The US military has placed Lt Col Scheller behind bars
taskandpurpose.com
taskandpurpose.com
I'm not a military person or from a military family, but it sure sounds like the dude disobeyed a direct order, so jail seems like he got what was coming to him according to military law.
As far as I know, the order was unlawful because the First Amendment still applies to members of the military. They cannot tell him to stop using his right to free speech "without exception".
Otherwise, members of the military would effectively not be citizens. Otherwise, they couldn't run for office (which they are allowed to, but in order to take office, they have to resign). Otherwise, they would have no say on how the country is run because they couldn't even petition Congress to pass laws against actions by superiors. They couldn't petition the courts for relief when a superior did something wrong.
Say a superior sexually assaulted a subordinate. If what you said was true, that subordinate could never tell anybody. That's absurd.
And when I was in, we were allowed to be critical of superiors as long as we obeyed every lawful order.
That's not exactly true, and even to the extent that it relates to real offenses, I think the upthread commenter would be correct that an order to not post to social media “without exception” (barring, e.g., a special mission where that is a bona fide security requirement) is probably an illegal order.
Of course, to the extent that his conduct using social media before or after is insubordinate, disrespectful toward military superiors or civilian officials, seditious, unbecoming of an officer and gentleman, or prejudicial to good order and discipline, that conduct may still be a UCMJ violation notwithstanding the invalidity of the overbroad order.
The fact that they define limits, in fact, means he still had the right because the limits would not need to be defined if the right did not exist for him.
Probably, but that only really is going to matter if and to the extent he is charged with disobeying an order, which I suspect won't be the only charge.
Art. 88 (Contempt for officials),, Art. 89 (Disrespect for superior commissioned officer), Art. 133 (Conduct unbecoming), and maybe Art. 134 (Conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline), though for the last the preemption doctrine would apply to any conduct that actually fell into the coverage of the other articles.
The actual charges that have been announced are being considered (which weren’t included when the article was first posted) include Art. 88 and 133, as well as two different disobeying-a-lawful-order offenses (Art. 90 and 92.)
We can disagree about whether he is guilty of them, or should be punished (I don't think so, considering he is critical of mistakes that lost American lives), but yeah, the military will probably make them stick.
That's one reason I left before I incurred an obligation. So glad I did because I do not have to follow orders that I disagree with.
Edit: Upvoted your comment because, well, you are correct.
Uniform Code Of Military Justice supersedes his constitution rights as a private citizen.
Source: I've been in the military.
That's not fair to say.
He asked for accountability from military leadership that knowingly left Americans in enemy territory and executed a drone strike that killed children & civilians.
Thus far, the only accountability has been his removal from his position, which he already knew would happen when he made his initial recording.
He sounds like the only sane one in this scenario.
>independent media
Of course an Islamophobe like Sam Harris was happy with the invasion of Afghanistan and got VERY upset when the US left. Not only does he want the murdering of Afghan Muslims to persist, but he also has no issue with a group of rapists and murderers ruling the country and wrecking havoc while militant atheists like himself maintain their interests in the region.
Blood is not only on the mercenaries' hands who participated in the war, but also on people like Sam Harris who strongly propagate for it and try to shift public opinion and the political climate to return to war. How many innocent men, women and children must suffer to make people like Sam Harris happy? Likely no limit.
>To me it is unconscionable that dissent can be punished and deterred in this manner, especially in America. The optics of it are damning and moreover it is actually unethical.
It's ironic that someone who wants more Afghan Muslims to die is lecturing people about what's unethical.
I've never seen anyone impugn motive so recklessly.
It's hard to see it any other way, because that's essentially what the US and its allies have been doing.
You could say another alternative would be that he sees the killing of Afghan Muslims as an unfortunate consequence of spreading secular democracy, but still necessary. But that doesn't make any sense, it's clear that the Afghans don't want secularism, so what should the US do? Wipe out every element that is anti-secular? Maybe by keep bombing children in Quran schools, like the US and its allies have done in the past? That's equally inconsiderate of Muslim Afghans lives, is it not?
It was not unplanned (a surrender was signed during the Trump Administration, well before the withdrawal was completed), nor has it been avoidable at least since the war of choice (and aggression) in Iraq; whether it was avoidable without that is debatable, but ultimately irrelevant, since the invasion only occurred because the Administration was boxed in politically and couldn't use 9/11 as an excuse for their preconceived war on Iraq without first making a show of going after al-Qaeda where their leadership was known to be.
- The Trump deal was conditional on the Taliban meeting requirements they ended up not meeting (supporting other terrorist groups), which would have invalidated that agreement. Additionally that agreement was very high-level with details left open-ended, and it could have been implemented via a safer, phased withdrawal. I say this as someone who recognizes Trump could also have led the US to this same (or far worse) outcome.
- The Biden administration had every authority to change course from Trump. Clearly Biden had no problem doing so with a list of immediate executive orders, and he could have made different choices here. In fact he already did, since he withdrew by August rather than May (a departure from the Trump-Taliban agreement).
- Biden repeatedly claimed that there was no way the Taliban could overwhelm the Afghan army, but that's what happened. This seems like an unplanned outcome (the alternative is that Biden lied to the US public and the world).
- Other allies like Germany were also blindsided by the unilateral choice to withdraw as the US did, which left them scrambling to figure out a safe exit for their people and other collaborators.
- The US could have left a small force of 2500 to help keep the peace - that seems like a small price to keep the Afghanistan government together for another generation.
- The US could have taken stronger action historically against Pakistan, which has provided a safe space for various terrorist groups to rebuild, including both Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Even doing so now, while continuing military support of the Afghan government, could have set up for a safer future withdrawal.