Angry Planet - Pardoning War Criminals Is Not 'Sticking Up for Our Armed Forces'

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for tuning into this special podcast. Last week was a busy one for President Trump and the military. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer was fired. Or did he quit? No, he was fired. Why? Because of how he handled controversy surrounding Navy SEAL and accused War Criminal Eddie Gallagher. That’s … that’s if he was actually fired, which he probably was.Here to help us untangle this mess is Pauline Kaurin. Kaurin is the Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics at the US Naval War College and the author of The Warrior, Military Ethics and Contemporary Warfare: Achilles Goes Asymmetrical.You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. That's the final story for the momentary that they say, no, this is who we are. This is who we're supposed to. We're supposed to protect the innocent. We're supposed to protect the vulnerable. It's not about being tough guys. It's not about taking advantage of the first. that we're given lethal power by our society. It's not about a particular vision of masculinity. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I am your host, Matthew Galt. Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for tuning in to this special podcast. Last week was a busy one for President Trump and the military. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, was fired, or did he quit? No, he was fired. Why? Because of how he handled controversy surrounding

Navy SEAL and accused war criminal Eddie Gallagher. That's if he was actually fired, which he probably was. Here to help us untangle this mess is Pauline Corinne. Corrin is the Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College and the author of the Warrior Military Ethics and Contemporary Warfare, Achilles Goes Asymmetrical. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. All right. So here at the top, I want to say that Corin's views are her own, and they do not represent the views of the U.S. Naval War College or the Pentagon. That said, what is going on? Why are we down a Secretary of the Navy? What happened, as far as you can tell?

Well, I mean, that's an excellent question. What happened? As far as I can tell. And there's a lot of conflicting press reports. So I think, you know, only the people involved really know what happened. But the basic issue, I think, is that, you know, Gallagher and his people had asked President Trump to intervene in a military justice case. And so there's this question about, it's not a legal question. President Trump, of course, has the right to pardon or give legal remedies as part of his executive powers. But the question this week, I think, became a question of the military profession because, you know, even though there were difficulties, procedural difficulties with Gallagher's case, the core question is whether or not the military profession can hold their own members accountable. for failing to uphold both legal and moral standards that we expect of people in the military profession.

That's as a profession, one of the definitions of a profession is that it is largely self-regulating and that the members of the profession are the ones who decide who is given entrance into the profession, and also they're the ones that decide when someone needs to leave the profession. And I think it's the second one that is the issue with Gallagher. And so I think the military views this as we are trying to police our own. President Trump views this as his prerogative. And from the reports, my sense is he thinks he is showing support to the military. but I think he has a particular view of the task of the military.

He's been quoted in the last few days of that he's supporting our war fighters. And in the past, he has made references to our war fighters as killers and has said in his election campaign that, you know, if he told members of the military to do so, they would commit war crimes. So I think he has a very different view of responsibility and accountability when it comes to the military. So in terms of what the conflict is about, it is in part a conflict about the nature of the military profession, but it has also created a civilian military relations conflict because there's this question about, can, you know, to what degree can the civilian authority overrule how the military functions as a profession, right? And what's the relationship? We have civilian control of the military, and so there has been a lot of discussion this week, especially with the either firing or resigning of Secretary Spencer about exactly what that relationship is. and also sort of questions of obedience.

What does one do when the president is taking action that one has moral qualms with? So it's not a legal question. He has a legal right to do what he's doing. For many people, it's a moral question that people think, including myself, I argued this week, that it was morally problematic that was wrong. Well, let's back up just a little bit and get a little bit more information about this. specific case. Who is Eddie Gallagher? And what exactly was he accused of? Well, he was, first of all, the Gallagher case, which has been laid out in the press,

you know, quite extensively, there's, there's the, there's the, what he was accused of, he was accused of by his own people, his own members of his own unit turned him in. He was accused of committing war crimes. There are lots of different accusations. The one that went to trial is him taking a picture with a dead combatant, a dead enemy combatant. That was the one that sort of made it through the process. There were other various allegations and charges.

But because of the procedural, there were all kinds of procedural problems with the case as it proceeded at the end of the day, that was the charge that was able to, in a sense, be sustained, right? Even though there are other allegations, those did not make it through the process. Now, of course, taking a picture with war dead is at the very least the violation of our customs and practices in war is about respecting the dead. and also violates, you know, certain, of course, certain legal practices and requirements that we have about how we treat how American military members are to treat combatants, right? People who are fighting on the other side. So that's the sort of the basic, if we can boil it down to the basics of the case. that's the basic issue.

The other two cases that were talked about in conjunction, these are all cases that involve war crimes in some way and an attempt by the military to say to their own people, no, you can't engage in that behavior. And if we find you guilty of engaging in that behavior, then there will be accountability that has to happen. And this is a, you know, it's a longstanding thing that the military thinks important.

the American people think is important, especially since Nuremberg, but also since Vietnam and the Mili case. But the Gallagher case was very complicated, and there were all kinds of procedural problems with how the Navy handled it. So that's part of this story as well, right? It's unclear what, if it hadn't been for those procedural problems, it's sort of unclear what would have happened whether Gallagher would have been found guilty on other charges as well. Right. So he's acquitted on most of the more, I would say, severe charges and found guilty of taking this trophy photo. Yes. And the punishment is going to be, they're going to take his, he's getting busted down to, he's getting busted down in rank, I believe, and they're taking away his Trident Pen, like the symbol of him being a Navy SEAL, correct? Yes.

Which that is actually, that's a pretty like, you know, if your civilian, you might say, I would have taken this. pin, that's no big, you know, what's the big deal about that? That is the symbol of his identity as a member of that military community, right? So this is sort of the, you know, equivalent of, you know, in all the old movies, ripping off someone's appellants or ripping their uniform or taking their medals off their uniform, right? He is, that is a mark of, you are now excluded, you are, you are no longer a part of this, of this community, right? So it's more that being reduced in rank affects things like his retirement and how much money he would get paid in retirement. So that's a monetary question.

The trident question is really a question of symbolism as a question of the military exerting their autonomy over their own profession and saying, if you are going to be seen as a member of our profession, you have to adhere to certain standards. same way that like for the ranger tab, if you have a ranger tab, that means something in that particular community. Okay. So this does bring up all kinds of questions. You know, the cliche that we think of when we think of civilian intervention in the military is usually the opposite of what we've been seeing.

It's usually we think of this, the, I think civilians, at least I do sometimes, think of the military as this kind of insular world. and when they do bring their own to justice, they have a tendency to hedge on the side of protecting people. Right. And so the civilians need to come in

to make sure that the cases are fair and that people are actually tried for the crimes that they have committed, etc. We've got this inversion of that now. Is that testing, how is the military reacting to this? Like, what are you seeing, what kind of conversations are you having? What do you think?

Well, in terms of what I think I argued in an op-ed this week with one of my ethics colleagues that, you know, that this is deeply problematic because it undermines the nature of the military profession and the ability of the military profession to sort of police their own and have a true sense of responsibility and accountability, particularly for actions in, combat. A lot of the conversations I've been having with both civilians on military this week have expressed a great deal of concern about how this, what this will mean for future accountability in the military. It's very, as you pointed out, it is actually quite difficult to get to the point where you are trying your own people for war crimes. That's quite an extraordinary thing that we do. And I think it is in part of the reason that the military has a high trust level from the American public, because I think the American public understands that they will, in fact, police their own and they take the rules and the laws of warfare seriously. And I

think a lot of people are concerned about this is setting a precedent that if you, if you appeal to the civilian authorities, and if you can go on cable news to make your case, then the president or whoever the civilian authority is will let you off the hook. We'll override military justice and say, no, it's okay. And I think a further problem is the perception that's being projected of the military as a bunch of tough guys who are killers and who commit war crimes and who will do whatever it takes, you know, to do their jobs, and it's a certain kind of cult of masculinity that is deeply problematic, and it actually is at odds with the military profession.

People who are members of the military are not killers. They're not murderers. There's a distinction. They engage in justified killing on behalf of the state under certain rules and certain parameters. They take an oath, and they swear to defend the United States. part of that oath is also to follow the rules and laws and orders of the military community. So I think some of it is also a conception of warfare that is probably rooted in watching too many action movies or too much sort of pop culture conceptions of how we think of the military as opposed to the military as a professional force that like other professions, operates within certain limitations.

Those who execute people, however you feel about capital punishment and the death penalty, those who execute people for the state have to follow certain parameters in doing so. They don't just get to do it however they want. Members of the medical profession have to follow certain rules and how they render care. This is part of what it means to be a member of a profession. All right, we're going to pause here for a, quick word from our sponsors. We'll be right back on War College. All right. Thank you for staying tuned. War College listeners. We are on with Pauline Corinne, and we are talking about

ethics and war criminals. Do you think there's anything to the fact that two of the high-profile pardoning cases are members of the Special Forces? Do you think that they get to even if, do you think that they get treated differently and they get to play by different rules? I know this is something that we've kind of talked about before with you. Right. Yeah, that's a good question. I think there, I think there is a sense, and I've spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks chatting with people in special forces. I mean, I think there is perhaps a sense that they are, I mean, quite rightly viewed as more elite and presumably then maybe entitled to certain kinds of special treatment,

although many of the members that I've talked to this week push back against the idea, that means that they shouldn't be held to the standard. And in fact, they argue they should be held to a higher standard because they're an elite force. But I do think that perhaps there is this sense, and particularly in the public eye, that they are special, they are different, And there's also been conversation about the extent to which the special forces have been used or perhaps overused in the last 18 years.

And that some of what is happening in these pardoning cases is perhaps a sympathy vote, right? Listen, look at what these guys have been through, because it is men that we're talking about at this point. Look at what they've been through. You can't expect people to go through all of these deployments and not commit war crimes, right? somehow an unreasonable expectation that we're asking them to do too much. So I think there's a couple of different strengths of discussion. But the fact that they are elite units, I think clearly, you know, sort of plays into at least the popular imagination.

Although, as I said, I think there are members of their own community who are quite upset and angry and say that these pardons tarnish their community because they say that the standard isn't the standard. And the people I've talked to actually are upset because that undermines what they're trying to do, which is to hold their own right now. Various Special Forces communities and it's been in the news are undergoing some soul searching and some discussions about their culture and ethics within their culture. So there's these conversations ongoing within these special forces communities across the

military about the effects of the 18-year, you know, constant operational tempo and what's that doing to their culture and their ethics. They're trying to sort of write the ship, if I can use a Navy analogy, and this is actually saying, oh, you don't need to write the ship. It's all fine. Your special forces like, Worldless, let you off the hook. So I think there's, I mean, there's several, there's some problems with that, with that kind of view and even if it's well-meaning sympathy because war is difficult. But these are all people

who volunteered, right? They raised their hand and said, yes, I'll do this. It was, I think, Rear Admiral Colin Green back in August said that the Navy SEAL specifically, which Gallagher has a culture problem. Do you think that stuff like this is going to have a chilling effect on people trying to hold their, the members of their profession accountable. Because like you said, Gallagher was turned in by multiple members of his platoon, right? Yes, yes.

And purportedly, he threatened to kill them if they turned him in. Right. So it was under, like, there was some courage involved for them to turn him in. Right. Yeah, I think that's a good, question. I don't know the answer to that question. I worry that the answer is yes. I worry that

because loyalty is so important in the military, it's difficult enough as it is to get people to turn in their comrades for war crimes, right? To be willing to step up and to say, no, what you did was not okay. That's a difficult thing to do because of unit cohesion in the military. These are people you depend on for your life, and these are people you are bonded with. So my worry is that it will, in fact, have a chilling effect. That said, I think the people that I've spoken to in Special Forces, and I think, especially someone like Admiral Green, seems very committed to the idea that they are members of a profession

and that they will uphold certain standards. The question is, if there are more pardons that come, or if there are more actions from civilian authorities that communicate, oh, well, we're not really going to hold you to the standard, or we don't even really agree with that standard anymore, then I think that that is going to be deeply problematic for the military because it sets up another kind of military-civillion conflict, right? You have a conflict of values,

and you and I have talked about the difference in the two-coveillance. cultures as it is, right? So I do worry that that's a possibility. When I talk to people in the military and I talk to my students, they're like, no, we're professionals. We don't, that's not what we do. And lots of the people that I've talked to do not have my things to say about, about Gallagher and the two other gentlemen. Because the view is that they broke the bond, right? We follow the rules.

This is what we do. We have a moral and legal standard that we uphold. And that's part of who we are. And we understand it's difficult. But this is, you know, we raised our hands and took an oath and agreed to do this. So I'm concerned it will have a chilling effect. I worry it will make people less likely to take the risk to turn in someone who's committed a war crime because will they think to themselves, well, the person is probably just going to get off the host. anyway. So why would I take that risk, put my career on the line to do that?

Not just get off the hook, but arguably rewarded too, right? Gallagher and Lawrence specifically have both been on Fox News. Yeah. They've been doing the tour. They've been in the media. They've been talking to the press. Now there's early rumblings that they'll be part of the 2020 campaign. Right. How does that look? I think it looks terrible from a military profession point of view, right? Because part of the military profession is that the military is, people often say the military is apolitical.

I don't, you know, I don't think that's the right way to phrase it. The military is supposed to be nonpartisan, right? So they are not supposed to endorse a particular party or be seen. The military is not to be seen as a tool or as being loyal to one party over another. The military is seen to be loyal to the Constitution and to the United States and to protect the citizens of the United States, all of them. So the concern here is, as you said, are Gallagher and Lawrence and whoever else, are they going to benefit actually from having committed war crimes or seen to have benefit?

But then also that sets up this message that this view of warfare that Gallagher and Lawrence and the pardon sort of represent now is the view of warfare that at least one particular political figure is asking people to endorse. It's asking them to endorse this idea that our boys are killing. Yeah, they'll commit war crimes if I tell them to because we're tough and we're badass and that's what we do. And if that is the mess. So the reward question is one issue and that's problematic because you shouldn't benefit from your crime. It's a basic legal principle. But then also this question about what's the narrative of the American military that's being put forward and the narrative of war.

because that's not the narrative that as a country we have historically followed. Now, it's not to say there haven't been people who have committed war crimes. Of course, there have. But there has been at least an attempt to say, listen, we reject that. I mean, we tried the not updates for that. We tried Japanese at the end of World War II for committing war crimes. We said this is not okay with the other allied powers in Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. right? So there's this legal precedent that says that's now established in international law and a law of armed conflict that this is their rules to war. There are limitations on how armies and militaries can function. So the question sort of going forward is what's the effect of these actions on that narrative? And the idea of that and the broader narrative of that we hold people responsible and accountable when they break the rules.

in this case in the military, is that still a thing? Or are we just saying if you can, you know, appeal to the right person or have powerful friends or garner sympathy in a certain kind of way, no, you don't have to follow the rules? Seems like a deeply sort of problematic view for a Democratic Republic to hold. The rule of law is a basic tenet of our political system. Well, it also plays into, you know, an argument from the cynical that has always kind of been espoused that, you know, the military gets to make its own rules, etc., etc. You know, this kind of, this idea that there really is no war of law. And if as long as you've got the right friends or the right amount of money, you get to do whatever you want, which, you know, the truth is actually way more complicated. But when you've got things happening like what's happening now, it, that feels more true than it's ever.

been before, unfortunately. Yeah, I think that's right. I think in that way it feels like that, you know, you have to cede the cynics point because at least you have a few data points that seem to suggest that that's the case. So I think that will be the, I think that's the question less for the military. I think within the military, there is still a strong commitment rooted in identity that this is not how we behave, right? And this is not okay.

You've heard that from many retired, especially senior officers this week. Veterans, people who are active duty, of course, can't speak out perhaps in the way that some people might want to hear from them. But in my conversations, like the people I talk to are in the military are very committed to their professional identities and that this is not how we behave. So I think the concern is really more what will civilians, especially civilians who have political power conclude about this episode. And what will they be willing to do in a case? So let's say we have a case where the military doesn't want to hold their own accountable. Will civilians sort of say, okay, well, you know, it's not really a thing anymore anyway because of these pardons and other things that have happened. we're not really that into accountability.

So we'll just sort of, we'll just let it slide. I think if that starts to happen, that's very dangerous because what we're then saying is that the role of law doesn't apply. Right. Or it doesn't apply in a meaningful way. So sometimes you might be held accountable, especially if you're a person of color, a member of marginalized community.

But if you look a certain way or belong to a certain community or have certain kinds of friends, enough money, you can go on cable TV, and get some sympathy, then you won't be held accountable. And that's a very sort of divisive. I think that's a very divisive message. Right. And it deepens the civilian military divide, which is already pretty bad in this country.

Yes. Yes. I think it does. Because it reinforces what is actually a misunderstanding, which is that, yes, the military police their own, but those aren't, they're not arbitrary standards. Right. there are reasons for those standards and they're taken very seriously.

They're related to things like just war thinking and international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict which have a long historical trajectory. These aren't like arbitrary rules. There's reasons for these. And since there are fewer and fewer civilians that have experience with the military, I fear that as that gap gets broader than what civilians fill in, their knowledge of the military has been based on what they see in the meeting, what they see in popular culture.

So if your view of the military is based on, let's say, Rambo, for our human's sake, or pick your favorite action movie, right, that's problematic because it doesn't necessarily represent the military profession. I think a few good men is a really good example here. Yeah. And especially because every week I feel like I see Jack Nicholson giving that speech at the end of the movie with somebody saying how amazing it is. And like, you know, this is what the military does, taking it out of context, not showing the next scene where he immediately. gets arrested, right?

Completely misunderstanding what's going on. Well, and at the end, at the very end of the movie, the two Marines, like the one younger Marine turns the older Marines, says basically so I'm paraphrasing here, but basically says, what didn't we do wrong? Like, he literally doesn't, he's having a hard time understanding what happened. And the older Marine says, we're supposed to, we're supposed to take care of the innocent, we're supposed to take care of the vulnerable, we're supposed to take care of the vulnerable, when we're supposed to take care of the week.

That's what Marines do. Right. So at the end, after all the Nicholson stuff, and you have this reassertion, this articulation of what happened is that the Marines failed to live up to their own professional identity. Right. And that even Nicholson fails to live up to that.

So, yeah, I agree with you. That scene is often pulled out as a sort of like, you know, you need us on that wall. You don't understand this. But I think you also have to be. take that scene with the scene towards the end where the Marine says to his younger colleague, no, we did the wrong thing, right? We didn't do what we were supposed to do. So one hope that that assertion that's at the end of the movie, that that is, that that's the final story for

the military that they say, no, this is who we are. This is who we're supposed to, we're supposed to protect the innocent. We're supposed to protect the vulnerable. It's not about being tough guys. It's not about taking advantage of the fact that we're given lethal power by our society. It's not about a particular vision of masculinity, right, that takes advantage of and harms other people because we can. That's not what the military is for the military is to protect the societies for the common good. So my hope is that people can move to the end of the movie and say, yes, that's right. Did Spencer maybe do the wrong thing here? Because it sure sounds like if you believe Esper, it sounds like he was talking about, he was saying one thing in public and doing another thing in

private, right? Yeah. If we believe, if we believe Esper and even if, I mean, there were reports that Spencer had talked to Esper's chief of staff. So there's a, assumption that somehow he was in the loop. But at the very least, if the reports are correct, then Spencer is saying one thing in public and then, you know, acting in a different sort of confusing way. And that's also hard to square with his resignation letter, which many people in the military were like, yes, you know, they view that as an honorable thing. So yeah, I think that's kind I think it's kind of a hot mess because it's, you have these conflicting reports and it's unclear, you know, who do you believe? But then there, I think, you know, at the very

least, there's, there is a concern that, that once again, what's happening is that channel deals, right? Which is not how the, that's not how the military operates. So, you know, another thing that I, that you and I have talked about a little bit is, um, people fall in line with, I'm trying to think of how to put this. Your commander affects things. Like everything the commander does and the way the commander operates resonates down, right? It does. It sets the culture.

Yeah, exactly. And Trump is the commander in chief. So that's in the way that he operates is, you know, everyone knows how he operates. So that resonates down. That changes the culture, that affects the culture, even the military culture. it does yeah no I think and I think that's also part of the concern I mean there is concern about the erosion of a certain way of doing things a civil male relationship but also just erosion of moral standards and you know civility and you know the way that that he operates is very different

than his predecessors in ways that people are concerned are eroding some basic norms that we need to have a Democratic Republic, right? We can't have political debate by insulting one another all the time. People have to be able to compromise. People have to be able to come into some kind of common solutions, to pass laws, to do things that need to happen. So what's the impact on the culture, I think, is a, it's a serious problem. And it's also part of the Siv-Mill issue, if in my T's,

teaching officers or teaching senior enlisted, I say to them, there's certain moral standards that I expect you to uphold as a civilian because you work for me, right? Civilians are the, you know, we're the boss. And there are certain moral standards that I expect you to uphold. But then they point to the commander chief to say, yeah, but he doesn't uphold them, right? That's, you know, all of those who have children know how difficult this is, right? If you have one parent who's who doesn't, you know, Racine is not following the rules, and the kids are like, hey, dad doesn't have to do that

or mom doesn't have to do that. Why do I have to do that? So I think it sets up a kind of a serious sort of culture problem about what are our norms and what are we going to hold people to? And if the military is held to a certain standard, but then in their interactions with senior political officials, if that's not the culture, that's not the norm, then what happens in that interaction.

Pauline, thank you so much for coming on to War College and walking us through this contentious and complicated topic. Thank you. All right, thank you so much for tuning in. War College listeners, War College is me, Matthew Galt, and Kevin, Kevin Nodell. You can follow us on Twitter at War underscore College. I'm at MJG, A-U-L-T, Kevin.

is at KJK Nodell. We'll be back next week with more stories from behind the front lines. Stay safe until then. Please enjoy some turkey.