No free speech for marines?
We read:
"A sergeant will be discharged for criticizing President Barack Obama on Facebook in a case that called into question the Pentagon's policies about social media and its limits on the speech of active duty military personnel, the Marine Corps said Wednesday.
Sgt. Gary Stein will get an other-than-honorable discharge and lose most of his benefits for violating the policies, the Corps said. The San Diego-area Marine who has served nearly 10 years in the Corps said he was disappointed by the decision. He has argued that he was exercising his free-speech rights."
Source
He wasn't disclosing anything of operational importance
10 comments:
There is no free speech in the U.S. military. You are limited to what you can say about the Commander-in-Chief.
Have Obama dishonribly discharged in november
He is probably the type of soldier that would massacre women and children. They are out there, you know.
No, Marines don't have freedom of speech regarding the President. That is something you give up when you VOLUNTARILY join the Marines. The USMC was quite right to discharge him.
"First of all comrade, he's not a soldier, he's a Marine."
LOL. Well, excusssse me. It is nice to see that we have baby killers commenting on this blog.
Jerk.
There are guidelines that he could have followed. It looks like he was warned before about this kind of conduct but did it anyway, knowing full well the consequences. I am unsure if the same applies to anonymous postings.
Just ignore the troll, please. His ego appears to be threatened by strong male figures, causing him to act out rather than try to measure up.
As for the story per se, the only real question is this: would this same marine have faced the same charges had he praised, rather than criticized, Obama?
If yes, then the verdict is just; if not, not.
There is another question. I seem to be seeing this repeatedly in the last few weeks. At least two cases of serving military personnel being punished for statements negative to the president. I know they are not allowed to make such statements and I understand why they are not. I am not arguing that the rules should be changed. My question is has a conservative president ever actually punished a member of the military for expressing an opinion negative to them? Or has it been quietly ignored? I do not remember this punishment ever happening under an even marginally conservative president? Dose any one know if it happened? It would seem to be a case where the first president to punish people for this would seem very childish and petty.
I can accept that certain people agree to surrender a portion of their free speech rights in certain circumstances.
For example, I do not believe it is appropriate for teachers (being in a position of authority over the vulnerable) to preach politics to their students.
Likewise I think many positions of authority ought also to be circumspect in their political speech.
The real issue is, do Marines surrender the right to 'private' political speech?
Post a Comment