Kacy Tellessen
America’s haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan was a physical manifestation of our decades-long failure in that country. Anyone who experienced combat watched with bated breath as the Marines charged toward chaos. We watched knowing that Americans would die because of the impossible situation into which the United States sent those young Marines, that the herald of death would likely be a suicide bomber. I hoped that I was wrong but knew I wasn't. The inevitable bombing killed 13 of our noblest—our military and political leaders had wasted more young lives on the Afghan quagmire. As a citizen, a veteran, and a human being, I wanted accountability. I wanted the assholes with shiny stuff on their collars and the politicians in tailored suits to pay for sacrificing our youth to their greed and gross incompetence.
But political leaders did not resign in shame. Nor did a single military commander have the intestinal fortitude to fall on his sword and take responsibility for the blunder.
Instead, there was a mid-ranking military officer who screamed for accountability. With nothing but an iPhone and poor lighting, Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller made a Facebook video decrying the Afghanistan withdrawal and demanding accountability. He recorded the video in his Marine Corps uniform from the very same office where he conducted his duties as the commanding officer of Advanced Infantry Training Battalion. An overnight sensation, the video kicked off "[a] series of escalating events […] which resulted in [his] imprisonment, court-martial, and resignation [from the Marines].” It was also the final fracture in a crumbling marriage. Scheller would lose his wife and children to this video.
The author details this event and others in his book Crisis of Command: How we Lost Trust and Confidence in America’s Generals and Politicians (Knox Press, 2022). He starts by asking the obvious question: "How can the greatest military power in the world tolerate keeping those in power who continually squander the lives and treasure of the American people?" Scheller promises not only to deliver an answer, but to provide readers with the insights and strategy to ensure future generations of Americans never ask this question again. The book sets out to be a treatise on a better path forward.
Then it devolves into a linear narrative of the author’s life thus far, one in which Scheller wants to play the hero but portrays himself as both hero and victim. The book follows what seems to be his successful career in the Marines, but anytime Scheller is passed over for an assignment or things do not go his way, he falls back on the excuse that it must have been someone else's fault. For a man attempting to spread the narrative of accountability, his own prose does more to work against him than anything his critics threw at him.
One of the most jarring sections of the book is the recapping of his Afghanistan deployment. Towards the end of the section, he states that he will not continue to regale the reader with his exploits in Afghanistan because "that's not the purpose of the book." He then immediately follows this statement with a bulleted list of his Afghanistan war exploits, a list that spans several pages and includes awards he won in combat.
Eventually, the book gets through Scheller's 17 years of service and arrives at his decision to post the video that would change his life. Scheller portrays himself as a genius tactician, pretending that his choices were all preplanned and well thought out in advance. Still, the writing makes it apparent that Scheller suffered from severe emotional problems, which he chose to broadcast through social media.
Had Scheller stopped at the first video, this reader would have taken his words at face value. But he didn't. He quickly posted another video, a call to action where he beckoned his budding social media disciples to "follow me, and we'll burn the whole fucking system down." The messages continued to spiral, including a tear-filled message to his wife, who chose to leave him after the social media posts. Scheller inserts chess moves after these social media posts as if to suggest that he was playing the long game: "C4 was another chess move. Pawn to center.”
Scheller includes a parting section in his book titled "Counterarguments." Here, he attempts to respond to some of the criticism he has faced and again finds fault in others, not himself. One argument he doesn't address, though, is the money.
At one point in the book, he claims that nonprofits and crowdsourced funders raised over two million dollars on his behalf. Where did that money go? For a man who felt compelled to speak on behalf of the 13 valiant Americans who died due to the incompetent Afghanistan withdrawal, I think he probably knows where that money should have gone. There are human-shaped voids in 13 American families. Perhaps the money could have eased some of their pain. That would have been leadership. That would have been a message Americans could rally behind.
I do agree with aspects of Scheller’s message of accountability. He speaks some hard truths that bear consideration. He writes: “America’s evolution requires acknowledging failure and breakdowns in the system apolitically.” He’s correct. This country needs to take a hard, objective look at the reality of our failures during the Global War on Terror and demand accountability. Trillions of dollars were squandered and our all-volunteer military—mostly junior enlisted—suffered the horrendous consequences of these failures. That is nothing of the monumental loss of civilian lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. On this, we agree.
But Scheller is a flawed messenger. His book is riddled with cliches and contradictions. Ultimately, Crisis of Command is a sad story about a military leader who played the game for 17 years but had an emotional breakdown watching the fall of Afghanistan. Why he decided to throw his life into the fire, hoping that some good would come from it, remains a mystery to the reader and could have made for a more honest and compelling narrative. Instead, the book’s flaws will ensure it is forgotten within the same span of time that Americans lost his first social media post in the news cycle shuffle.
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