“Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.” — Martha and The Vandellas
It fascinates me when people are riotously self destructive. We’ve all made bad decisions from time to time, that’s why hindsight is 20/20. But Stuart Scheller, the Marine Lt. Colonel who went bonkers after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, making a video critical of his superiors, is in a different category. By his own admission, the military has tried to cut him some slack if he will just cooperate but he keeps rushing headlong, bull in china shop fashion.
The latest development is that after alienating his wife, giving up his career, pension, all that he’d worked for, now it comes to light that he’s not even a true MAGA. He has broken the first law of MAGAland, which is to speak ill of the Dreamsickle Deity. He can forget that contributor spot on Newsmax or the shot at anchoring at OAN after this revelation.
There’s a reason why MAGAs stopped treating Marine Lt.Col Stuart Scheller like their next big hero, after his initial video about Afghanistan. The reason is that it turns out he is no fan of Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/LFQurQi6T8
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 27, 2021
This is sheer blasphemy to the MAGAs.
I give up. This guy is indecipherable. I had initially thought he was looking for a talking head position on right-wing media but he’s now toast there. The rest of the sane world is looking at him and shaking their collective head, so he doesn’t seem to have much of a future there.
Another day, another incomprehensible action. Whatever happened to self preservation as the first rule of the day?
If he thinks the former guy was “exposing corruption”, he hasn’t been paying attention to reality for at least five years. The former guy was, and still is, corrupt as a four-day-dead skunk, and so are all the people associated with him.
There seems to still be confusion on whether he’s officially out of the Corps or in his last few days of “service” as his discharge is being processed. For his family’s sake at least the Corps tried to give him a deal of sorts to, if he just STFU he’d wind up with a general discharge and would at least be able to earn a halfway decent living. But no, he had to keep shooting off his mouth and put himself on the chopping block for a Courts Martial and a less than honorable discharge which carries significant baggage in civilian life. Oh, and even with the General Discharge his security clearance was on the line and he blew that out of the water by continuing his antics.
This latest gambit might only be his attempting to walk things back to a point where he can get the General Discharge that was (too) generously offered to him and at least a chance of keeping his security clearance so he could get a job with some minor league defense contractor. If that involves incurring the wrath of MAGAts he might decide it’s worth a few months of heavy abuse until ongoing events drop his name from the news entirely. Because he might feel some obligation to see to the needs of the family he alienated and has left twisting in the wind with him. Personally I think he’s lying through his teeth about not being a full-on Trumper but he’s taken a cold, hard look at his future and that of his kids and decided to try and salvage what he can. And publicly speaking critically of Trump might, if it provokes enough backlash give him a shot at building some kind of ability to look after himself and his kids.
I don’t know him at all, but he’s a soldier, not a politician. This is really early after the fall of Kabul. It will take years to find out what all really went wrong, though, obviously some things are already pretty clear. Whatever his politics, it looks to me that he went into a free-fall. I think in cases like this, it might be better to say “I’m sorry you are going through this” and let them find their own way to work through their pain.
Well, the main thing that went wrong with Kabul etc is Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo. They held “peace” talks WITH THE TALIBAN and WITHOUT THE AFGHANI GOVERNMENT being involved at any point. The Biden Administration managed to get a delay for US troop withdrawal from May to August and probably should have done a better job in planning to get our Afghan allies and assistants out of the country at the same time, but it ALL still ultimately goes back to Trump and Pompeo’s deal to stab the Afghani government in the back.
And I will GUARANTEE that if Trump had managed to get reelected last November, there would’ve been an even greater debacle, especially for the thousands of Afghanis who did manage to get out. The Taliban would’ve swept over Afghanistan just as they did (only a few months earlier) and the Afghani government would’ve collapsed just as rapidly as it did and Trump would not have given a rat’s ass about any Afghani who’d helped US troops over the last couple of decades. Trump would have demanded that US troops fire on any non-US civilians who attempted to board US military aircraft (and I wouldn’t put it past Trump to press the DoD to court-martial any soldier who tried to help the Afghanis escape).
I agree, the Trump lizard was in full swing and the only thing that should happen to the freak, is a lot of time to think about his decisions in a building with many doors, while wearing his favorite color – BRIGHT ORANGE …
If the investigation and resolve of Jan-6 can get his ass in court soon enough, all lies will come to roost on his own head and his outlook for more time in any way at the WH, will vaporize as well … The GOP is already showing its true colors attacking everything in the new abortion rules … The thought of a young girl attacked, raped and having to bear a rapist’s offspring for 9 months of mental torture, physical risks and no follow up support for the young girl as well in any way, is at once, cruel, stupid, sickening and downright criminal …
I respectfully disagree. I watched how much Trump love our military and increased their ability to do their jobs. He also completely overhauled the VA for our vets.
His heart for us and our country. He gets things done that no one else could or would do.
He understood business and knew how to negotiate and no one dared go against him because they knew he meant what he said and said what he meant.
I’d rather have a tweeter that gets things done than a soft spoken liar who thinks we are all stupid.
Keep your thoughts and opinions on the matter. I’m certainly going to keep mine.
I’ll address your point about the VA first, since I get my health care through them. I’ve been well-served by two VA medical centers in two different states, going back multiple administrations, and things changed for the worse under Trump. Conservatives have long dreamt of privatizing the entire system and he had a trio of MD pals down at his FL club go to work on things. The first thing I noticed was what had been a simple process for scheduling my next appointment with the counselor I saw for about a year suddenly became complicated. Instead of him looking at his calendar on his computer for his openings and me checking my own calendar at the end of our sessions he instead was forced to submit a request to some admin type detailing when I might be available (my appointments weren’t weekly, but every ten days or so) and then I’d have to wait for a scheduler to call me. It was bullshit and he and I both knew it but he was too professional to offer overt criticism of the unecessary complication.
There were other changes, and the much ballyhooed stuff about getting us an appointment in any specialty within 30 days turned out to be complete and utter bullshit and I happen to live in an area (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) with all manner of top professionals. I have never (since that big pronouncement) gotten an appointment with an outside provider anywhere close to within 30 days! A couple of months sometimes, and in a couple of instances it was over five months. And then during Covid they actually SHUT DOWN the office that searched for private medical providers! Parking has also been an issue since I moved to this area seven years ago and even then the Durham VA was on the construction list for parking garage expansion. But that fucking VANITY and useless border wall was more important to Trump so he ILLEGALLY diverted funds for all manner of base and other construction projects. So don’t go tossing me any bullshit about how Trump (and the GOP) love veterans and support services to us. Trump and most of them would cut EVERY FUCKING DOLLAR of money going to the VA healthcare system in a heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it.
As for other military matters, he hung our troops and our allies out to dry over and over again. He made us weaker in the world and has placed the lives of our troops at greater risk – especially where Russia (and their paramilitary forces have been deployed) trying to suck up to Putin! He gave away intelligence too, including code-word stuff to the fucking Russians IN THE OVAL OFFICE in a meeting he TRIED TO HIDE FROM THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, compromising a top source and making countless others go deep underground, including the cost of losing valuable intelligence that could protect our troops.
If you believe what you believe you either are under a cult type spell or WILLFULLY ignorant, refusing to see the truth.
I’ll concede maybe Trump was right about one thing, that I was a sucker for joining the Marines because a country where even ten million people would vote for someone so manifestly unfit for ANY public office, much less the Presidency isn’t the country I signed up to serve. When it became apparent on election night 2016 he’d win the electoral college my reaction was that my service didn’t mean a fucking thing. Nor my father’s, or others I knew who were wounded and even died. Not in a country where sixty million plus people would vote for a draft-dodging CHICKENHAWK (at least Bill Clinton admitted gaming the system to avoid service) morally bankrupt asshole like Donald Trump. Had he not been born to a rich daddy who bailed him out over and over again he’d have spent his adult life hawking crappy used cars on some lot far off the main roads.
I thought he had a plan… looks like he is rogue, not patriotic. The people in the country need to unite, and he gathers them up with ANTIFA spittle. Rot in jail, I don’t care anymore.
This article is the exact reason that America is in trouble today. The author never will understand a man with conviction, someone who stands for what he believes, no matter the cost. Yes, we need more men like him. Men who did swear an oath to the constitution to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic, not just when it was easy. It’s ridiculous to think these men care about political affiliation. They have sworn allegiance to the country, not to a party. These men are prepared to fight and die for our country.
It’s rather disgusting to say that he should have kept quiet if he wanted a job at Newsmax or OAN. So yes, you are right about one thing, you don’t understand him. Because he’d have to spin and tell lies like every other talking head in the media.
Never forget, it is men like Stuart Sheller who protect the right for people like you to regurgitate this drivel.
You know what? It’s also people like me who have very different views than Scheller. My own service in the Corps was long ago, serving on active duty during the Reagan years. I got turned down for OCS because I was 26, but the barracks bombing in Beirut had just happened when I got the news so I enlisted. And volunteered for infantry. During grunt school at Pendleton I was assigned to a weapons specialty – anti tank/assault which means I was one of the dudes who would have been on the line trying to slow down the Soviet tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap if the balloon had gone up & that was a real threat back then. I tell you this because under Reagan, because we were pumping so much fucking money into “Star Wars” and ladeling out money to defense contractors for high priced weapons systems there wasn’t adequate money for grunts, be they in the Corp like me or Army guys to even maintain proper levels of marksmanship at firing ranges! Much less train with actual missiles, and in an environment where one’s life would be measured in minutes, if not only seconds after firing the first missile (thereby revealing your position) getting as many hits as possible as quickly as possible was crucial to slowing down the Soviet advance enough to allow for Reforger and sealift to balance the terms of the fight.
I didn’t like it nor did others I served with, but the difference is we didn’t go shooting off our mouths to reporters – no social media back then. Publicly criticizing those higher in the Chain of Command and especially the President was forbidden under the UCMJ. It still is! Any fucking buck private E-1 knows that, and for damned sure a career Officer at Field Grade rank surely knows it too. When you raise your right hand and swear to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic you also give up certain rights and privileges so as to maintain good order and discipline in the ranks. One is expected to obey the lawful orders from superiors in the Chain of Command, right up through the civilians who maintain control of the military as is established in our Constitution. You don’t have to like orders, but you damn well have to follow them or face the consequences. This asshole Scheller violated his oath, and his duty by opening his suck and shooting off his personal take on his Commander in Chief and did so explicitly under the guise of an actively serving Marine Officer. His ass belongs in the fucking brig, and that’s exactly where an enlisted puke like me would have been all this time!
So just STFU about his “rights” because he violated both the UCMJ and his duty as an Officer. And DON’T try to tell me if a Saigon type cluster fuck had happened in Kabul if Trump had gotten his way and pulled out before he left office (I graduated high school shortly after the fall of Saigon and remember that chaos well – and despite whatb you think the Afghanistan withdrawal went far more smoothly) and an Officer who was a Democrat had publicly used social media to criticize Trump YOU wouldn’t be calling for him/her to be executed by firing squad and raising hell that it hadn’t already happened.
If you had read my comment you would have noted that I never said anything about Trump. I could give a crap whether Trump, Johnson, Nixon or Bush or Reagan is in office, if anyone of them gives orders that contradict foundational Constitutional principles, which is the highest law of the land, then I have a real problem. A standing army will always follow the whims of the politicians to further THEIR goals, often in direct conflict with the Constitution. Our founding fathers understood this and so did Eisenhower on his way out of office. Don’t lecture me on chain of command and lawful orders. All lawful military and police orders should be given based on these principles to protect all American individual’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Somehow shutting down Bagram before the Kabul exfill and leaving hundreds of Americans behind doesn’t jive with my version protecting Americans. So no, I don’t have a problem with Scheller’s uncommon valor to speak up and ask for accountability. In fact, I applaud him.
Just remember- following “lawful” orders through the chain of command is exactly what the SS and Nazi soldiers did when marching millions off to the ovens. You’d be a fool to think that’s not going to happen here. Atrocities are already occurring in Australia and we WILL see it in the US with half of Americans now labeled as domestic terrorists. Don’t fool yourself. They will just be “following lawful orders” when they come for you. I would like to think my military and police will stand down when asked to spy on me via social media, support my right to free speech at a school board meeting, support my right to keep and bear arms, but those constitutionally protected rights are being abused everyday by the people put in charge to protect us.
So, don’t talk to me about chain of command and lawful orders. I don’t want to hear it.