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Whatever Happened to LtCol Scheller?
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller was court-martialed on Thursday, October 14, charged with five counts of violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice including: showing contempt towards officials; showing disrespect towards superior commissioned officers and failure to obey an order or regulation.
He pled guilty on all counts, as he surely must have, given his call for “accountability” in the ranks.
Prior to the hearing, a deal was reached between prosecutors and the defense team, in which Scheller agreed to accept a maximum punishment of a letter of reprimand, forfeiture of two-thirds of a month’s pay for a year, and the processing of his request to resign from the Corps, the disposition and type of discharge to be determined by the Secretary of the Navy.
The judge in the case, USMC Colonel Glen Hines, unsurprisingly accepted Scheller’s guilty plea, finding him so on all counts.
In something of a surprise, however, the judge did not impose the agreed-upon maximum sentence, calling for the letter of reprimand, and the forfeiture of only $5,000 of one month’s pay. (He stated in his verdict that it would have been his preference for Scheller to forfeit the amount for two months of pay, but that he gave Scheller credit for time served in the brig.) Scheller will now begin the process of separation, and the type of discharge he receives (honorable, general, other than honorable, bad conduct, dishonorable) will be at the judgment and discretion of the Secretary of the Navy.
In his ruling, Col Hines also sharply criticized the prosecutorial (ie: USMC) handling of the case, saying that the entirety of Scheller’s videos showed a man who appeared “to be in pain,” “confused,” and “significantly frustrated,” rather than the violent revolutionary portrayed in the prosecution’s testimony. He was also critical of what appear to have been leaks to the press about Scheller’s character and mental health status, as well as his pre-trial confinement, saying that they raised the specter of “unlawful command influence.”
All in all, an interesting conclusion to the case, in which no-one involved got off scot-free.
That happy outcome, apparently, is reserved only for those at the highest levels, and those in charge of the debacle for which Scheller’s outspokenness and unflinching honesty cost him his career.
Published in General“I am standing here today pleading guilty; this is me accepting accountability. But it deeply pains me that my senior leaders are incapable of being as courageous.” — LtCol Stuart Scheller, at his court-martial, October 14, 2021
Thanks for the update. That is indeed important to know about.
Scheller did the crime knowing he’d do the time, but felt that his honor required it. I wonder if any of the superior officers to whom he “showed disrespect” can say as much?
Showing them disrespect was wrong. They merited utter contempt. They still do.
They merit utter contempt from us not under their command. Scheller knew he had to fall on his sword to preserve his own honor. The only way he could make that sacrifice worthwhile was to do it before he resigned, thereby making it a public spectacle.
This guy is in my prayers. I hope and pray something good comes out of this for him. He deserves it.
There’s a great children’s story, a classic, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, about a little kid who sees a way for the steam shovel driver to get the steam shovel out of a big pit. No one else in town can see the solution to the problem.
That’s all I could think of when I heard Scheller’s video: “Why did you give up Bagram Air Base?” A simple question that no one has yet answered satisfactorily. Instead, everyone has taken a shot at the questioner.
So do you think, @marcin, that Scheller will get hired by CNN?
If a Biden-appointed Secretary of the Navy is to decide what type of discharge he’ll receive, then I fear the long-term damage to the Lt. Col.’s future resulting from that final outcome.
Scheller said
He challenged the weaklings we’ve installed in place of leaders to “throw their rank on the table” and say the truth out loud, then he showed them how to do it.
Yes, the play soldiers of the left have earned contempt, and I obligingly despise them.
Not quite everyone.
Good on the military judge and LtCol Scheller. We need to set vengeance, retribution against the four stars, as a litmus test of every Republican primary candidate. No commitment, no call for vengeance and retribution, no votes.
Your link goes to something different. Our family knows ‘Mike Mulligan ‘ – that wonderful story is in ‘The Modern Story Book’ , published back in the late 1930s, both my husband and I had that book as children; and we were able to find a copy a few years ago which we still enjoy. (Second childhood?)
I think those in the rarified heights of the USMC, who may be slightly less tone-deaf than their counterparts in other service branches, must have decided that no useful purpose was to be served by making Scheller either a martyr or an object lesson for those who would publicly criticize their chain of command. I’m not sure they started out with that gentle goal in mind, given early leaks which appear to have come from inside the Corps, or the fact that his commanding officer sent the MPs to round him up and throw him in the brig in late September. (Both aspects of the case on the part of the USMC that were harshly criticized by the judge at Scheller’s court-martial.)
That was when a few politicians got involved, and Scheller’s parents (who seem like very decent, normal people who love their son) started appearing on every Fox News Channel prime time show, every night. I’m guessing that the public backlash from that precipitated a change in plan, and that it no longer seemed like such a good idea to throw the book at Scheller. That seems to have paid off from the point of view of those who would like the Scheller story to go away, as there’s very little coverage (other than on Fox) of the rather light judicial sentence that Scheller received for his actions.
We’ll see if the Secretary of the Navy is similarly inclined. A particularly harsh ruling would, I think, bring the matter, and Afghanistan with it, back into the news. And I don’t think anyone in DC wants that.
Whatever the terms of Scheller’s discharge, I don’t think he has to worry about his future. Speaking the truth when doing so endangers your career, and then (perhaps somewhat recklessly) escalating, and then stepping up and acknowledging that you violated the rules of your service and accepting the punishment, while still effectively standing your ground, is something that many, many people find admirable, if not heroic. He may not be every employer’s cup of tea, but I don’t think he’ll have any difficulty moving on. And I hope he finds a worthwhile second career where he can put his considerable talents to some good use.
Like @marcin, I pray for his success, and that he’s able to settle himself and put his life back together, that he’s not swept up and used by others for an agenda that’s not in his best interests, that he knows who his real friends are and that he sticks with them. I wish him well.
Thank you so much. I just fixed it. I used the other link in another comment I made earlier, for some reason I didn’t check that I got the right link. I fixed the link in this one too. :-)
So sorry, everyone. :-)
I’m not sure where to exactly get a fact check, but my father (Col. USMC, Ret.) tells the story that George Marshall passed over hundreds of generals as he built up the US effort in World War II. Basically, anyone who had risen high in the ranks from 1930-1940 was worthless. The next president will likely have to do the same when building assembling the Joint Chiefs and the rest of the military leadership. God Bless Lt. Col Scheller.
How? A four star general is near the end of his career. By the time of the next presidential election, most of the generals responsible for this debacle will have retired. Mark Milley is scheduled to retire in October 2023.
General Scott Miller who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan during the withdrawal is expected to retire soon, and presently holds no 4 star command.
Also, I can think of better things to be a one issue voter about if I were to be one.
I think that there is some truth in what you say about the WWII commanders, though not everyone who had risen to high rank before 1940 was worthless. Far from it.
Here’s a short list: Marshall himself, MacArthur, and Hap Arnold. They were pretty good, I think.
On the Navy side, there were King, Leahy, Nimitz, Halsey, and Fletcher. They were all pretty good, too. I know, I know, Halsey shouldn’t have chased the Japanese decoy force at Leyte Gulf, but overall, he wasn’t worthless.
I sympathize with Lt. Col. Scheller, and am happy to read that his punishment will be relatively light. I hope that SecNav goes easy on him with the discharge.
I must love to be hated, because I’m gonna write what you know that I’m gonna write. I think that Scheller was wrong, not only due to his circumstances, but due to the substance of his opinion. I do sympathize, because I think that he was dealing with the grief and remorse of the ultimate failure of the intervention in Afghanistan.
The withdrawal was a success. Our losses were limited to 13, as far as I could tell. I recall all of the, well, hysteria back in August, here at Ricochet and elsewhere. There was going to be a bloodbath of Americans left behind. There were worries of Taiwan falling; or Afghanistan somehow attacking well, I could never quite tell who, Israel maybe; or Afghan terrorists sneaking across the southern border now that they had all of those new used weapons.
None of it happened. As far as I’ve been able to tell, there has not been a single American killed in Afghanistan since September 1. If anyone has contrary information, please let me know.
Here’s what I expect to happen. Month after month will pass, and there will be nothing particularly bad that happens to Americans in Afghanistan. Taiwan will not fall. Nothing much will occur on the international scene.
If something bad does happen, there will be no particular reason to relate it to Afghanistan. While we were in Afghanistan, we saw the mess in Libya, the terrible civil war in Syria, the rise and fall of ISIS, the whole (thankfully brief) Muslim Brotherhood thing in Egypt. Oh, and Russia fighting a brief war with Georgia in 2008 and seizing Crimea in 2014.
It is possible that I will turn out to be incorrect about this. I hope not, and you should hope not, too, no matter how annoyed you may be at me. We don’t want bad things to happen to our countrymen, do we?
But I doubt that I will turn out to be incorrect. Months will pass, and the fallout from Afghanistan will be a nothingburger. And occasionally, someone will probably post something about the Great Afghanistan Debacle of 2021, and I will point out, again, that all of the fears and dire predictions did not come to pass. Maybe, eventually, folks will start to realize that this was a minor thing.
I do expect that Afghans will sometimes do terrible things to other Afghans. I’m no expert on Afghan history, but it is my impression that they were doing this when Alexander the Great arrived, and until the British took over, and after the British left, and after the Russians invaded, and after the Russians left, and after we invaded. They’ll probably remain true to form now that we have left. Not my problem.
That’s an odd reason to write something. That’s all I’ll say.
I should add that I do not have much respect for some of the high military command, but not for anything relating to Afghanistan. I think that they are wrong in their embrace of Wokeism, and in going along with the whole right-wing domestic terrorist narrative. Oh, and the silly global warming stuff, too.
I do hope that one of them is still a good guy. I don’t think that I’ve seen him since his wedding back around 1991. A 3-star general, Lt. Gen. Gregory Guillot, is currently the commander of the Ninth Air Force. Greg is one year older than me, and his family moved into the house next door back around 1974, when we were around 7 or 8 years old. We were neighbors and friends through the end of high school, though we didn’t see much of each other thereafter.
Greg took command of the Ninth Air Force in 2020. It looks like the command included Bagram.
If our top military command believed that, they probably wouldn’t have handled Scheller the way they did. He would have been punished, to be sure, but there wouldn’t have been the leaks to the press, etc., that were criticized by the judge.
LtCol Schiller won’t be getting a bad conduct or dishonorable discharge. Those can be awarded only by court martial. The character of a discharge is governed by regulations, so SECNAV won’t have unfettered discretion.
She you state: “All in all, an interesting conclusion to the case, in which no-one involved got off scot-free.”
Sad to think that behind the scenes, it was our national security – betrayed by those the Lt Colonel complained of – that took the greatest hits.
And, come to think of it, some of the people Scheller complained of, like Gen Milley, did get off scot free.
Marshall did pass over, indeed got rid of, older generals. But the army he presided over was much different than today’s military. Officers in today’s military are automatically cashiered if they are turned down for promotion twice in a row. That wasn’t the case pre-WWII.
The examples given above of MacArthur, and Hap Arnold are curious. Marshall had little influence over them. In the case of MacArthur, he had already retired, but was called back to active service, really by the president, because he was already in the Philipines as the head of their army.
In the case of Hap Arnold, he was head of the Army Air Corps, precursor to today’s U.S. Air Force, and the Army Air Corps already had an independence from the Army Chief of Staff, only technically reporting to the Chief of Staff.
By the way, one notable exception Marshall made regarding older officers making general under his tenure was George Patton.
The problem today’s military has is rank inflation and a culture that doesn’t tolerate mistakes. I mentioned today’s up or out policy, and really, if you miss one promotion, your chances of getting promoted on the second try are almost nil.
It wasn’t a success. Your argument that it isn’t as bad as it seemed at the time is plausible. But it did result in a hit to American prestige. I also suspect that the Taliban are getting under the table payments from the United States to keep those American “hostages” from being mistreated. So they’re being left alone?
The real test is if they are being allowed out of the country. As for your predictions about Taiwan, again it’s plausible. We’ll see.
We agree about that, Carol. I was referring to the judge‘s ruling, and his harsh words for the prosecution at the same time as he sentenced LtCol Scheller. Milley and his ilk are the people I’m speaking about in the next sentence of the OP. They are the ones who skated.
The Daily Mail (of all things) has the most comprehensive coverage of this I’ve seen. It includes, in full, Scheller’s statement to the court-martial. It’s very long (and comes with a few CoC bolded emendations), but here it is:
That fact alone rubbishes our “free and impartial” press.
9th AF commands CENTCOM. He has the same job Horner had.
Agree. You don’t give a dishonorable discharge for a LOR.
Good to know. Thanks, @eherring and @alfrench.
He’s been through hell. Those mental health shenanigans to imply that he was unstable and suicidal: I am so glad he had the presence of mind to not get sucked in by the play acted concern for his state of mind.
His thinking is crystal clear.
I think people his age will understand everything he is saying, and I think it will do enormous good going forward.
Locally, I’ve seen frustrated people yell Stop! or Go! from time to time. :-) Everyone around them recoils in pretend fear and horror, and then they criticize and, worse, make fun of the instigator. But then a weird thing happens: little by little, all the changes the instigator said needed to happen happen. It’s almost as if the people were listening and understanding the entire time the instigator was calling for change. They just never had the decency to give credit to the original instigator who had the courage to stand up and took a public beating for doing so.