Guest Post by Fred Reed
One Vet’s Take
June 6, 2014
It is so easy to gull the: the pack, the herd. It just takes a bit of theater. A brass band on the Fourth of July, flags whipping in the wind, young soldiers marching down Main Street, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of boots. There comes that glorious sense of common purpose, the adrenal thrill of collective power, thump-thump-thump. Martial ceremony is heady stuff, appealing to things deep and limbic. When Johnny comes marching home again, hoorah, hurrah. We are all together now, made whole, no petty divisions. The fanged herd.
Always the herd. It is in the genes. The herd. Basketball championship night, in a rural high-school: Bright lights, electrified crowd, cheerleaders twirling, skirts riding high. “Johnny, Johnny, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, nobody can!” Wild applause. Striplings dash onto the court, swirl into smooth fast lay-ups, cocky, confident. Long jump-shots, swish! Yaayyyy! Common purpose, unity.
For the seniors, next year in Afghanistan. Johnny comes rolling home again, hoorah, hoorah, minus his legs. From this we avert our eyes.
The herd. In a thousand Legion halls across the nation veterans gather on Memorial Day to make patriotic speeches. There are clichés about the ultimate sacrifice, defending our freedoms, God, duty, and country, our American way of life. Legionnaires are friendly, decent people, well-meaning—now, anyway. If there were an earthquake, they would pull the wounded from the rubble until they dropped from fatigue. They are not complex. They listen to the patriotic speeches with a sense of being a band of brothers. And if you told them they were suckers, conned by experts, used, they would erupt in fury, because somewhere inside many have suspected it.
The herd. The pack. Whip’em up. It’s for God, for democracy, onward Christian soldiers. We are a light to the world, a shining city on a hill, what all the earth would like to be if only they shared our values. We, knights in armor in a savage land, we fight fascism, Nazis, terror, Islam, it doesn’t matter what as we can always find something to fight, some sanctifying evil.
We are very like our enemies. We do not notice this. Carefully we do not notice. Guernica, the Warsaw ghetto, Fallujah, Nanjing—they are all the same. Soldiers are all the same, wars the same. All are fought on the most irreproachable moral grounds. We fight for peace, for freedom, for Allah, for the Fatherland, the Motherland, for the Homeland, for white Christian motherhood. We do not fight for Lockheed-Martin, or for oil. Oh no. Even the suckers might revolt at dying for low-sulfur crude, or Caspian pipelines.
People are squeamish these days, so we hide the horror of what we do. The public might gag and say, “No. No more.” Besides, we do not want to discourage recruiting. In our Fallujahs we do not show the rotting corpses, or footage of the disemboweled as they try to crawl, god knows to where, while they bleed to death.
And we do not show Johnny with his new colostomy bag, or blind, or with three stumps and one partial arm, or paraplegic or, never, ever, the quads, paralyzed below the neck, lying on slabs, turned over from time to time to avoid bed sores. The public does not see—though I have seen—the seventeen-year-old sweetheart of the young Marine from Memphis, when she first sees her betrothed irremediably blind with half his face a hideous mass of mangled flesh—and her obvious thought, oh Jesus, Johnny, oh Johnny, how can I do this? Onward Christian soldiers.
In my day we girded our loins against the Soviet Union, the Evil Empire, that spied on its citizens, tortured people it didn’t like, and committed atrocities in Afghanistan, where it had no business being. We loved the Afghans. We wanted to save them from the godless communist invaders.
To protect people from communism, we killed millions of them, only incidentally making McDonnell-Douglass rich. Today we spread a swath of destruction across the planet, this time protecting people from Terror by murdering them with drones.
But let us not think of these things. At all costs we must maintain patriotic unanimity, the idea that Our Boys are selflessly Serving America. Actually they do it because they have no choice. Offer them a chance to come home without penalty and see what happens.
To make them fight we have heavy punishments for desertion, for treason, and for mutiny. Escape comes quickly to the minds of men compelled to die in wars that mean nothing to them in remote countries that mean less. Escape must be prevented. Thus the cries of “Traitor!” and “Commie!” and “Coward!” The pack instinct runs strong, but self-preservation runs stronger. It must be suppressed ruthlessly.
Flags whipping in the wind, thump-thump-thump, brass band, Stars and Stripes Forever, maybe a few F-16s howling overhead to set hearts a’pounding, unity. Politicians will speak of gratitude to Our Boys.
Except of course that there is no unity, and few are grateful. Most of the country isn’t interested in the wars. A majority don’t know where Afghanistan is. The wealthy, the Ivy students en route to careers in I-banking, and for that matter most college kids have never seen a military base and don’t want to. The small-town, lower-middle class South and West—the suckers grow thickly there. Yale has never heard of Farmville. And doesn’t want to, and won’t.
There is another reason why veterans rage at any deviation from the tales of nobility and sacrifice. Two choices exist for a man who has been mutilated in the hobbyist wars of Washington’s neocon pansies. He can believe desperately that he became a lifelong cripple in a worthy cause. God. Duty. Country. He can believe that he is appreciated. He can hope, or pray, that it was somehow worth it.
Or he can realize that he has been suckered, snookered, conned. This can be hard to bear, very hard. It will get worse when a few years have rolled by and the new generation begins to ask, “Wasn’t there some kind of war in Afghanistan or somewhere? Maybe it was Africa.”
Men engaged in killing for petroleum can develop a suspicion that what they do is just wrong. Soldiers are trained, conditioned by experts, to do things that the civilized finds abhorrent. If a veteran begins to doubt the justness of the war, then he becomes no more than a hired murderer. This is not pleasant. Thus no one must be permitted to say it. A contagion might result.
God forbid that soldiers begin to think. Independence of mind is dangerous to militaries. Training is chiefly a means of preventing it. Infrequently a soldier has the courage to see that what he is doing is both stupid and immoral, and walk away from it. Bowe Bergdahl did. I say, speaking as a former Marine in Viet Nam, and as a life member of both the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled Veterans of America: You have my admiration, Sergeant Bergdahl.
Fred,
Spot on from a former Marine, Edward Snowden stated the Middle East wars were BS, and even Alan Greenspan stated the wars were about OIL.
I’m a veteran, spent two years on the Shangri-La CVA with the 6th fleet in the Mediterranean. Quite the adventure, but stand with Fred and Ron Paul, empires are expensive and evil.
Does Bergdabi have my admiration, NO, but I am not going to give him the firing squard either. The two that need the firing squad are Bush and Cheney. Look what these two did to prmote the NSA, they recreated this monster big time.
All this crap about veterans giving their life for our freedoms is absolute propaganda bullshit.
Good article. On the surface, I am not a big fan of Bergdahl, but I don’t think I know enough about it to form a opinion one way, or the other.
What I do know is that the endless wars on Terror, Drugs, Poverty and so on are nothing but utter bullshit. Every time I fly I remember the great words of the decider.. “They hate us for or freedoms”.
What a load of shit, endless wars to kill people we have nothing in common with and nothing against. They replace paid mercenaries for troops and say they are winding down the war. We go around shitting on third world country after third world country and in the process destroy the lives of so many of ours and theirs.
For what? For Oil and Capitalism. All political systems suck that end with a “ism”. It is just a matter of who benefits the most. Rarely is it the majority of the people.
“And we do not show Johnny with his new colostomy bag, or blind, or with three stumps and one partial arm, or paraplegic or, never, ever, the quads, paralyzed below the neck, lying on slabs,” —– Fred
I guess he’s never seen the Wounder Warrior Project commercial ……… a commercial despite it’s noble intent, disgusts me to no end.
Fred wrote a wonderful anti-war article ….. except for the last paragraph where he says “You have my admiration, Sergeant Bergdahl.”.
From the BIRDS EYE view, I agree with Fred. I have no qualms about a soldier in the field who realizes he’s been bullshitted about the war, and then saying he’s had enough.
The problem is at the GROUND LEVEL ….. HOW Bergdahl did it. At least FIVE other soldiers lost their lives looking for Bergdahl. Why doesn’t Fred talk about that? As Billy mentioned in another thread, Bergdhal had other many other options. He picked the worst possible one.
Bergdahl wanted to avoid causing further Afghani deaths ….. only to cause more American deaths. He bargained with the Devil, and must pay the price.
A good article that would rattle a lot of people I know if they cared to read it. Unfortunately, if I were to share this with coworkers or post on a public forum, the indignation would be so palpable, I would be considered subversive especially since many of their adult children have joined the military in some capacity as a step in their career choice. When I hear the cliches emanating from them about patriotism and ‘our freedoms’, it is with the utmost self restraint that I do not leap up and slap them out of their trance.
Stucky, you can’t handle the truth. Bergdahl didn’t bargain with anyone, he made his own way. This is inconsistent with the USCMC, and he should be court martialed, stripped of pay and rank, and dishonorably discharged for desertion. That’s what should happen. What will happen is anybody’s guess considering the cluster fuck surrounding his case since he walked off his post.
In case anyone hasn’t seen this,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/13-things-you-need-to-know-about-bowe-bergdahl-20140602
I agree with Fred in that I know I got played for a chump.
Yeah, it’s hard to come to that realization. It burns. Stings. There is nothing wrong with choosing to be a soldier. We are a warrior people. Always have been. Where “wrong” comes in is the duplicity in sending us to fight.
I’m just asking for a little honesty. That’s it. We hold our soldiers to the highest standards. The folks who send our guys to fight? Eh… not so much, if at all.
And Bergdahl is a fucking puke. I’ve already stated my case on that. Sorry Fred. Can’t back you up on this one.
Oh yeah, there are war profiteers and democracy and freedom and the American Way are mostly bullshit. The cannon fodder has been conned and snookered and worse killed and horribly maimed. However, there are Nazis and fascists and commies and Mooslimes who should not be allowed to threaten us. We have a clan,pack and herd-that is the way it is. It has always been thus and always will be. There are also traitors like Bergdahl and Bush and Obama and Fonda.
It is what it is and I don`t know how to fix it.
“It is what it is and I don`t know how to fix it”
I do.
Unfortunately, the course of action I would suggest… is a course of action I cannot suggest.
“However, there are Nazis and fascists and commies and Mooslimes who should not be allowed to threaten us.”
They can run their cock holsters all they want. To me, it’s just hot air.
Deeds, not words.
If and when they do some heinous shit, then unleash the hounds. The whole point of going to war is to pound the other guy so badly and so completely, they never want to fuck with you again… ever. I knew we were totally fucked when I went to my first “sensitivity training” class… it was mandatory.
Sensitivity training? For guys whose job it is to kill people and break stuff? That’s just asshattery in the worst sense.. and it sets us up for failure. And failing we are. At least at warfighting. The military should be exempt from social experimentation and political correctness.
Thing is, if you’re going to war, then fight to win. But you should use that only as a final option when everything else has failed and you have no other recourse… we’ve grown too used to quickly sending our guys to beat up on other people for… well, literally for nothing. And it should be at the discretion of Congress, PERIOD, as was originally intended. Not be the personal enforcers of whomever or whatever happens to be in the Oval Office..
One last thing. Take the first born male of every Congresscritter and put them into combat arms – Infantry. Let THEM send their own to fight, too. I’m willing to bet that our involvement in the affairs of other countries would drop to zero.
Billy,
You were not a chump, maybe a green chimp back then. Life’s lesson change people, and the constant war mongering gets old, the patroitism thing is but a thin veneer. Below that is goobs of lust for power and greed.
How does the public school system operated, with the lubricant of children, the military does it with green chimps like you and me, and criminal justice system with the dumb and dependant lubricant called prisioners.
100 percent agree with the horror of these fake wars. Makes me sick.
The only thing that makes me sicker is empathy for this puke Bergdahl. Throw rocks at Cheney (good!) then you are ok with a guy who deserted, pal’ed up with the Taliban and got more guys killed? What the hell is wrong with you. Go fly a kite.
disobedience is fine until it hurts others. Keeping your word matters, even when it’s wrong, if your actions affect others who have counted on you. War or regular life, same concept. You are no libertarian, Fred. Your good points are clouded by your ignorance and bitterness.
You are also very wrong about generalizing Ivy campuses, the students anyway.
I was raised to believe that my word was my bond. A deal’s a deal. I came to dislike a deal? If there’s a time-frame, walk away when the time is done. Until then, a deal’s a deal.
Bergie wasn’t drafted.
Exactly, Desertrat. Fred is part of the generation that ruined what was handed them, so his view is unsurprising.
I “found” Fred in his earliest days. I have strongly agreed with much of what he has written. However, in recent years, his maltreatment within the VA and by the US State Department have embittered him.
Saigon fell the year I graduated from high school. I hated that war. I hate all of them. I never wanted anything to do with the military, so I didn’t. I have never regretted it.
Welsh,
If I had to make a guess, I’d say I’m the biggest flag waiver I know. Nothing wrong with patriotism and nationalism. If the old America First bunch still existed, then I’d probably be a member.
But being a patriot does not mean you go out and beat up on people just because. It doesn’t mean you’re a warmongering dickhead. Smedley Butler was right. War is a racket, except when you are fighting for your own existence.
What burns my ass like a three foot flame is that the sociopaths and warmongering opportunistic dickheads in the Military Industrial Complex exploit that patriotism to get guys like you and me to join up, then send us to war on trumped up reasons in order to make shattering amounts of money… fuck them. I ain’t opposed to anyone making money. I like money as much as the next guy. I wish I had MORE… but I got a serious beef with making money by spending the blood of our best. Only a dickhead with the morals of a bag of dog shit would do that.. including the bankster financiers of such things…
I’m not sure why but my father has always been rather prescient. He voluntarily joined the AF prior to the outbreak of hostilities in Vietnam to avoid becoming a grunt slogging through the jungle and being shot at daily. I could never imagine my father as an unquestioning ground pounder because of his ability for reason. Later, as his three sons came closer to high school graduation he advised us to avoid the military unless it was to acquire some specialized training or skill that could be translated to a lucrative civilian job after a minimum enlistment. I’m grateful for that advice and even more grateful that he survived and is still with me today. He is my one and only hero in a million different ways.
I respect Bergdahl for having the intelligence to recognize his situation for what it was but he had numerous options to choose from which did not involve risking the lives of those around him. He made a selfish choice to endanger them so fuck him! Americans died because him. Actions have consequences and he will be learning that lesson for the rest of his life.
It always amazes me how legally, kids are just kids and not “responsible” until they are 21 unless they join the military and then they are suddenly wise men. This alone should be enough for the sheople to ask What the Fuck?
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Billy,
Well said, after WWII this war mongering went to our heads, as it had big buck tied to it.
Congress and their total disregard for the Constitution is the real culprit. “Only Congress can Declare War” is the law of the land, but has not been upheld since WW2. Undeclared “wars” financed by debt and deficit spending have been our legacy. And no-one seems to give a shit. I too drank the Kool Aid, served my 8yrs during Vietnam(never went) and thought I did the right thing. Over the years, I began to realize that it was all so much bullshit(the war). However, I do not regret my years in the military. That may sound schizophrenic, but the discipline did me good and I received the best flight training in the world. The military has its proper place, which is guarding our borders to ensure the freedom and liberty of every US Citizen. I haven’t seen this in almost 67yrs.
It’s a national tragedy what’s happening to kids who are poor, and can’t find jobs. They join the military and get their dicks blown off in a place we have no business being in. But if you’re dumb enough to join (instead of get on welfare) the military, they can’t just walk off and join the enemy. It’s bullshit. Some day people will realize we’re the enemy, not the saviors, not anymore. The rest of the world fears the USSA and Obama above all else, with good reason. This isn’t the country I grew up in.
[img]http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples_resource/image/30657[/img]
“Obama is a good man. He will not leave us behind.”
“Hopefully the American people won’t catch on. We’re the soldiers he won’t leave behind.”
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Shepard Smith asked Judge Andrew Napolitano whether or not the Taliban prisoner exchange was legal under the NDAA H.R. 1960 Statute. The judge explained that the swap was illegal because taxpayer dollars were spent to remove these prisoners from Guantanamo Bay without giving Congress 30 days notice. However, Napolitano goes a step further by pointing out that Obama has provided material assistance (human assets) to the Taliban, which has been identified by Congress to be a non-state terrorist organization. This is a crime punishable by imprisonment of 10 years to life, which covers all Americans–including the President.
Here’s some more:
Was the swap of five Gitmo detainees for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl legal?
Shepard Smith brought in Judge Andrew Napolitano, who said it’s not. It was treason.
Napolitano explained that a statute prohibits use of taxpayer dollars or federal funds to pay for removal of anyone from Gitmo if Congress hasn’t been given 30 days notice. In other words, President Barack Obama unlawfully spent money.
By releasing these detainees “into the theater of war,” Napolitano said Obama has also provided material assistance to a terrorist organization, which is illegal, and treasonous.
“You’re accusing the president of the United States of aiding and abetting the enemy?” Smith asked.
“Yes, yes it’s pretty clear […] no exception for the president’s behavior,” Napolitano said.
I like the Judge but what he fails to realize is that the laws he cites are just for a little people. They do not apply to TPTB. Somebody really should send him an email about this.
AWD,
Impeachment of Obongo will NEVER happen… not because he’s not guilty as sin and a reprehensible pile of monkey shit, but because those craven fucks in Congress won’t do shit…
Being honorable means RIGHT ACTION. Even if it means your own death. They won’t act because Obongo is a negro. They are so craven, so cowardly about being accused of being an Evil White Rayciss, they are paralyzed into inaction.
Also, and don’t think they don’t know this, IF they impeached Obongo on one of any number of impeachable offenses he has committed, the Professionally Angry Negroes in the US would riot. To them, he’s infallible and the only reason Congress would impeach his ass is not because he’s a maniacal socialist piece of dog shit who has wiped his ass with the Constitution and broken dozens of laws, but because “He beez black an sheeit”…
Impeach Obongo = negroes rioting in every major city in the US simultaneously.
And Congress knows this. But instead of RIGHT ACTION, even in the face of an overt threat like this, they choose to let themselves be extorted by a bunch of low-IQ smelly thugs.
This is a VERY interesting link to the late Michael Hastings:
“Key facts from the late Michael Hastings’ profile of the freed Taliban POW”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/13-things-you-need-to-know-about-bowe-bergdahl-20140602
I’m really not sure what to make of this, as it’s getting increasingly obscured by ‘the fog of war.’
“I asked a former member of the Navy SEALs’ elite Jedi Unit (the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden) to tell me how he feels about the whole episode. “Betrayed and angry … both those words apply,” he said.
Let’s call this man Tommy, for his civilian life must necessarily remain as clandestine as his military service. He said he stays in touch with some 700 special operations forces team members, who all took umbrage with the president’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, when she declared that Bergdahl had served “with honor and distinction.”
“The White House is whitewashing the ill deeds of this deserter and is lying to the country on mainstream media,” Tommy told me. And like all the other military men, he insists that Bergdahl must now account for his actions and face a military tribunal or court-martial.
None of those I interviewed is a lawyer, but each offered the opinion that the commander in chief committed an impeachable offense by ignoring the law that requires a president to give Congress 30 days’ notice about any prisoner exchange.” –Diane Dimond
Admin says: Bergdahl must now account for his actions and face a military tribunal or court-martial.
I could not agree more. Let him stand trial and tell his side of the story.
Not to be confused with Edward Snowden, who is a true American hero.
Our Orwellian federal gommit would put Snowden on trial. It remains to be seen what becomes of Bergdahl.
This is a giant steaming pile of crap. While I agree with much of the author’s sentiment, Bergdal didn’t have to enlist. By the time he got to Afghanistan, the war had been on for a while. He was deserting in 2009, not 2001, as if that would have mattered. If you don’t want to go to war, don’t join your nation’s military and don’t join during a never ending worldwide war on a noun!
I was in the army, too. I went to Iraq. I didn’t agree with it, either (I joined before we declared Regime Change on a country not involved in 911), but I went and did the job I signed up to do. I didn’t agree with the Iraq war, but I’m proud of what I did in fulfilling my duty in it. Intellectual disconnect? I don’t think so. I could have whined and acted out and gotten in trouble, shirked, maybe claimed I was gay to avoid deployment (as one soldier did in my brigade), or gotten pregnant, had I been female (lots of girls did this. Our own fat, lazy Specialist BigButt did just that a week or two prior to deployment). I could even have cut on myself or acted suicidal, which some other folks did. While the gay escape clause has been sealed in the last 2 years, the crazy card is still in the deck. If Bergdal had such a problem with service, he could have worked the system to get out or sucked it up and soldiered on, like everyone else has for 2 centuries. Going native in Afghanistan is not an option. (Maybe he watched The Beast one too many times?)
While I recognize the entire war has essentially been a massive waste of time and we have no business over there any more, I don’t think the soldiers get to call the shots. You enlist in the military knowing there’s a chance you’ll have to go do nasty things. If everyone got to decide what they would do and when they would come and go, it would be total chaos. There would be a naked man in every tree (Catch 22, anyone?) The fact you don’t like it once you have to go doesn’t change anything. No one made him enlist. No one made me enlist. He bought a ticket and he got to see the whole show.
Even if he did have a problem with being in the military or being in a rotten war or hurting innocent people or missing Simpsons episodes on TV, he didn’t have the option to quit whenever he felt like it, aside from those bag drag measures I mentioned. If he had such a big problem, why not complete the commitment he made, then write or blog or protest and speak out, like many others have before him? General Smedley Butler served loyally for decades, THEN spoke out against what he saw as corporatism. He made a glaring indictment of the system that stands the test of time. Even Dr. Frankenstein’s Hideous Undead Monster, John Kerry, managed to fulfill his duty BEFORE becoming a giant anti-American douchebag. Bergdal, no matter what he believes, will be a pathetic loser for the history books because he couldn’t do his duty.
Also, a lot of people have written in the past about the camaraderie of the field. Regardless of how Bergdal felt about the military or Afghanistan, there was an important consideration of his teammates. He abandoned his buddies in a dangerous place. He walked away from his battle buddies. In thousands of years of history, one thing veterans agree on from this war to WWII to WWI to the Civil War to even the Trojan War is you don’t abandon your buddies. It’s disgusting he decided to abandon them. Even worse, he placed all his buddies at risk when they dropped everything to go look for him for months, apparently leading to some of their own deaths.
One thing I haven’t heard ANYONE talk about is the Army Values, which Bergdal must have known about. Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. They’re drummed into recruits’ heads and have been for some time. Even civilians can find something good in that list of values. They’re universal. Bergdal pretty much peed all over them. He demonstrated none of those values when he decided to run away.
Bergdal deserves no sympathy, no support, no respect, and no welcome home. In my opinion, he was not a lost soldier or a POW, but a quitter, a shirker, a deserter, and perhaps even a traitor, if his comrades’ stories of improved Taliban attacks and the 2010 Guardian article I read, where the Taliban stated he trained their troops, are true.
The Whitehouse’s attempts to portray this as a standard POW exchange are so embarrassingly, outrageously, incredibly wrong, I can’t believe they even tried to make that argument. You could spend hours debating it, but for one, I don’t think the Taliban counts as a foreign power. Their “troops” don’t wear uniforms of any type, which is sort of covered in the Geneva Conventions. If you want to treat them as an enemy power, then the Geneva Conventions would, in my opinion, classify the fighters we’ve captured as spies, and therefor punishable by death. Plus, I believe Afghanistan never signed the conventions, so they don’t apply. Read the conventions some time! Also, who exchanges 1 enlisted soldier for 5 high-level leaders of the enemy? This all seems sort of desperate and ham-handed on the Barry administration’s part and probably conducted with a minimum of adult supervision.
It all makes me so mad to see what a farce, a mockery of the military this has been. We had a similar case when I was in Iraq, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15395225/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/us-soldier-still-missing-baghdad/, where a US soldier who emigrated from Iraq and joined the Army was sneaking off base to visit family and friends on his own. He was captured and we went nuts trying to find him. Once I found out he was willingly putting himself at risk and sneaking off base, I was all for abandoning the search. If you’re willing to abandon your post and go into No Man’s Land, in my opinion, you brought it on yourself and you’re on your own. Why should anyone break their neck for you at that point? Bergdal’s capture, like this rat’s, was entirely preventable and did not deserve such a determined effort. Were I in charge, I think I would have let him rot. Sure, you never leave a man behind-but when the man leaves you behind, it’s a bit different.
One last thing-calling him an honorable, distinguished soldier is so, so amazingly offensive, I can’t believe it. These clowns would honor dishonor and credit discredit and respect the unrespectable. If I didn’t already know they hate this nation and everything about it, I would be astonished and curious how they could do something so despicable and harmful to morale.
The vendetta against Bowe Bergdahl
By Patrick Martin
The decision by the Pentagon to bring charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy against former Afghanistan prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl is vindictive and politically reactionary. Its purpose is to intimidate rank-and-file soldiers who, like Bergdahl, turn against the savagery of the wars American imperialism is waging in the Middle East and Central Asia, or who oppose future American wars around the world.
Bergdahl, a private first class near the beginning of a year-long tour of duty in Afghanistan, walked away from his unit in Paktika province in June 2009. He was captured by the Taliban and held as a prisoner, often under barbaric conditions, and forced to participate in propaganda videos. The Obama administration negotiated his release last May as part of a prisoner exchange in which five long-held Taliban prisoners were allowed to leave Guantanamo Bay.
While the American media and the ultra-right have long peddled myths about Vietnam War-era POWs in an effort to retrospectively justify that imperialist bloodbath, these same elements immediately launched a campaign of vilification against the sole Afghan War POW upon his return home from captivity. Former members of Bergdahl’s unit played a prominent role in these efforts.
There were claims — all later proven false — that Bergdahl had left his unit in order to join the Taliban and fight on their side, and that as many as a dozen American soldiers had been killed in the course of fruitless efforts to find and rescue him in the months after his disappearance. At the height of this campaign, the Wall Street Journal published a commentary suggesting that Bergdahl should face the death penalty for desertion under fire in wartime.
The real reason for the ferocity of the attack on Bergdahl was his public disaffection from the war in Afghanistan and, in particular, his caustic criticism of the conduct of the American military in that devastated country. In 2012, Rolling Stone magazine had published excerpts of emails from Bergdahl to his parents in Idaho in which he declared, “I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.”
“I am sorry for everything here,” he continued. “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live.” Referring to a particularly gruesome incident he had witnessed, he added, “We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks.”
In response to the right-wing campaign against Bergdahl, the machinery of the Pentagon began to grind out the mockery that passes for “military justice.” Lt. Gen. Kenneth Dahl interviewed Bergdahl and other members of his unit and filed a report with the top brass. Last week, Gen. Mark Milley, head of the Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, authorized charges against Bergdahl. A preliminary hearing is set for April 22 to determine whether to order a court-martial, accept a negotiated plea, or dismiss the charges.
Eugene Fidell, one of Bergdahl’s attorneys, said the Army report contains evidence that Bergdahl left his post not to desert, but to go to another military outpost to report on the conditions in his own unit. In a memorandum that he made public, Fidell wrote: “[T]he report basically concludes that Sgt. Bergdahl did not intend to remain away from the Army permanently, as classic ‘long’ desertion requires… It also concludes that his specific intent was to bring what he thought were disturbing circumstances to the attention of the nearest general officer.” This might have been a violation of military discipline, but it hardly warrants the charge of desertion.
Two military officials confirmed Fidell’s account of the secret report in interviews with CNN. “This was a kid who had leadership concerns on his mind,” one of the officials said. “He wasn’t fed up, he wasn’t planning to desert.”
The vendetta against Bergdahl reveals two interconnected political facts. First, the military brass is determined to make an example of the former POW because, in addition to popular opposition to the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, there is increasing turmoil within the ranks of the military itself, as the Afghanistan War approaches its fifteenth year and the war in Iraq is resumed twelve years after the US invasion of that country.
Second, the Obama administration, which initially hailed Bergdahl’s safe return as a diplomatic triumph, to be celebrated with photo ops with the POW’s parents in the White House Rose Garden, takes its lead from the Pentagon chiefs. It is the military-intelligence apparatus, not its nominal civilian “commander,” that calls the shots in Washington.
Behind the vendetta against Bergdahl is the fear of a Vietnam War-like growth of demoralization and opposition within the ranks, under conditions of a continuous escalation of US military operations, not only in the Middle East, but directed increasingly against major powers such as Russia and China.