If he is still charged and tried even as one who has not over-stepped those guidelines, then the government is wrong in their prosecution of this Marine. The old standards might have been changed, but the old standards were an effort at preserving as much as possible of first amendment rights for the military.
Personally I am convinced that this prosecution would never have taken place if the President had been Bush or any other Republican. The problem is that this Marine chose to publicly criticize “The One” and the brass were advised by the powers that be that ANY public criticism of the Megalomaniac shall not be tolerated.
If there were a draft or this had been during the Vietnam War and they threw out every soldier who publicly criticized the CIC, then there would be an epidemic of this kind of public criticism.
The fact of the matter is that this kind of benign criticism and expression goes on all the time within the ranks and within e-mails and blogs and it does absolutely nothing to deter morale or good order or discipline. If anything this prosecution will cause more deterioration in morale and good order than it could possibly help. Further it will become harder and harder to field a voluntary army if the public becomes aware of how severely the opinions of soldiers in the field shall be punished.
Nothing good will come out of this firing. Obama willnbe appeased. I guess that is the important thing.