Republican Mike Coffman is congressman, former Colorado secretary of state, former legislator and top target of Democrats every two years. But he’s also a soldier who has served in the infantries of the Army and Marine Corps

So it should could come as no surprise that Coffman, who represents Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, wrote a letter Tuesday to President Obama incensed about the possibility of a pardon for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who faces a court-martial trial in April on desertion charges. Last week his lawyers pre-emptively asked Obama for a pardon.

Bergdahl was held captive by the Taliban after he left his post in his post in Afghanistan in 2009. Republicans were outraged after Obama traded five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2014.

“Bergdahl’s decision to abandon his post was not a ‘harmless’ act that simply led to his capture by the Taliban,” Coffman tells the president. “It led to a major military search operation in one of the most dangerous regions of Afghanistan that I think endangered the lives of other U.S. service members and may have led to some becoming casualties

“A pre-emptive pardon for Bergdahl will, I am convinced, seriously undermine the military court-martial process and send the wrong message to the hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform who have served honorably in combat.”

In other words, people such as Coffman.

The full letter is available here.

If the words of a combat veteran aren’t enough, Coffman also serves on the House Armed Services Committee and House Veterans Affairs Committee, where he is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.