The New Republic - During his first term, Trump pardoned a pair of Army officers convicted of war crimes and ordered the promotion of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who was acquitted despite posing with the body of a teen he had killed. Gallagher’s own teammates accused him of sniping women and children in Iraq. Trump celebrated all of them, seeing nothing wrong in what they had done. This was indicative of how he would approach his second term in office.
One of the first acts of the Trump-Hegseth Pentagon was to purge the military of its top lawyers (also known as JAGs, or judge advocate generals). JAGs perform the critical function of assessing the legality of anything done within the military. One piece at The Atlantic correctly described them as the “conscience” of the military.
They also dismissed the Joint Chiefs chairman, the chief of naval operations, and Air Force vice chief. At the time, Hegseth told reporters that all these senior military officers were removed because he didn’t want them to pose any “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.” The clear goal was to remove anyone who might raise ethical objections to anything the military was ordered to do by the administration.
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