I realized this morning I should probably thank Donald Trump—which is not something that comes easily for me—for showing me the difference between a “military mindset,” and a “martyr mindset.” I realize I have unfairly lumped them together here on this website for a decade or more.  My bad. Live and learn.

As mentioned in the sidebar, the primary “mindset” of both military folks and martyr jihadists is a stark “us against them” world view. Such a world view often “pardons” the most heinous crimes against our “brothers and sisters” here or across the sea.

But Trump’s recent pardons of three “U.S. war criminals,”  and the immediate push-back from both the rank and file and the ruling military commanders, allowed me to see that, at least in the U.S. military, there are indeed standards, principles and legal and moral guidelines forhow a U.S. soldier must act.

War itself, of course, tends to blur and even dissolve such standards, principles, moral guidelines. But when these guidelines are clearly transgressed—as these three U.S. servicemen seemed to have done—consequences are indeed necessary.

I recognized this morning that Trump has the “martyr mindset”: everyone’s out to get me, so there are no rules, anything goes. He certainly does not have a U.S. military mindset, which is based on the rule of law, adherence to organizational standards, and service to the wider good.

President Trump clearly loves “tough guys,” and apparently, he particularly loves tough guys who operate outside most human morality norms (think Kim Jong-un, Vladimer Putin and here most recently, Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.)

His recent pardon of these three American servicemen, “tough guys” who were charged with horrible war crimes in Afghanistan, shows that he does not—perhaps can not—recognize the line between human necessity and human cruelty. Alas, the situations these three men found themselves in provides more clear evidence why it’s not a good life decision to join the army, navy, air force or marines, either here in the U.S. or in any other country around the world. Again, basic laws of decency, morality and humanity are often dissolved when you agree to go to war.

Trump put it this way, in a statement made to NBC News in 2016: “You have to play the game the way they are playing the game.” Trump apparently believes that if the terrorists chop off innocent heads, then the U.S. should be allowed to chop off even more innocent heads. That’s how the game is played, right? So what’s wrong with that?

Although all three of these U. S. servicemen were accused by their own comrades of unnecessary and illegal crimes against humanity, the situation itself is one where the borders blur between right and wrong.  Even allowing yourself to be sent to a foreign country, highly armed, with implied “right to kill,” is a blurring of this distinction.

Again as Trump (who constantly cheats at golf, and thus can not claim the highest rung for moral behavior) once Tweeted: , “We train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill!”  

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, and senior military leaders advised against the pardons, worrying that such pardons  would “damage the integrity of the military judicial system, the ability of military leaders to ensure good order and discipline, and the confidence of U.S. allies and partners who host U.S. troops.”

The question then arises, will Trump next pardon the top-gun (so to speak) war criminals, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheny, who through their myopic “military mindset” caused the deaths of more than 200,000 Afghan, Pakistani and Iraqi  citizens?

He probably just thinks of them as “tough guys,” but not tough enough. Uggh. What have we come to?