President Trump came under fire after tweeting on Saturday about Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, a former Green Beret who is on trial for killing an unarmed Afghan man in 2010.
Trump tweeted, “The case of Major Mathew Golsteyn is now under review at the White House. Mathew is a highly decorated Green Beret who is being tried for killing a Taliban bombmaker. We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!” Trump’s tweet came after a segment on Fox News went over the case.
Golsteyn admitted to killing a suspected Taliban bomb maker in a CIA polygraph when he was applying for a job with the intelligence agency in 2011. In the CIA interview, Golsteyn said he buried the Afghan man’s remains and later dug them up and burned them.
The Army initially dismissed the case, but it was re-opened in 2016 after Golsteyn again admitted to killing the man in an interview with Fox News.
In May, Trump pardoned a former Army lieutenant who was convicted of killing an unarmed Iraqi man in 2009.
Some of the outrage over Trump’s tweet was not about him potentially pardoning a suspected war criminal, but instead focused on Trump using the term “killing machines.”
Bill Kristol responded to Trump’s tweet and said, ” ‘We train our boys to be killing machines.’ No we don’t. And it’s beyond disgusting that an American president would say this about our military. Shouldn’t senior military leaders set the record straight?”
The President should not have the power to pardon those guilty of war crimes because of a conflict of interest, he must maintain the loyalty of the troops and if doesn’t side with them he will loose that loyalty. Someone else should have that responsibility.
The troops should be loyal to the country, not to the individual who happens to be leading the government.
Bravo Donald, you told the truth! I’m sure you didn’t mean to and will tweet yourself out of this but you can’t put toothepaste back in the tube. We train our boys to be killing machines indeed.
White washed by the don
does not make a crime right
just shows
how low
things can go
We all know
the insanities of our days
cascading upon each other
each bit more horrible than the last
To say that this is
out of control
is an understatement
yet each of us
lost alone
utterly without influence
Yet still
each of us
are required by principles and ethics
to at least complain
not to take this shit as sane…
Yeah, we need all our sicko heroes.
Bill Kristol has never served a day in uniform. How would he know how the troops are changed. Kristol isn’t just a cowardly chickenhawk, he is a liar.
Kristol of course is a death-worshiping Neocon monster. One among many, created by the Zionist criminal project.
That said, the issue of “teaching our boys to be killing machines” is complicated and tragic. The damage done to the soul when a young man kills another human is invisible, but real. It’s difficult to deny the legitimacy/necessity of defending loved ones from criminal assault in a world where historically criminal assault has long been an undeniable reality. Even then, the killing takes a toll on a person’s humanity. But where defense is noble and tragic, sending those killers across the world to kill for political ambition and corporate profit — the historic reality — turns the “noble warrior” into a criminal monster.
We rarely discus how to extract society from this conundrum. We need to do more of that. As Trump said during his campaign, our weapons are now so powerful that the ancient criminal habit of taking the other king’s stuff by force and violence has now become too destructive, too dangerous, to continue.
Trump enjoys revenge, humiliation, and grinding his ‘enemies’ into the dirt. In no universe did he state your last sentence, but I do remember him saying he was the most warlike candidate on stage during a GOP primary debate.
Of course you right. He said that “our weapons are now so powerful”, and I read into that to what I saw as the “and therefore…” — ie the conclusion — myself.