Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller has been much in the news of late. While on active duty as commanding officer of the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Scheller, in uniform, posted a video on social media in which he criticized senior military and civilian leaders for incompetence in their management of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan and demanded accountability for their failures. Previously, according to the Washington Post, Scheller had been ordered to cease posting critical and controversial items on social media before he made the post that resulted in his relief and court-martial.1
To his credit, Scheller has publicly embraced responsibility for his actions, accepting removal from command and the judgment of a court martial. He will leave the Marine Corps without complaint in the near future. Where Scheller gets it wrong, however, is his belief that he was right to disobey orders and “speak truth to power” while still in uniform and still in command. In fact, he or any officer has the option to act insubordinately only when given an unlawful order. Scheller may disagree strongly with his government’s policy, but he has no right to undermine that policy by publicly criticizing it while holding a commission on active duty. He also had other, legal options to act on his beliefs. He could have resigned his commission and run for public office, as many members of Congress have done. From this political platform, he could have expressed his views and even influenced the policy with which he disagrees. Instead, he chose to leverage his exemplary military career to lend credibility to his views. Such insubordination is not only illegal but is a violation of our core values. Ultimately, Lieutenant Colonel Scheller’s actions were dishonorable, reflected misplaced courage, and demonstrated a lack of commitment to his Marines, to the naval service, and to the nation and the Constitution.
Scheller’s case is closely related to the conflict disrupting the political life of our society today as evidenced by the erosion of meaningful public discourse, extremist actions by political partisans, and even violence not seen in decades. It exemplifies these developments because it indicates there are signs that good order and discipline are being undermined by partisan politics in the U.S. armed forces. The case of Navy Chief Eddie Gallagher is one example. That of Lieutenant Colonel Scheller is another. Both cases raise questions about how military personnel in leadership positions execute lawful orders and live up to core values. Both examples make us question how leaders are held accountable and how they model and impart core values to the sailors and Marines they lead.
The Core Values of the Naval Services
When the Navy and Marine Corps instituted the core values in 1992, many of my contemporaries I and gave them little thought. In some ways, they seemed like the latest Navy “pet rock,” a passing fad that would soon be forgotten. It wasn’t until I took command that I fully recognized their importance. Honor, Courage, and Commitment became pillars of my command philosophy and those of many of my peers. The curricula at the Command Leadership School in Newport, Rhode Island, was developed with these values as their foundation. Likewise, the Sailor’s Creed includes the statement, “I proudly serve my country's Navy combat team with Honor, Courage and Commitment.” The Marine Corps defines the core values as:
Honor: Integrity, Responsibility, Accountability
Courage: Do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons
Commitment: Devotion to the Corps and fellow Marines
Each service highlights their importance in different ways.
The Consequences of Scheller’s Actions
Sending service people into combat with lower military effectiveness than the enemy is an abrogation of officer and enlisted leader responsibility to their troops. The most important resource contributing to military effectiveness is manpower. Concerning men and women in battle, the late John Keegan wrote:
What battles have in common is human: the behavior of men struggling to reconcile their instinct for self-preservation, their sense of honor and the achievement of some aim over which other men are ready to kill them.2
Preparing and sustaining men and women to maximize their individual effectiveness despite battle’s stresses is the key to sustaining a state’s military effectiveness. One of the most significant stressors is morale. High morale correlates to high effectiveness, while low morale correlates to low effectiveness. Time and again, military forces with low morale have suffered defeat even if they have physically outmatched their opponents.3
The importance of morale cannot be overstated because its manifestation as “the will to fight” is essential to military victory and because it is sensitive to influences not always under the control of a service person’s superiors. Morale’s sensitivity to outside influences is more pronounced today than in the past because of social media. Comments such as Scheller’s are easily accessible to greater numbers of service people and much of it goes beyond legitimate critique, becoming a means of promoting radical views that can undermine military discipline and esprit de corps.
Military leaders must promote good order and discipline, service core values, and obedience to lawful orders, in part through honest communication between leaders and their sailors and Marines to offset the radicalizing influence of some social media material. They must also model that behavior every minute of every day.4 Failure to execute these obligations or seeking to undermine them damages morale, which in turn undermines military effectiveness. In the end, this puts the lives of sailors and Marines at much greater risk. This is where Scheller’s behavior falls short.
Personally, I can sympathize with how Scheller felt. I disagreed with many of the policies that were implemented during the Global War on Terror (GWOT), including the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the U.S. detention and interrogation policy. But I was obligated by my oath to obey lawful orders and not to publicly question lawful policy. Nothing that the Bush administration did was unlawful. Therefore, I continued to do my duty.
A Change in Perspective
My perspective on GWOT policy and strategy changed when the commander-in-chief, President George W. Bush, communicated to the American people his goals and his commitment to their accomplishment. In 2006, I heard him speak at the Naval War College. The President had come to talk about the “surge,” a significant course change in Iraq. As he spoke, he projected great honesty and certainty of purpose regarding Iraq. He took full personal responsibility for failures in the war. He also expressed a determination to succeed that conveyed that he believed what he was doing was right. He didn’t change my personal opinion about the policies, but I left the auditorium with a respect for him as a leader. President Bush accepted responsibility for his failures, spoke honestly about the challenges ahead, and conveyed an endearing humility and a conviction of the justice of his cause. Having heard him speak in this fashion made it much easier to do my own duty and convey to my sailors what we were all striving for.
Accountability Above All
Military leaders are often confronted with dilemmas like the ones Lieutenant Colonel Scheller and I faced. At all times, however, we must act to enhance the military effectiveness of sailors and Marines by training them and holding them accountable for acting lawfully, morally, and ethically. We must model that behavior every minute of every day. Our mission and the law require nothing less.
1. James Hohmann, “Will the Marines let Lt. Col. Scheller off with a slap on the wrist?” Washington Post, 15 October 2021.
2. John Keegan, The Face of Battle (London, England, Penguin Books, 1978), 302–303.
3. The United States’ most significant experience with this phenomenon is, perhaps, the Vietnam War (1965–1973).
4. Sean Childs, “Soldier Morale: Defending a Core Military Capability,” Security Challenges 12, no. 2 (2016), 47.
