richard V. Spencer was fired as secretary of the Navy in November. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, he defended his push to keep the president from interfering in the Gallagher case. “A system that prevents command influence is what separates our armed forces from others,” Spencer wrote….
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Pete Hegseth, a guest host on Fox & Friends on Fox News, continues to praise President Trump’s decision to intervene on Gallagher’s behalf. Hegseth has posted Twitter messages urging the president to pardon other service members convicted of war crimes….
image…dailymail.co.uk
Trump,like many Republicans, is all for “law and Order” until the criminal or the crime is one they like.
Then?
The Hell with Law and Order!
HIS Law and DISorder?
Shades of the William Calley pardon or commutation.
The U.S. GOP version of the Nuremberg Principles seems to be “exonerate white war criminals if they are popular enough with the Republican base.”
But I forgot, the world finally put an end to war crimes 70 years ago with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Nuremberg and Tokyo trial (1949).
No more wholesale expulsions, religious persecutions, ethnic massacres, poison gas, or the direct targeting of schools, clinics, hospitals and civilian neighborhoods,
Something to be thankful for this holiday season.
Let’s hope Trump don’t fuck things up…
The Atlantic
Many Americans are looking to the country’s generals to be a steadying force on this administration—a sign that things have gone very wrong in the system the Framers devised, writes @DebPearlstein:
Remember that it was only about 135 years before the Framing that Oliver Cromwell and other military officers were called in to win Parliament’s victory over King Charles I, only to dissolve Parliament itself by force in Pride’s Purge (shades of Boris Yeltsin bombing the Duma) and later establish the much-loathed Rule of the Major-Generals.
If you read the debates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, you’ll see that, apart from Classical examples from Greece and Rome, the Framers had only a few modern examples of republics to study and learn from: chiefly the Italian city-states, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the republican Commonwealth of Great Britain and Ireland (1649-60). They were especially afraid of some unelected military leader like Julius Caesar or Oliver Cromwell seizing power from an elected legislature. That’s the main reason for provisions such as making the elected civilian President commander-in chief.
Having seen the Queen’s Christmas Message for 2019, I was directed to her majesty’s first televised message at Christmas 1957.
Sixty-two years after she delivered it, I wish that the present American leadership would follow this extract:
…That it is possible for some of you to see me today is just another example of the speed at which things are changing all around us. Because of these changes I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold on to and what to discard. How to take advantage of the new life without losing the best of the old.
But it is not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery.
They would have religion thrown aside, morality in personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.
At this critical moment in our history we will certainly lose the trust and respect of the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth.
Today we need a special kind of courage, not the kind needed in battle but a kind which makes us stand up for everything that we know is right, everything that is true and honest. We need the kind of courage that can withstand the subtle corruption of the cynics so that we can show the world that we are not afraid of the future.
It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult. That is why we can take a pride in the new Commonwealth we are building….
Video (7 1/2 minutes black-&-white):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBRP-o6Q85s
Full text:
https://www.royal.uk/christmas-broadcast-1957