Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who was held in Taliban captivity for 5 years after leaving his base in Afghanistan in 2009. He was freed last year in exchange for five Taliban prisoners who’d been held for years at Gauantánamo. Last week, the Army announced it plans to charge sergeant Bergdahl with one count of desertion and one count of misbehavior before the enemy. If convicted, he faces life in prison. The tough military charges Bergdahl faces have revived controversy over how the Obama administration won his release in exchange for 5 Taliban prisoners. Fox News reports at least three of the five have since attempted to reconnect with their former terrorist networks.
Matthew Hoh talking:
I have been saying for almost 10 months now. Give this time, no rush to judgment. Why are we vilifying and crucifying a young man who suffered at the hands of the enemy for five years? And even more so, persecuting his family as well. Just to, really, score political points. With regard to the most recent developments with sergeant Bergdahl, the most important aspect of all this is the fact, as Mr. Fidell was just explaining, the Army’s investigation has found that sergeant Bergdahl did not intend to desert permanently. He didn’t intend to quit the war, quit the Army, or join the Taliban or walk to China, but that his intention was to try and get to another base to report some kind of wrongdoing, something disturbing to a senior military officer or to an American general. Something had bothered his conscience. Something had bothered his standards as a soldier that he felt that this was the only option he had, to travel overland, admittedly a pretty crazy option, and obviously one that did not work out so well as everyone knows. But, that is what the Army has found. That this is not a case of classic desertion but of a young man who was disturbed by something, possibly war crimes, some kind of wrongdoing, something immoral, maybe, and that he took it upon himself to report this to his senior officers because he had no faith in the soldiers he was stationed with anymore.
According to the book “Military Justice: A Guide to the Issues,” by Lawrence Morris, Article 99, misbehavior before the enemy, essentially criminalizes a soldier’s inability to overcome fear to carry out their duty.
if he was willing to communicate with his squad leader, his team leader about this before hand. And then actually carry out this action. If we go back to information we know about this already, most of which comes from the Rolling Stone article published by Michael Hastings and Matt Farwell, we see that he actually asked his team leader what would happen to me if I went off base with my weapons and other serialized gear — so, my night vision goggles and other equipment the Army has issued to me. The team leader said you will get in trouble. And so, that is, to me, the reason why he went off base without that equipment. This was a plan he had. He obviously felt that he had no other possibility, no other option. So, for him to do that, to go overland in eastern Afghanistan to try and report this disturbing circumstances as the Army says he was trying to do, required quite a bit of bravery. With regard to this misbehavior before the enemy charge, a lot of us who are in the veteran community have never heard of that before. Obviously it is an actual part of the uniform code of military justice, but it is something that is extremely rare. And if you google it — I invite people to go and google it — you’ll see there are nine sections to this possible charge. And really it’s a catchall. If somebody does not have their boots tied properly while in their fighting position, that could be construed as misbehavior before the enemy. It really is a catchall that can be applied really to any circumstances. So, certainly i would imagine that if you were to say like he left the base, well, he left the base without permission that is misbehavior before the enemy so, I guess that you could say that he is in violation of that.
I got to know Bob Bergdahl via Twitter, and we developed a friendship talking on the phone or skyping. And then we actually had dinner together, along with — the first time I met Jani as well, Bowe’s mom — just a few nights before Bowe was released. So, I think it was a Thursday evening we had dinner together in Washington, D.C. You know, Amy, like a lot of guys in these wars, you’ve seen a lot of suffering, a lot of grief, but, I had never seen anything like I saw in sergeant Bergdahl’s mothers eyes that night. This is a woman whose son was being held as a prisoner of war who was, at that point I don’t think they understood the horrors that which he was going through in terms of the constant psychological and physical torture he endured, but, they certainly knew he was suffering, and they were unsure if they would ever see him again. And I had never seen anything like that in a mother’s eyes. Like I said, I have been to a lot of funerals I’ve seen a lot of suffering and grief of mothers who have buried their sons way too early, but I had never seen anything like I had seen in Jani’s eyes that night. I think that is what is so touching about what Bob is saying in those comments. These are two people, these are a husband and wife who raised two children, raised them well, raised them in the spirit of their church, who had their son join the Army, and their suffering has been unreal, unknown to really anyone in this country.
You have to go back to the Vietnam era to understand the suffering that they must have endured in the sense of will we ever see you sons again, will we ever — what torture must they be experiencing. But, what Bob says about the duplicity of it, the duplicity of this nation, the fact that in church we can bemoan violence, we cite we are a Christian nation, but, we regularly ignore Jesus’ call to peace while we maintain 600 military bases around the world, while we occupy countries, while we conduct wars, while we bomb nations, while we support other nations that bomb nations. This past week with Saudi Arabia’s and other nations’ attacks into Yemen that is fully supported by the United States. We are providing targeting information, in-flight refueling, logistic support. So, i think Bob’s words carry a lot of weight from the kind of man he is, the principled man he is. His experiences as a father who sent his son to war as well then too as a man of the church and a man who has seen this both through a philosophical level and from a practical level.
22 investigators working for many months interviewing everyone involved to determine that he left his — Sergeant Bergdahl left his post to report disturbing circumstances which may have been wrongdoing, which may be related to the death of this child, which will most likely be related to his views of his unit, his shame at the actions he has seen there. So, we may have very possibly, this may be a story of a young man obeying his conscience, obeying the standards of the army and trying to tell the truth. Trying to report wrongdoing. Who then was captured en route to trying to — on his mission and then held in captivity for five years, tortured, and then come home to the most disgraceful and shameful attacks to score political points by the media, by politicians. And I will say that, while the Republicans tend to be leading these assaults against Sergeant Bergdahl, I’m not hearing a lot of Democratic voices and Democratic politician speaking in defense of this young man or his family. So, I think it’s shameful not just the attacks but also the silence that has occurred over his treatment; the lack of men and women willing to stand up and defend him in his family.
This is the most unpopular war in U.S. history. We see around four out of five Americans opposed to this war. As many americans think the war has been a mistake since 2001 as think it was worth it. And what we have seen occur in Afghanistan, and which was I thinks was really quite striking, Last week, President Ashraf Ghani, the new president of Afghanistan who stole his elections in such a manner that the ballots have never been released, we do not even know how many people voted in total the theft was so great in Afghanistan in those elections. He is surrounded by the same warlords drug lords that Hamid Karzai surrounded himself with. The Taliban is stronger than it’s ever been, record numbers of security forces and record numbers of civilians are killed every year. And the only thing that is doing well in Afghanistan is the drug trade, something that the Afghan government is involved in. Every year there are bumper crops of poppies in Afghanistan. So, somehow President Obama thinks that it is worthwhile to continue propping up this government while millions of Afghan people suffer. As I said, tens of thousands, the report is about — a recent report is that about a quarter million Afghans have died since 2001 because of this war. That President Obama somehow thinks it is worth it.
I think, while I don’t want to see Sergeant Bergdahl go to trial because of the toll that will take on him and his family, I would like to see a discussion about this war. I would like to see a more open dialogue about this war. And these platitudes and certitudes that come from our officials that this war was somehow worth it and that somehow we have achieved some level of security from it, I would like to see that debated in a formal setting and possibly, as a friend of mine described it, maybe Sergeant Bergdahl’s trial could turn into some type of Scopes Monkey trial for our foreign policy and our wars overseas.
— source democracynow.org
Matthew Hoh, former Marine and State Department official who resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan over U.S. policy in September 2009. Prior to his assignment in Afghanistan, he served in Iraq. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. Last June he wrote an article for Politico Magazine headlined, “Stop Persecuting Bowe Bergdahl: He and his parents have suffered enough—like all of us veterans.”