Parents of Marine Officer Thrown in Brig for Criticizing Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal Excoriate ‘Shameful’ Military Leaders

The parents of the Marine officer relieved of duty last month for criticizing leaders who botched America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan took aim at military leaders on Tuesday, calling their son’s incarceration “shameful.”

The man, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr., recorded a viral video in August criticizing military and civilian officials for scenes that played out in Afghanistan as American armed forces attempted to leave the region in August. His parents, Cathy Scheller and Stuart Scheller Sr., said in a Tuesday evening interview on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program that he was detained this week for “pretrial detention” after allegedly violating a gag order that prohibited from posting on social media, even though no charges against him had been filed.

“Our son called for accountability,” Scheller Sr. said, before making an emotional plea directly to viewers. “Is it OK with you that a 17-year infantry officer that put his life on the line to protect you and protect your children — is it OK with you that he is put in jail and is facing a court-martial? He didn’t murder anyone. He didn’t sexually offend anyone. He didn’t do drugs. He asked for accountability. He spoke his truth, and they couldn’t handle it. It’s an embarrassment. It’s shameful.”

They also took aim at military leaders who testified before Congress on Tuesday, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, who said he would not resign for reasons that included the fact that his “dad didn’t get a choice to resign at Iwo Jima.”

“My thoughts are, our son said to him, if you thought this was a bad idea, are you willing to take your rank and put it down and say [I] will not put our men and women in peril? He should’ve dropped that rank. He should have resigned and said, ‘I will not do this to our service members,” Scheller’s mother said.

“We have lost somewhere, depending on the data … somewhere in the last 20 years, up to 100,000 troops from suicide,” she added. “They need that accountability. They need to know that what they did mattered. So many lives can be saved on the backside by being held accountable. And I say, take that rank and put it down and stand up for your other service members.”

Scheller Jr. said in the August video that sparked the controversy that he was willing to risk his rank, retirement, and “family’s stability” to send his message, and that he believed “it gives me some moral high ground to demand the same honesty, integrity, accountability for my senior leaders.”

“I’m making it because I have a growing discontent and contempt for my perceived ineptitude at the foreign policy level and I want to specifically ask some questions to some of my senior leaders,” he added. “I’m not saying we’ve got 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?'”

“I have been fighting for 17 years,” Scheller said. “I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, ‘I demand accountability.’”

Watch above via Fox News.