The Vendetta Against Bowe
Bergdahl
By Patrick Martin
March 30, 2015 "ICH"
- "WSWS"
- 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
yearlong 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.