Basing my emotional reaction off of a WaPo story, and off of my own attempts to put myself in the (unimaginable) position of Bowe Bergdahl’s father, I was willing to apportion him some measure of sympathy.  After all, the love I have for my sons would probably lead me to do things that under other circumstances would be unconscionable, if it meant saving them.  However, if as early as 2012, Bergdahl’s father was actively, if only obliquely, pushing him to desert, which it is appearing is what he did, then what we have is just another leftist moron whose selfishness and sanctimony, coupled with his mush-headed, cosmopolitan anti-Americanism, have potentially changed forever the way we are forced to fight wars.

Of course, the upside of that is we may, under the right kind of CinC, fight wars to win them again, and not to posture as compassionate victors.  When attacked, we need to identify our enemy, identify their stooges and enablers, and with cold resolve annihilate them and leave a marker where they fell as a warning to all who might wish to attack us in the future.   Yes. Blow the tops off of mountains.  Turn swathes of land to glass.  Show once and for all that we here haven’t lost our resolve, and no matter the manufactured grievances of countries wishing to scapegoat the US for the misery of their own people, we don’t much care:  attack us unprovoked and we will respond with lethal force of the kind that would make so many international tribunals shriek and weep and rend their garments.

Which, sucks for them.

But that for another day.

Fox News:

Email exchanges between Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and his parents, statements from fellow GIs and a purported letter he left the night he disappeared into the rugged Afghan terrain are painting the picture of a troubled and disillusioned soldier who was “ashamed” to be an American.

While Bergdahl remained at a U.S. military hospital in Germany following a swap for five high-level Taliban members — dubbed a jihadist “Dream Team” — two of Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers told Fox News Channel that the 28-year-old Idaho native willingly walked away from his post in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. Their claims that Bergdahl’s departure from the base was premeditated jibes with emails published in 2012, in which he told his father of his growing disenchantment with the Army’s mission in Afghanistan.

“The future is too good to waste on lies,” Bergdahl wrote his parents. “And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I have seen their ideas and I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.”

Bergdahl’s father, Bob Bergdahl, who learned the Pashto language spoken in much of Afghanistan while his son was held hostage and chanted an Islamic prayer as he stood alongside President Obama for Saturday’s Rose Garden announcement of the deal, wrote back to his son with a subject line in all capital letters: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!” That email, one of several between the Bergdahls revealed in a lengthy 2012 Rolling Stone report, was sent three days before the-then private first class left his post.

Fellow soldiers who remembered Bergdahl as an outsider who studied Rosetta Stone lessons in the native language and talked of hiking to China, told Fox News they believe Bergdahl is a deserter, an offense punishable by death in the military code of justice

(my emphasis)  If it is the case that Bergdahl’s father was in fact some hippy-dippy muddle-headed wannabe 60s throwback, and his encouragement to his son was to follow his feelings rather than attend to his duty and obligations, then yes, I hold him accountable, and I don’t  have the sympathy for his suffering I might otherwise feel.

And in fact, I’d be the first to say that if, upon his return, Bergdahl is found to have abandoned his post and deserted, he should be tried.  And if convicted, he should be hanged — to show that his actions have consequences, in this case, the death of other American soldiers who stayed true to their oath, and the release of barbarous terrorists who, under no convention, are POWs, but are rather unlawful enemy combatants.  That is, terrorists.  Bent on killing more Americans.

The irony of having returned a soldier just to have him executed is not really ironic, at all.  It is in fact justice, if the facts in the emerging stories are correct.  And if we believe in justice, then we do what must be done, despite the price that has been paid.

As for the Obama Administration, should it be shown that they knew Bergdahl deserted — and that his sympathies lay with the enemy — then they are guilty of releasing high ranking enemies of the United States in order to bring home an anti-war fellow traveler.  And that should be grounds for impeachment.

Of course, this means we’ll need another investigation, and Mr Boehner is too busy weeping, tanning, and taking pot shots at teabaggers to do his fucking job.

Watching Obama circumvent them on everything he can’t get them to capitulate to — and watching them take it — has made many of us question the very need for a Congress in the first place.  I mean, if we wanted a bunch of feckless dickheads to lord over us and steal our money, we could just go directly to the Administration and skip the entirely useless middle men.