The military fosters violence

First Lt. Clint Lorance ordered the shooting of three civilian men in Afghanistan. Today, he is home with family, pardoned by President Trump of the murder he committed. He was one of several granted amnesties.

Another murderer, Michael Behenna, was pardoned after killing a prisoner he was ordered to release. Even Oklahoma’s Attorney General Mike Hunter, who wrote to Trump directly asking for the pardon, admitted that some of his actions were “undoubtedly wrong.”

These crimes are not flukes or “bad apple” scenarios, they are a direct product of the military’s imperial function and lack of accountability to the public. 

With every act of clemency for men who commit war crimes overseas, we inch further into territory of state-sanctioned torture. 

Military personnel in active duty have mostly chosen to stay silent on the matter, likely to present a united front, but tension is rising to the surface. Charles Brown, the chief of naval information, simply tweeted that his fellow officials “acknowledge his order and are implementing it.”

Even within a structure built to enable the murder of foreign peoples with little control, Trump’s actions stand as a controversial and risky course for military justice.

Trump stands by his decisions with lighthearted confidence, retweeting a video about the matter with the comment “Let our great soldiers fight!” on Dec. 8. 

Those retired from service are much more vocal about the potential threat. Retired captain Patrick Swanson, who was Lorance’s commanding officer, has publicly stated “The tragedy is that people will hail him as a hero, and he is not a hero. He ordered those murders. He lied about them.”

Swanson is not alone. Rachel VanLandingham, a retired Air Force lt. colonel, stated “It’s just institutionally harmful,” and “This isn’t about these three individuals, it’s about the whole military justice system and whether that system itself is something of value to the operations of the military.”

Hunter claimed that Behenna “admitted to his mistakes, has learned from them and deserves to move on.” The people of Afghanistan cannot do the same. There is no pardon to give them back their land, their freedom, their dead family members, or their decades of cultural trauma. 

This is not a defense of Afghani war criminals, nor is it a claim that every single victim at the hands of the U.S. military was innocent, but the actions of our military clearly display a lack of accountability and rampant misconduct. Intervention must be put into place. 

Military personnel are given weapons, virtually no surveillance by the public, and the opportunity to exercise their worst cruelties on war-torn civilians who have almost no means of defense. Allowing them to then return home without facing any consequences for their crimes is a step in the wrong direction.