Presidential pardons for war crimes by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan — including killing unarmed enemies — could undermine military leadership and complicate the U.S. relationship with key allies, Stars and Stripes reports.
Military law experts told the news outlet that President Donald Trump has a constitutional right to pardon servicemembers — but warned clemency for wrongdoing in war zones risks signals to American troops that they have a license to kill indiscriminately in combat.
“This would be a terrible decision,” Eric Carpenter, a former Army prosecutor and defense lawyer who teaches law at Florida International University, told Stars and Stripes. “He plays into our enemies’ narrative, which is that we don’t care about Muslim lives.”
According to the news outlet, retired top military officers and former judge advocates have asked the White House not to issue pardons in high-profile war-crimes cases, including those of at least two special operators who face courts-martial on charges that they killed detained and unarmed combatants.
The New York Times reported Trump was working with the Pentagon and the Justice Department to assemble pardon documents for Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Eddie Gallagher and Army Maj. Matthew Golsteyn, among others, who could be pardoned by Memorial Day.
If granted, they would follow the recent pardon of former Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna, who was convicted in 2009 of the “unpremeditated murder” of a prisoner in Iraq a year earlier.
“This is inherently controversial,” a statement from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America said of the issue, the news outlet reported. “Rolling out these decisions over Memorial Day [and] distracting from a time that is meant to be a meaningful moment of reflection is very concerning.”
Rachel VanLandingham, an associate professor of law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and former Air Force judge advocate, told the news outlet that pardoning soldiers accused of committing war crimes before they face judges could undermine the key military tenets of good order and discipline necessary for the military to function.
Trump would be “betraying everyone in uniform who trusts that the rules that 99% of them follow — that when they are violated, folks are going to be held accountable,” she said, Stars and Stripes reported.
“We’re no better than ISIS or al-Qaida or any of the terrorist groups we fight if that’s how we fight,” she added.
Carpenter added that such pardons could damage the American military’s relationship with leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“He makes it harder to build coalitions for future conflicts, because we lose our credibility as leaders in the rule of law,” he told Stars and Stripes.
“If Trump does what we think he might, he will be taking a bunch of unrelated crimes, grouping them together, and saying — after the fact — that he condones those crimes,” Carpenter added. “He is essentially saying that it is OK for American servicemembers to unlawfully kill people in these combat zones — and these people are predominantly Muslim. I think that if any other world leader did that, we would label that world leader a war criminal.”
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