By @BGinKC
From the very beginning, when Bowe Bergdahl went missing, I had questions about how he came to be alone, unarmed and off his post, but I come from a military family and in spite of the fact that I say “fuck” a lot, I have a modicum of human decency. The questions I had were not the sort of questions a decent person asks about a prisoner of war while they are being held, and after that prisoner of war is released, the appropriate place to ask them is in a military courtroom, if the branch of service the prisoner of war wears the uniform of deems that action necessary – and if they don’t my questions are not fit to ask, because I am not privy to all the information.
Now the light is starting to shine through the heat that has been generated around the issue of his rescue. The attacks on the soldier and his family were coordinated by republican strategists. He must not be worth saving, because Obama gave the orders that saved him. Pardon me while I puke.
“Yes, I’m angry,” Joshua Cornelison, a former medic in Sergeant Bergdahl’s platoon, said in an interview on Monday arranged by Republican strategists. “Everything that we did in those days was to advance the search for Bergdahl. If we were doing some mission and there was a reliable report that Bergdahl was somewhere, our orders were that we were to quit that mission and follow that report.”
Sergeant Bergdahl slipped away from his outpost, the former senior officer said, possibly on foot but more likely hiding in a contractor’s vehicle. “He didn’t walk out the gate through a checkpoint, and there was no evidence he breached the perimeter wire and left that way,” the ex-officer said.
It was not until the 9 a.m. roll call on June 30 that the 29 soldiers of Second Platoon, Blackfoot Company, learned he was gone.
“I was woken up by my platoon leader,” said Mr. Cornelison, who had gone to sleep just three hours before after serving watch from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. “Hey Doc,” his platoon leader said. “Have you seen Bergdahl?”
Platoon members said Sergeant Bergdahl, of Hailey, Idaho, was known as bookish and filled with romantic notions that some found odd.
“He wouldn’t drink beer or eat barbecue and hang out with the other 20-year-olds,” Cody Full, another member of Sergeant Bergdahl’s platoon, said in an interview on Monday also arranged by Republican strategists. “He was always in his bunk. He ordered Rosetta Stone for all the languages there, learning Dari and Arabic and Pashto.”
Yes…this jackass they found and paraded in front of the cameras and the press didn’t like Bergdahl because Begdahl respected the people and culture of the area he had been sent to, didn’t violate regulations by drinking alcohol in a Muslim country and tried to learn the languages! Quelle horreur!
Too bad we can’t tattoo “REACTIONARY DUMBASS” on the forehead of every jerk who glommed on to this Cornelison prick and proclaimed him a deserter and a traitor based on a press availability arranged by a republican strategist fired by Mittens so the rest of us know what we’re dealing with when we have the misfortune of crossing paths with one of the miserable pieces of shit.
Sometimes you just need to see the sun come up. He was a nature boy from Idaho with a history of going off alone for a bit but returning. He was in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. Where the fuck was he going to go? Ask the simple questions first, people. If the answers make you think “Hey! Wait a minute! This fucker is trying to play me!” guess what? THAT FUCKER IS TRYING TO PLAY YOU.
I do know one thing for sure…We sure as hell shouldn’t be trying the guy in the press or on the internet. James Taranto, a Lt. General in the 101st Chairborne, had one of the nastiest, most hateful columns on the release of Bergdahl, a 2000 word screed on how the left “just doesn’t get” military culture – and best of all, the scolding is administered by a chickenhawk who never served a single day in uniform in his life, so yeah…credible. All kinds of credible.
As the week has worn on, the right-wing’s “deserter” and “traitor” meme started to fall apart – and justifiably so. At least one of the members of Bergdahl’s platoon was booted from the service with a “less than honorable” discharge, and even talking about Bergdahl violates an agreement he signed on separation, so he may see the inside of a stockade for flapping his gums. Wouldn’t that be high-sterical?
Here’s the deal…If you wear the uniform of one of the military branches of this country, and you are taken prisoner, we will go get you, and sort the circumstances out later. Justice WILL be served, whether that justice is being returned to your family and freedom or to the stockade after a trial by Court Martial. Period. Full Stop. It’s not negotiable, it might as well be carved in stone.
I don’t know if Bergdahl will face any disciplinary action or not, and it isn’t my place to say. It’s up to the UCMJ now, and anyone who says otherwise, whether they are passing judgement or caling him a hero, is a reactionary dumbass.
I never imagined I would ever see a prisoner of war attacked, not by the fringe, but by the rank and file of one of the political parties in this country. For forty years the accusations have flown back and forth between the right and the left over who it was who spit on the returning troops from Vietnam. The right says the left did it, the left says it was the right.
This time, there will be no debate. The shame from the Fox archives will live on YouTube forever.
