trace pronoun

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

The following seems unnatural to me because the pronoun HIM has not been
deleted:

FORT BRAGG -- A national organization that fights for the rights of
homosexual service members has come to the defense of a Fort Bragg soldier
whose superiors refuse to let him resign. [Associated Press, Durham, NC,
HERALD, 2/16/02, B1]

Do YOU have an obligatory object deletion in this syntactic environment?