https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/ignore_the_leftist_hype_the_blackwater_pardons_were_the_right_thing_to_do.html
On December 22, President Trump issued 15 pardons. Among those pardoned were Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard. If the names are unfamiliar, you might recognize them collectively as the Blackwater private contractors. In September 2007, these former veterans ended up in a shootout in Nisour Square, Baghdad, that left 17 Iraqis dead and 20 wounded. Slatten got life in prison; the other men each got 30 years. The left would like to see them continue to rot in jail, but President Trump made the right decision to let them go.
I have to admit that, for no good reason, I did not pay too much attention at the time to the original shootout in Iraq or to the men’s railroading over the course of several years after the shootout. That’s why I was at a loss for words when a leftist friend called me to ask accusingly, “So, what do you think of your President Trump now for pardoning those mass murderers?”
That friend wasn’t the only one taking that stand. Several leftists I know on Facebook posted a New York Times article about the pardon. The following is just the title but, after reading it, you really don’t need to waste your time (and it will be wasted) reading the rest of the article:
Blackwater’s Bullets Scarred Iraqis. Trump’s Pardon Renewed the Pain: Iraqi witnesses against Blackwater guards were promised justice after a mass killing in Baghdad in 2007. ‘Today,’ one said, the bullets still in his leg, ‘they proved to me it was just theater.’
The way things roll on the left is that you can simultaneously be angry at Trump for wanting to draw down America’s military presence in Afghanistan and the rest of the world, while still accusing him of being an imperialist and lambasting him for pardoning men involved in a war Trump didn’t even support.