Based on all we’ve been hearing, I’ve been referring to Bergdahl as a deserter. And until he’s tried, that’s technically his status, I suppose. But if he deserted, then went to join the enemy, he’s a defector.
And if that’s the case, we traded the murdering future rulers of a Taliban-run Afghan nation state, terrorists all, for a US soldier who may have actively helped a terrorist network target his own countrymen. In doing so, we as a country (NOT IN MY NAME!) took a giant shit on the military men and women who honor their obligations and uphold their oaths. And we desecrate the graves of those killed by the medievalist scum we’ve set back into the wilds of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism made manifest in rocky caves and sandy deserts.
Of course, Barry and his aides believe we’re upset about all this because we just don’t like him very much. And because, like, racism (it’s coming any day now, bank on it). But honestly, this has nothing to do with harming President Othinskin’s carefully nurtured and protected esteem. We really do, as American citizens, resent a President, without fully consulting Congress, releasing those intent on murdering Americans for a likely defector who may have helped murder Americans — then expecting to be applauded for it.
All as part of a political plan to improve his poll numbers.
The White House is trying to suggest the soldiers in Bergdahl’s unit who have spoken out against him are trying to “swift boat” a soldier who served with distinction. This, too, is typical of these leftist cowards: they seek to demonize the brave in order to shield their own ineptitude, cowardice, or complicities (depending on where you think the narrative leads).
I’ll say this now: unless Bergdahl was a trained CIA plant who was able to fool his unit, then fool the terrorist group holding him, in order to learn enough about the networks in Afghanistan that need them some obliterating — and the chances that this are the case are exceedingly low, given the makeup of our current leadership structure, who holds many of the same anti-American views as it appears Bergdahl and his father did — the only “distinction” about this guy’s service should be that he’ll be the first traitor in some time to find himself dangling from the end of a rope with a noose around his head.
Time was long lanky guys got nicknamed Stretch. Re-vivify, I say, with a twist. But which long lanky guy? Choices, choices.
As to “any day now”, we can see that the magic-shield media has been as of today fully equipped with all the tools it needs to do the prescribed job, such that any day now turns out to be today.
We really do, as American citizens, resent a President, without fully consulting Congress, releasing those intent on murdering Americans for a likely defector who may have helped murder Americans — then expecting to be applauded for it.
Ah, but we have a new paradigm in America, though one perhaps not widely discerned.
This new paradigm can be seen in another proportion in the formula a:b1::b2:c, where a is The Duchy of Grand Fenwick, b1 is the UnitedStates1959, b2 is the UnitedStates2009, and c is the SoftServeJihadiFive.
This jug-eared, shake-weight using motherfucker better learn, and quick, that Sergeants in the US Army are NOT “kids”. Even if they do decide to take their ball and go home.
I think the word you’re looking for Jeff is collaborator, not defector.
Traitor seems to cover all the bases too.
In Obama’s Mer Rika, everybody on somebody else’s insurance plan is a kid regardless of how old they are.
Makes the boomers feel better ’bout never growing up, you see.
So concerning WithHonorAndDistinctionBowe we have had to date [non-exhaustive list follows]:
language-student, dustwan, awol, missing/status unknown, seeker, despiser-of-own-nation, missing/status captive, PoW, absolutely-not-PoW, hostage, freeman-RoseGarden-object-of-praise-and-celebration, sickly, drugged, life-threatened, unconditional’MericanSoldier, deserter, defector, proximate-cause-of-fellow-soldier’s-deaths-and-injuries, potential-collaborator, healthy, held-incommunicado-in-medical-treatment, traitor, (perStateDept.SpokesTool): better-knower-than-fellow-soldiers, (perObaZmaAdmin.Booster): fleer-from-psychopaths, hometown-source-of-joy-and-celebration, hometown-source-of-shame-and-celebrationcancellation, soon-to-be-courtsmartialed-defendant, never-to-be-courtsmartialed-swept-under-rug-recipient-of-politicallydetermined-gift, and . . . oy, whoof.
Okay, Super Special Agent Bergdahl, your mission is to walk away from your post and hook up with the nearest Taliban unit and ingratiate yourself with its people. Sure, they may execute you on the spot, torture you, or hold you in captivity for the rest of your life. It’s doubtful that you’ll be able to glean much usable intelligence and even if you do, you probably won’t be able to communicate it to us, but…well, you never know. Good luck!
I’m with Ernst. “Defector” implies that he was changing national allegiances (like Lee Harvey Oswald did), and since the Taliban is not a nationality, it would be “collaborator” or (since he gave aid and/or comfort to the enemies of the United States) “traitor”, although a treason conviction requires two witnesses to an overt act, and the only witnesses to those acts are “unindicted co-conspirators”.
“Prisoner of War” is defined by the Geneva Conventions, and since the Taliban does not qualify, even under the most generous of definitions, he couldn’t be that, either, any more than Benedict Arnold was a POW held by His Majesty’s redcoats.
Next question is “Does the President’s Pardon power extend to the UCMJ?”
Which I’d lurve to see the MSM enablers spin that one away…
At least acquire a decent recipe for goat pilaf before you break off contact, AgentWithHonorAndDistinctionBowe.
Again, I’d like to emphasize that the Swift Boaters were telling the truth.
I also want to know whether he was held by the Taliban (who would have beheaded him on general principle) or the Haqqanis, who were more mafiosos than Islamists and so would have little to gain by demanding the release of the Taliban Generals.
Haqqani.
So now we can add to the list:
Convert, warrior for Islam, lions and tigers and bears
Oh my.
Brother Juan is one The Five opining that Taliban Bowe was “tortured” and “held in a cage”. Bull.Shit.
As to the “kid” language, my eldest was 18 when he joined the USN and took issue with being called a “kid.” Slacker Bowe is nearly 30.
Barack Hussein Obama hates all you miserable fuck Americans. Get over it.
We hate him back. So, I guess we’re even.
Nope, not even. What he enacts, like language, matters: power, see?
Whereas the return hatred is perfectly impotent. Because, fuck you, Americans.
*sigh* We’re fucked.
Hey, now — I have a pen and a phone! And I know how to use at least one of them!
So my return hatred, it does nothing?
Hello, Walmart? I need to return my White Privilege™. It’s defective.
Quite a day today, this June5 day before D-Day.
Is this June5 ever to rival in its own magnitude for infamy the magnitude of nobility in that high-honored day we know in our anniversary tomorrow, on some new day to come, once this story is written to history in years far off?
No, certainly not. Right? Certainly not.
speaking of june 5
The Passing of a Conservative
I miss Ron.
Jeff wrote: …We really do, as American citizens, resent a President, without fully consulting Congress, releasing those intent on murdering Americans for a likely defector who may have helped murder Americans — then expecting to be applauded for it.
Andrew McCarthy in a recent interview with The London Daily Mail:
Mr. McCarthy has convinced me.
Forgot the link:
http://thecampofthesaints.org/2014/06/02/impeachment-food-for-thought/
Apologies.
Confirmation or slip of the tongue? My bold.
Greetings:
For a while now, the “Leave No Man Behind” (LNMB) concept has been a bit of a burr under my cerebral saddle. It seems to have a great deal of resonance, especially with military and former military webizens.
Recently, I re-read Mark Bowden’s “Black Hawk Down” about the “Battle of the Black Sea” in Mogadishu, Somalia in the early part of President Clinton’s first term and that reading brought forward in what’s left of my mind a concern about what’s involved in that concept and its implications for today’s soldiers.
Admittedly, it has been a long time since my military service. That was back when the draft didn’t have anything to do with ventilation. So, I have no direct experience of today’s volunteer military. But, be that as it may, I am concerned that LNMB seems to be progressing from a mantra to something approaching a fetish and I worry about its impact on our troops.
When I went off to see what kind of an infantryman I could be, dying wasn’t my largest fear. My father had survived his infantry stint in WW II and I fancied myself as good a man as he. And, as a twenty year old, my sense of mortality was in its earliest stage of development. My greatest fear, by far, was being crippled. Secondarily, it was failing in my duties. Subsequently, when I became a squad leader, which was somewhat after I was made a squad leader, I bumped up against the LNMB concept big time. And it’s the resonance of that emotional experience that has me concerned.
Even at the mantra end of the spectrum, LNMB seems so terse as to be almost mindless. I have to wonder if there is some super-secret calculus that I failed to apprehend. I mean, are our troops all committed to dying lest one get left behind? While “Black Hawk Down” may be the exception rather than the rule, my take on it is that its “Lost Convoy” is an adequate example as to how very wrong military thinking can go when it is overly influenced by such
thinking.
(For those unfamiliar with “Black Hawk Down”, the “Lost Convoy” was supposed to remove the American soldiers from Mogadishu after their raid. When the first Black Hawk was shot down, the convoy was diverted to the crash site and was exposed to heavy enemy fire while trying to follow radio directions. It ended up returning to base without ever reaching the crash site but with very heavy casualties.)
At the other end of the spectrum and in spite of all the technology, efforts, and bravery, American soldiers were tragically left behind at the second helicopter crash site.
Thus, the crux of my concern, has LNMB become some kind of unit fetish as opposed to say, and this will sound trite, an organizational goal? Has it become a too easy answer to too difficult problems? Are we setting our soldiers up for failure or worse by allowing LNMB too much of their and their superiors mindshare. Hopefully, nobody wants to leave anyone behind but isn’t more complex thinking better than relying on slogans?
I think that I understand the usefulness of LNMB as a tool. But sometimes people take an idea way too far. Our military routinely classifies casualties as killed, wounded, or missing, the proverbial KIAs, WIAs, and MIAs. No one of any military intelligence or experience would stand up and pronounce “Let no man be killed.” or “Let no man be wounded.” because those events are not under anything approaching adequate control. And believe me, I know that fear of abandonment does not usually contribute to mission accomplishment. But soldiers do get lost, confused, or even vaporized and investing more military assets in their recovery is not a risk-free endeavor. Subscription to a terse mantra is not the best of reasons.
chamber of crony commerce news
Diana F. Cantor
Member, Advisory Board
11B40: I wonder if the reason LNMB has become a fetish is because of the kind of Enemy we are facing – the Jihadist – who, unlike so many of Enemies of the past, murders our troops in vile ways and treats their dead bodies in vile ways.
We’ve had similar experiences with many enemies since before this was a nation even. The French & Indian Wars were nasty. WWII in the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam were too. The main difference is now we get video, on Youtube, so everyone sees it.
Good point, GeoffB.
Perhaps this fetish is the result of something in the current Culture.
Marie Harf, one of the spokespeople at the State Department, for the first time said something on the record that I had been hearing on background and off the record is, “We had to get something for these guys because we were eventually going to have to release them anyway.”
Not only has our godlike administration, perilously close to declaring itself a divinity, freed sworn enemies to recover a stocking full of shit that likely committed treason, but this same heavenly administration has the wisdom to hire goggle-eyed valley girls for spokeslackeys who are too fascinated with media attention or too busy giving head to their employers, that they spill the inconvenient beans.
If we had to get something in exchange for these guys, why not Afghan saffron or even a few sacks of decent opium? You could sell those at least. Bergdahl is just soiling a hospital bed and sucking up oxygen. He would do better as a weight for stretching rope.
We couldn’t have left Mujahid Bergdahl behind. He left us.
If we had to get something in exchange for these guys, why not Afghan saffron or even a few sacks of decent opium? You could sell those at least.
How about a few tons of chromite? win-win
Greetings, Bob Belvedere: (@ June 5, 2014 at 6:25 pm and at 6:53 pm)
The thing that disturbed me most about President Obama’s recent LNMB performance is that in our military culture when the Commander in Chief pronounces, our genuflecting generals commence to passing the pronouncement along to their colonels who pass it along to their majors who pass it along to their lieutenants who pass it along to their sergeants, and so forth.
One of the reasons that I attribute to the military’s embrace of the miracle of the all volunteer army is that there is probably a good deal less talking back than when draftees were out and about. During my all expense paid tour with an infantry company in sunny Southeast Asia, there was a bit of folk-wisdom that went, “What are going to do? Put me in jail?”
Not that what “GeoffB” points out isn’t accurate. Growing up with Fenimore Cooper left me wondering about my personal efficacy in those knife and tomahawk days. And my fear of intimacy has left me with rather severe cases of both bayonetophobia and kitchenophobia. But, bottom line, I think its the mindless repetition of the expression by people who should know better as much as anything else.
If by “LNMB” you mean that we will do everything, move heaven and earth, to bring back everyone alive, then yes, that would be new.
There is and has always been the commitment to do what we can to bring back our soldiers alive if possible but at least their remains to be buried properly with respect.
I think the new thing that has led us there is the internet and the ease of videoing the horrors visited on the captured. That publicity is part of terrorism too and is designed to get the response that we do now. and to encourage the enemies followers to do more.
amb. stevens who was cic baracky’s rep in a war zone was unavailable for comment.
also this
So, Why Not Get Four Deserving Civilian Hostages Out of Taliban Hands, Too?
Yes, it does.
language matters via insty
Fascinating how Obama recasts Bergdahl as a “child.” Uses word four times to describe him.
Bergdahl Platoon Mates: Obama Administration “Spit in the Face” of Everyone in the Military (Video)
Heard Odumbo call Bergdahl a “prisoner of war”
Seeing how the Army never classified him as such, I guess his authority is also immune to the time-space continuum.
I’m a straight-up civilian puke who holds his manhood cheap upon St. Crispin’s day, and Memorial Day too, out of respect for those better than I. So I admit I’m not in any kind of position to opine on LNMB authoritatively.
That, said, it seems to me that newrouter raises a good point. Which incident leaves the more sour feeling in your mouth and in your gut, Mogadishu or Benghazi?
As a student of history, the thing I marvel at, particularly on this, the 70th anniversary of D-Day (as I type, 11:9 pm CDT, it’s 6:19 am in Normady, which means the 82 & 101 have been in combat for about, what? for or five hours, give or take, and that the first wave to hit Omaha is getting machine-gunned and mortared to death on the beach.) Is that we’ve become so technologically adept at killing the enemy before he can kill us, that we can literally afford to send a detail to personally notify the families of those killed in action. The loved onese of those men dying at this hour, and in the hours to come, wouldn’t get the news of this tremendous, hardly comprehensible (today) sacrifice for human freedom for six weeks. And then only via Western Union.
So it seems to me from the comfort of my cheap Shopko desk chair, that LNMB is only even possible because we are in fact, so good at making the other poor dumb bastard die. And that, like our expectation of manageably low casualties is part of the reason why we’ve found it so hard to find the will to finish the job once we’ve started.
We’ve forgotten how to take a knock-down punch and get back up again.
-Your reply makes a boatload of sense, 11B40 – thank you.
-As does yours, Ernst.
-And your second one, Geoff.
Because I didn’t want to crap on Darleen’s D-Day thread, my outrage meter hit 11! when I heard part of Obama’s speechifying in France. The part of the speech I heard was where Obama extolled the bravery of men who fought and died on D-Day. How the veterans “fought for the freedoms we currently enjoy.” (I’m paraphrasing. The gall of that jackass and his clueless coterie of sycophants, especially with their recent actions in regards to Taliban leaders released from Guatanomo in exchange for a traitor.
RichardCranium says June 5, 2014 at 7:32 pm
Next question is “Does the President’s Pardon power extend to the UCMJ?”
Yes, it does.
Then let him exercise that power, and explain it away. Or not, and leave the issue hanging. That ought to go over splendiferously, especially during the busy part of an election cycle.
Here’s the Pansy-In-Chief’s D-Day speechifying:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/06/remarks-president-obama-70th-anniversary-d-day-omaha-beach-normandy
It’s long.
It ends:
[altered to reflect Reality]
Oh, the “racist” thing has already started.
And they get to add “The War On Womenz!” thing to it, too.
“I’m not here to suggest it’s because she’s a woman or a minority or what it is,” the official continues. “But other principals in the national-security team don’t come under this kind of attack.”
http://time.com/2822696/susan-rice-bowe-bergdahl/
“But other principals in the national-security team don’t come under this kind of attack.”
Former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Condoleezza “Aunt Jemima” Rice could not be reached for comment.