What is Honor? An Update From Stuart Scheller

I appealed my military discharge to the Naval Discharge Review Board and have been granted an in-person appearance on 22 February at the Washington Naval Yard. This post is an attempt to generate conversation in the comments to help me with my oral statement. 

The central question I’m trying to understand is: What is honor? 

If you remember the story, I was the Marine Corps LtCol who posted a social media video demanding accountability for our military leadership’s failures during the Afghanistan withdrawal. The entire ordeal got very ugly. I was forced to undergo mental health screening, slandered in the media, imprisoned, court-martialed, and ultimately, I resigned from the Marine Corps short of my retirement. On the way out the door, I received a general under honorable discharge rather than an honorable discharge. 

The government’s argument is that while I was in pre-trial solitary confinement, I pled guilty at a special court martial for violating the social media policy, conduct unbecoming a gentleman, and three other charges, all centering around the fact that I broke the chain of command to publicly say what my leaders didn’t have the courage to say. I’ve been very honest and accountable for my actions by admitting that for an entire month of my 17 year military service, I was not a gentleman, and I violated the social media policy. But of note, I was never charged with giving a false statement. 

Two years following the Afghanistan withdrawal, General McKenzie on a Fox News interview was asked if he regretted any of his decisions as the commanding general leading the Afghanistan withdrawal, and he stated, “I have a lot of regrets about how it ended in Afghanistan. I regret the basic decision, which I think was the wrong decision. And I particularly regret that we did not choose to evacuate our people, our embassy personnel, or American citizens, and our at risk Afghans, at the time we made the decision to bring out our combat forces. I think that was a serious mistake and led to the events of August 2021 directly.”  He then went on to say that “I believe history will view the manner in which the Afghanistan withdrawal was conducted as a fatal flaw, and history will be very hard on that.”

The current instability across the globe following this American military blunder is easy to identify. And somehow, I have this feeling in my gut that “honor” is both the problem and the solution.

Should a military officer follow orders that he knows will lead to catastrophe, death, and global instability?  

And, shouldn’t every military officer observing such a clusterf^ck use all of their power to influence the situation? 

The American military member is very aware that “A military service member must obey orders unless it is illegal, immoral, or unethical.” But if it is predictable that a military operation is “the wrong decision” and will lead to a deteriorating global security situation threatening the lives of service members for years to come, then logically isn’t this order immoral and unethical? 

During my struggle with the Marine Corps, I tried preferring legal charges on General McKenzie, which is allowed by the Manual for Courts Martial for any active service member witnessing a crime, but my attempt was illegally stopped by the same general officer who recommended I get a discharge less than honorable. The system, driven by misguided incentives, inherently protects itself before the young people serving in it. 

The Naval Discharge Review Board (NDRB), the arbitrator of honor, is a military system like the rest of the bureaucracy. If you want to play politics, it’s very easy to manipulate the system for personal benefit at the cost of the greater good. Any service member appealing their discharge who gets a doctor to diagnose them with PTSD, which with combat experiences like mine is simple, automatically obligates the board to upgrade the discharge to honorable based on the regulations. Easy as that. Claim to be a victim of your experiences, and the military leadership rewards you. Claim to take a principled stance against the military leadership’s decisions and the system will punish you. Misguided incentives rotting an organization from the inside. 

But something about that word ‘honor’ makes it impossible for me to swallow the victim pill. I don’t want to end up like General McKenzie: living with regrets. PTSD didn’t drive my actions honor did, even if, at times, I said some unsavory things. The biggest threat to a republic is everyone “just doing their job” as leadership complacently fails. 

My legal argument, despite the protests from my lawyer who wants me to go the PTSD route, is simple: does one month of publicly demanding accountability for military leadership’s bad decisions, which even those leaders now acknowledge, negate my 17 years of honorable service? 

Even though service members swear an oath to the Constitution or to obey the orders of the President or the officers above them, what happens when those things don’t provide clear answers to the tough moral and ethical situations encountered every day? I believe, in the end, we all must be guided by an inner sense of right and wrong, and if we are courageous enough to follow that inner voice, may find a deeper meaning of honor.  

So I ask the group, what is honor?  And bonus question… is it possible to develop a sense of honor in our military leadership so that they never live with regrets?   

Picture is with a Frozin Chosin Vet at one of my events last year in Maryland where I spoke on courage. He reminded me why it’s important to keep fighting.  

RAH

Stu