Dr. Phosphorous
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In a Washington Post Op-Ed today, Col Doug Krugman explains why he recently retired from the Marine Corps after 24 years.
Pardoning of the Jan 6 defendants had a lot to do with it. --
On Sept. 30, at an unprecedented gathering of senior military leadership, President Donald Trump said, āIf you donāt like what Iām saying, you can leave the room ā of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.ā I wasnāt invited to be in the room that day, and I had decided months earlier that I had to leave. By coincidence, Sept. 30 was my last day as a colonel in the United States Marine Corps. I gave up my career out of concern for our countryās future.
United States military officers take an oath to defend the Constitution without mental reservation or purpose of evasion. I swore or repeated that oath under five presidents, starting with former president Bill Clinton. I risked my life for it, serving as an infantry officer in two wars. I watched Marines die for it.
No commander in chief is perfect. President Clintonās moral failures are well known. President George W. Bushās invasion of Iraq might be one of the worst errors in U.S. history. All recent presidents share responsibility for our failure in Afghanistan. I continued to serve despite all that because I believed the Constitution brought the country more success than failure, and I believed our presidents took their oaths to it seriously.
With President Trump, I no longer believe that. During his first term, his actions became increasingly difficult for me to justify, culminating with the Jan. 6 attack on Congress as it tried to execute its duties. I hoped he had learned from those errors, but it only took a few days of his second term for me to realize he had not. I could not swear without reservation to follow a commander in chief who seemed so willing to disregard the Constitution.
My departure was not about policy disagreements, which exist in every administration. President Trump won in 2024 and has the right to implement his policies within the law.
My first reservations were about promises and actions that I thought were morally wrong even if they were possibly legal. The Constitution gives the president the power to pardon, but pardoning roughly 1,600 of those who tried to violently overthrow the results of an election didnāt help defend the Constitution. Likewise, I didnāt see it as moral to deny refuge to Afghans who risked their lives to support us, which he did on Jan. 22. Ignoring reality to take advantage of vague laws to assume emergency powers is also immoral. For those who believe in honoring their word, breaking promises our country has made ā including some trade agreements President Trump made himself ā is not moral. These are not the kinds of actions that Iām willing to risk my life to defend.
Worse than immorality, however, has been President Trumpās willingness to disregard the law and Constitution to achieve his goals. When asked in May about the Fifth Amendment requirements for due process and if he needed to uphold the Constitution as president, the first words out of his mouth were āI donāt know.ā
This month, National Guard officers received orders from the defense secretary that their governors opposed. A federal judge intervened, citing the lack of apparent emergency and the 10th Amendment. Those commanders and units were stuck between competing orders with no clear answer. When the presidentās orders push or cross legal limits and put commanders in these situations, cohesion within our military is at risk.
President Trumpās description of Portland as a āwar zoneā is as fantastical as his belief that the June protests in a few blocks of Los Angeles would somehow āobliterateā the massive city of nearly 4 million. In both cases, his words had little connection to reality. Every dubious basis he gives for an order creates more room for doubt, more room for reservations and more threats to our unity.
Pardoning of the Jan 6 defendants had a lot to do with it. --
On Sept. 30, at an unprecedented gathering of senior military leadership, President Donald Trump said, āIf you donāt like what Iām saying, you can leave the room ā of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.ā I wasnāt invited to be in the room that day, and I had decided months earlier that I had to leave. By coincidence, Sept. 30 was my last day as a colonel in the United States Marine Corps. I gave up my career out of concern for our countryās future.
United States military officers take an oath to defend the Constitution without mental reservation or purpose of evasion. I swore or repeated that oath under five presidents, starting with former president Bill Clinton. I risked my life for it, serving as an infantry officer in two wars. I watched Marines die for it.
No commander in chief is perfect. President Clintonās moral failures are well known. President George W. Bushās invasion of Iraq might be one of the worst errors in U.S. history. All recent presidents share responsibility for our failure in Afghanistan. I continued to serve despite all that because I believed the Constitution brought the country more success than failure, and I believed our presidents took their oaths to it seriously.
With President Trump, I no longer believe that. During his first term, his actions became increasingly difficult for me to justify, culminating with the Jan. 6 attack on Congress as it tried to execute its duties. I hoped he had learned from those errors, but it only took a few days of his second term for me to realize he had not. I could not swear without reservation to follow a commander in chief who seemed so willing to disregard the Constitution.
My departure was not about policy disagreements, which exist in every administration. President Trump won in 2024 and has the right to implement his policies within the law.
My first reservations were about promises and actions that I thought were morally wrong even if they were possibly legal. The Constitution gives the president the power to pardon, but pardoning roughly 1,600 of those who tried to violently overthrow the results of an election didnāt help defend the Constitution. Likewise, I didnāt see it as moral to deny refuge to Afghans who risked their lives to support us, which he did on Jan. 22. Ignoring reality to take advantage of vague laws to assume emergency powers is also immoral. For those who believe in honoring their word, breaking promises our country has made ā including some trade agreements President Trump made himself ā is not moral. These are not the kinds of actions that Iām willing to risk my life to defend.
Worse than immorality, however, has been President Trumpās willingness to disregard the law and Constitution to achieve his goals. When asked in May about the Fifth Amendment requirements for due process and if he needed to uphold the Constitution as president, the first words out of his mouth were āI donāt know.ā
This month, National Guard officers received orders from the defense secretary that their governors opposed. A federal judge intervened, citing the lack of apparent emergency and the 10th Amendment. Those commanders and units were stuck between competing orders with no clear answer. When the presidentās orders push or cross legal limits and put commanders in these situations, cohesion within our military is at risk.
President Trumpās description of Portland as a āwar zoneā is as fantastical as his belief that the June protests in a few blocks of Los Angeles would somehow āobliterateā the massive city of nearly 4 million. In both cases, his words had little connection to reality. Every dubious basis he gives for an order creates more room for doubt, more room for reservations and more threats to our unity.
