Trump orders the Navy to punish prosecutors for doing their jobs

Trump

President Donald Trump further degraded the office of the presidency on Wednesday by ordering the Navy to punish prosecutors for doing their jobs by stripping them of their medals.

Navy SEAL team leader Eddie Gallagher had been charged with committing war crimes after members of his own team turned him in for stabbing a teenage boy to death even though the boy was only a suspected ISIS insurgent. The boy was also in custody and unarmed. He did not pose a threat to Gallagher or his team.

Gallagher then took photos of himself posing next to the boy’s corpse as if he were a trophy kill and threatened the men who turned him in.

Of course, conservatives were outraged because they think members of the military should be able to kill indiscriminately regardless of what the rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention say.

And so, Trump intervened back in May while considering pardoning several former soldiers who have been convicted or are on trial for war crimes. The jury went on to acquit Gallagher of all the charges except one related to posing and taking a picture with the boy’s corpse.

The Navy had awarded prosecutors on the case with the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, but Trump is punishing the prosecutors by ordering their medals taken away from them.

Retired Admiral John Kirby blasted the order and warned that Trump is once again politicizing the military and killing morale.

“I can’t remember a time when a president involved himself in an award decision at this low a level,” Kirby told CNN, going on to say that Trump’s order “unnecessarily demoralizes and demeans the men and women who received those medals, as well as the superior officers who saw fit to award them. Once again, he risks further politicizing the military.”

Trump’s order to punish military prosecutors will also result in them being more reluctant in the future to charge members of the military with war crimes, making such crimes easier to commit and get away with. This is a breakdown of the rule of law and the rules of engagement that our military has followed for decades. Trump isn’t doing our military a favor, he’s turning them into monsters and targets. Because if soldiers are allowed to commit war crimes at will, other nations will do the same to us.

Plus, if Trump can order medals and honors stripped from military personnel, he could so the same to anyone who once wore the uniform or still does, which means he could further attack the late-Senator John McCain and any other military official who ever criticized him. Make no mistake, this is a slippery slope, and the Pentagon is enabling him.

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