President Trump has selected retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller to join the Defense Department as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. This office is responsible for advising the secretary and deputy secretary of defense on recruitment, career development, pay and benefits, and oversight of the state of military readiness. The undersecretary is one of six principal deputies to the Secretary of Defense and must be confirmed by the Senate.

I accepted the position of Senior Advisor to the DoD Under Secretary in personnel and readiness. The military’s people and readiness are my passion. The SecDef will outline a focus on culture, structure, posture, and equipping across the force, but I am sure the national security situation left by the incompetence of the last administration will monopolize his time. Concurrently, service leadership will focus on prioritizing realignment of resources and priorities within their respective services.

LTC Scheller became a cause célèbre early in Biden's reign of clownishness when he was relieved of his command for criticizing military leadership during the horribly botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and the failure of the military to demand accountability of itself for the failure; see This Marine Battalion Commander Probably Burned Down His Career to Demand Accountability for Chain-of-Command Failures in Afghanistan – RedState.

If an O-5 battalion commander has the simplest live fire incident, EO complaint. Boom. Fired. But we have a secretary of defense that testified to Congress in May that the Afghan National Security Forces could withstand the Taliban advance. We have Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs — who the commandant is a member of that — who’s supposed to advise on military policy. We have a Marine combatant commander. All of these people are supposed to advise.

And 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?”

In response to that criticism, Scheller was relieved of his command (Military Acts Quickly Against Marine Commander Who Demanded Accountability From Leaders on Afghanistan – RedState). But they weren't content to just fire him; they officially claimed that he was a danger to himself and his family (USMC Take Troubling Step Against Marine Commander Who Demanded Accountability on Afghanistan – RedState). He was charged with several military offenses, and against all the rules, he was held in the brig in pretrial confinement (Marine Who Criticized Deadly Afghanistan Withdrawal Thrown in the Brig – RedState and Marine Who Criticized Deadly Afghanistan Withdrawal Thrown in the Brig – RedState). He was eventually court-martialed (Marine Who Was Imprisoned for Speaking Against Afghanistan Incompetence Receives Surprise Sentence – RedState), but in a surprising turn of events, he received a fraction of the punishment the Marine Corps sought, and the military judge castigated the proceedings from the bench. 

Since his resignation, he has turned to advocacy for a return to military values and led the support for Pete Hegseth's confirmation as Secretary of Defense.

This is the second seasoned officer whose career was destroyed by the forces of Marxism and go-along-to-get-along that controlled the Pentagon under Joey Softserve. Last week, President Trump nominated retired Space Force Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier to be Under Secretary of the Air Force, the number two civilian position in that service; see Trump Tags Space Force Officer Dismissed by Biden Over Criticizing DEI for Role in New Administration – RedState. Lohmeier's career was derailed when he wrote about the way that critical race theory, DEI, and other Marxist concepts were becoming the norm in the military; see Military Officer Fired Over Criticism of Marxist Ideology Creeping Into Armed Forces – RedState and Space Force Lt. Colonel Ousted for Denouncing Marxism Reveals How Deep the Marxist Infection Goes – RedState.

I think placing high-profile and very credible critics inside the military's civilian bureaucracy may prove to be a masterstroke. First, it rubs the noses of those who toadied to the forces of DEI, CRT, transgenderism, and every other social science fad in their own ordure every day just by their existence. Much like Biden and Kamala had to sit at the front of a packed auditorium during Trump's inauguration and listen to him castigate their loathsome term in office, Scheller and Lohmeier will condemn the people who punished them every day by just existing. Second, their presence in the upper reaches of DOD will encourage whistleblowers to report on people who are part of the resistance. Finally, if Scheller and Lohmeier can impart a fraction of their passion for military virtues to the Armed Services, they will have done the nation an everlasting favor.