President Donald Trump pardoned three military personnel in November. Two of the three, Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and 1st Lieutenant Clint Lorance, had already been convicted. Major Matthew Golsteyn was awaiting trial. I wrote about Clint Lorance and you can read it here. What is shocking is the criticism that is coming from our Nation’s toy soldiers.

These military personnel were all charged under the Rules of Engagement set by the administration of Barack Obama. Under those ROE’s, military casualties went up and so did battlefield confusion. I have never and will never serve in the military. Most Americans will never be in a battle in a combat zone. That’s why it’s shocking that a couple of toy soldiers are so vehement in their criticism of the Trump pardons.

The first is former Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, who is absolutely sure that Donald Trump is destroying good order and discipline with his pardons. I call Richard Spencer one of the toy soldiers because, while he did serve as a U.S. Marine aviator from 1976 to 1981, he saw no combat action. I am sure of this because the United States was not involved in any military action during those years. It’s easy to criticize when you have worn the uniform and have the veneer of the military, but you have never gotten dirty.

The second of my toy soldiers is Lucian V. Truscott, IV. Mr. Truscott has an article entitled “The war crimes president: Donald Trump doesn’t understand the damage he’s causing to the military” on the Salon.com website. Mr. Truscott says these men are war criminals. I am going to quibble with that because our Rules of Engagement are not the the internationally accepted rules of war, which are far more lenient. And, when I think of war crimes, I think of the wholesale shooting of a village or the slaughter or genocide of a population. These men are not charged or convicted of war crimes.

What really dilled my pickle when I read the Truscott article in Salon was his description of our military personnel. From the article:

Trump has no idea what he’s dealing with in the military. The population on an average army post, say, isn’t like the population of the civilian town just outside the gates. To begin with, everyone on the army post is a trained killer. It doesn’t matter if a soldier is a front-line infantryman or a clerk in the division finance office or a wrench-twister in a motor pool or an information technology specialist or a quartermaster handing out olive drab underwear. Every single one of them went through basic training and qualified on a modern military rifle like the M-4, and many of them qualified on more weapons, like the 9mm pistol or the M-240 machine gun or the M-2 .50-caliber machine gun or the 81mm mortar.

Crikey! I sure do hope they are locked in at night. All of those trained killers running around and all of the horrendous assault weapons locked up tight in the Armory or Weapons Storage Area. Mr. Truscott makes it sound like all of these people are ticking time bombs just waiting for someone to yell, “Shoot to kill.” Which would be harder than you might think with all of the authorizations you would have to get on the base. You would have to be assigned a weapon, you would have to be issued ammunition. And, most importantly, it would have to be a legal order. And, just for the record, I have never felt safer than when I am on a military base. I love being around those trained killers.

So, just who is Lucian V. Truscott, IV? He is a West Point graduate. In his third year, he sued the Academy to stop mandatory Chapel attendance. He knew before accepting the appointment to the Academy that Chapel was mandatory. I hate when people get their knickers in a twist and change an organization to fit their beliefs. He resigned his Army commission after thirteen months and was given a general discharge. Truscott is the son of a General, who was the son of a Colonel. His forth or fifth great-grandfather was Thomas Jefferson. All of this means absolute squat. None of this gives Truscott any special insight into rules of engagement or battlefield operations.

Toy soldier Truscott believes Trump is going to destroy the military. From the article:

But it cannot be emphasized enough how dangerous the pardons are that Trump has issued to war criminals, not to mention the way he has celebrated their crimes. It sends a message to the rest of the military that crimes committed while at war won’t be prosecuted, of course. More than that, Trump’s pardons for these war crimes, which included killing prisoners of war in cold blood, make the enforcement of every other regulation and military law that much more difficult.

No. That’s not true. Trust me, every other regulation and military law is being upheld on a our military installations.

Listen to this broadcast. Lucian Truscott really hates Trump. A lot.

Donald Trump never served in the military. Barack Obama never served in the military. In their job as President, they are/were Commander-in-Chief. The Commander-in-Chief is privy to more information than we civilians are. Armchair generals and toy soldiers are always going to criticize the President. Spencer and Truscott are just two prominent examples of the type.

Photo Credit: John Cooper/Flickr.com/Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)/cropped