Here I am again in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Armed Forces in Washington, D.C., the highest appeals court for the U.S.
military. Last month, I was here to cover Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna's final
appeal. Now I am waiting for Army Sgt. Evan Vela's final appeal to begin. I
glance over at Evan's father, Curtis Carnahan, and Evan's wife, Alyssa, sitting
together in the otherwise empty first row, and I can't believe it's been more
than four years since Curtis first emailed me:
"I am Sgt. Evan Vela's father. I do not know if you
have followed my son's case, but some people have drawn similarities between
the Luttrell situation and Evan's."
Curtis was referring to Marcus Luttrell, whose 2007
best-seller "Lone Survivor" tells of four Navy SEALs, Luttrell among
them, whose 2005 mission in Afghanistan was compromised when two unarmed Afghan
goatherds discovered the SEALs hiding deep in Taliban territory. I had written
a column discussing the excruciating fact that the thought of being brought up
on legal charges in a military court back home weighed so heavily on these
young Americans' minds that they decided not to save their own lives and their
mission by killing the two Afghans, but rather to take their chances against
the veritable Taliban army the pair would summon against them.
"It was the stupidest, most Southern-fried,
lame-brain decision I ever made in my life," Luttrell later wrote of his
decisive vote to let the two Afghans go. As a result of the decision the SEALs
made on an Afghan mountaintop far from any courthouse, 19 Americans --
Luttrell's three SEAL teammates and 16 more special forces -- would be killed
that same day.
But no one went to court.
In Evan's case, the leader of his elite sniper squad
chose the other path. It was May 2007, in insurgent-controlled Iskandariyah,
Iraq. When an unarmed Iraqi man compromised the team's "hide" and
refused to cooperate quietly, the team leader chose not to risk drawing local
insurgents to their position, but instead ordered Evan to kill the man. As a result
of this decision, all of our soldiers came home that day.
But then they went to court. Long saga short, Evan Vela
became the only soldier convicted of the killing. He was sentenced to 10 years
at Fort Leavenworth military prison -- the shortest sentence of the so-called
Leavenworth 10, as Curtis reminded me this week, using the nickname for a group
of veterans who are incarcerated for a variety of desperate, blurry, fog-of-war
shootings.
Listening to the procedural review of Evan's case, I am
struck again by the ghastly surrealism of their plight -- the penalties the
U.S. government has forced on its most dutiful sons for not committing, in
effect, suicide as the Navy SEALs did in choosing to escape prison rather than
death.
Meanwhile, literally thousands of incarcerated terrorists
in Iraq and Afghanistan have been granted clemency or otherwise found their
freedom. Recently, Ali Musa Daqduq, a Hezbollah mastermind who confessed to
kidnapping, torturing and killing five American soldiers in 2007, walked free
in Iraq. In December 2011, President Obama turned over Daqduq to an Iraqi
court, which released him this month. According to the most basic moral
calculus, this is neither fair nor right. As Republican Rep. Allen West of
Florida recently wrote to President Obama, it's an "utter betrayal."
I steal another glance at the Carnahans, now focused on
the court proceedings. Like the other Leavenworth families, they have been
counting off the years by trials, appeals, clemency boards and pleas for
congressional support. Back in early 2009, there were flutters in the news
about a possible pardon for Evan from outgoing President Bush. Then nothing. No
pardon. Which was, to my mind, unpardonable. George W. Bush should have
pardoned Evan and the other soldiers, now prisoners, whom he ordered into a
confusing, rules-restricted war against an army without uniforms on a
battlefield without lines.
And so, the Leavenworth 10 sit in prison: Michael
Behenna, Corey Clagett, John Hatley, William Hunsaker, Larry Hutchins, Michael
Leahy, Joseph Mayo, Michael Williams, Evan Vela. Newcomer Derrick Miller has
joined them. Miller last year drew a life sentence after unsuccessfully
claiming self-defense in the killing of a suspected Afghan insurgent who had
penetrated his defensive perimeter.
Memorial Day -- the day we mourn our war dead -- is
coming. President Obama, give these men another chance at life. Pardon them.
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