Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was relieved for cause after demanding that senior U.S. leaders hold themselves accountable for actions made during the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan that led to the deaths of 13 service members.
Officials confirmed to Fox News on Thursday that 10 Marines and two Army soldiers, as well as one Navy corpsman, were killed in explosions near Kabul’s airport Thursday. Another 169 Afghans were killed, according to two officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Scheller, a father of three who has been in the USMC Infantry for 17 years, mentioned senior military leaders including Marine Commandant Gen. David H. Berger, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley, whom he said are “supposed to advise.”
“I’m not saying we need to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone’? Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up’?”
Scheller wrote in a Friday update posted to Facebook that he had been “relieved for cause based on a lack of trust and confidence.”
“My chain of command is doing exactly what I would do … if I were in their shoes,” he wrote. “I appreciate the opportunities AITB command provided. To all the news agencies asking for interviews… I will not be making any statements other than what’s on my social platforms until I exit the Marine Corps.”