EXCLUSIVE: A Marine lieutenant colonel from Ohio who publicly spoke out against the Afghanistan withdrawal will lead rank-and-file service members door-to-door in the Senate next week in support of defense nominee Pete Hegseth.
Stuart Scheller, who was imprisoned in a Jacksonville, N.C., brig for his public criticisms of military brass, told Fox News Digital Wednesday he is organizing enlisted men and women to engage with senators next Wednesday.
Scheller stressed that service members who are participating are not prominent fellows at think tanks or in any governmental or related seats of power.
"Pete has made public comments that he wants to move to a meritocracy, and he believes that we need more courage in the ranks. So, I'm not saying that I wouldn't have been reprimanded [if he was secretary]," Scheller said.
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"I still think there probably was some reprimand that needed to happen, but it would go across the board.
"The difference is, if Pete was the secretary of defense, the general officers would have also been held accountable [for the botched withdrawal], and I would not have had to go to the lengths that I had to go to bring attention to the situation."
Scheller said that, in the last decade or two, the U.S. military is "not winning anything, and we need to turn it into a winning organization."
Scheller said Hegseth has planned to hold accountable Pentagon leaders who have "become stagnant" in the lieutenant colonel’s words.
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He also stressed that Hegseth is the first Pentagon nominee in decades who is not from the officer corps or defense contracting firms.
Outgoing Secretary Lloyd Austin III is a retired CENTCOM general but also came from the board of Raytheon.
"Forty years to become a four-star general really removes you from the forces," Scheller said of the past several officer-corps secretary choices overall.
"Pete’s middle management — a major. I mean, he’s like the perfect guy ... and he's been sitting here talking to veterans when he was developing his book, trying to understand their pulse and the heartbeat. So, that book that he wrote probably prepared him in terms of the current culture and sentiment and frustrations more than any other secretary of defense."
As for his plans for the Hill next week, Scheller said he and fellow service members are focused on those who may appear to be on the fence about Hegseth.
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"I'm looking for more [of] the right people than the total quantity," he said.
Scheller will also release a video announcing his Wednesday mission.
"[Hegseth] is a combat veteran from our generation and … he’s not a puppet for the military industrial complex. He's not going to end up on one of their boards like every general officer of our generation," Scheller says in the video.
"I'm going to be in Washington, D.C., walking through the halls of the U.S. Senate, talking to all the U.S. senators, advocating for peace."