Posted on 06/12/2014 2:30:52 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
‘Was He Worth It?” blared the cover of Time magazine, as if that should be the question Americans ask in light of the release of Bowe Bergdahl after five years of brutal captivity by the Taliban.
No, the question we should be asking is a version of the one Pope Francis made famous in a different context: “Who Are We To Judge?”
Who are we, in the safety of our civilian homes, to judge whether an American soldier captured overseas is worthy of rescue? Who are we to decide whether, somehow, the fact that he was imprisoned for so many years was his fault?
The American public’s reaction to the Bergdahl swap is both stunning and dismaying. Yes, the White House could have handled this more deftly, should have informed those members of Congress who see it as their right to know such things, should have anticipated questions about the constitutionality of releasing prisoners from detention in Guantanamo Bay, and after all these years of ruthless Republican attacks, should have done more to try to minimize the potential damage in advance.
But we’re talking optics here, and courtesies, which are important but not fundamental. What’s fundamental should be the rock-solid belief that American soldiers are to be rescued without judgment, that they should be brought home and dealt with on our soil, not the enemy’s, whatever the circumstances. We redeem our captives.
That’s what Israel does. The contrast between the Israeli public’s reaction to even more lopsided deals with terrorists and what’s occurred here says a lot about who we are and what is missing in our collective sense of self.
This is, in part, because Israel has a military in which most of its citizens participate. America does not.
The obvious comparison with Bergdahl is Gilad Shalit, the Israel Defense Forces soldier also held for five years by a terrorist organization, whose release in 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 really bad guys set off waves of anguished debate in Israel. The debate, however, was about the deal. It wasn’t about whether the State of Israel should redeem Shalit. And even as the debate raged in the political sphere, 78% of the public supported Shalit’s freedom in varying degrees, whereas a plurality of Americans told one poll that the prisoner exchange for Bergdahl was the wrong thing to do. Period.
Why? As the Forward said in an editorial at the time, Shalit was “everyone’s son.” Nearly everyone in Israel participates in the military, and so nearly every mother and father could identify with Shalit’s long-suffering, loudly determined parents.
Yes, Shalit was defending his homeland while Bergdahl was fighting in a faraway land for a confusing, ill-defined reason. But it’s very possible that if we had compulsory military and community service, if every member of Congress and every leader in the White House with an 18-year-old could potentially see his or her child off to war, we’d be in a lot fewer confusing, ill-defined military campaigns.
And we would have a vehicle to forge national identity, which we desperately need in our increasingly atomized, narcissistic American culture. Mark Silk, a professor of religion at Trinity College, in a blog post for Religion News Service, noted the long, ignoble tradition in this country of designating certain people or groups “un-American” — immigrants in the 19th century, leftists in the 20th century, Muslims in our century. Now even Bowe Bergdahl, home-schooled in Idaho, as all-American as one can get — or so we thought — is considered not American enough to be rescued.
As the conservative commentator Ann Coulter had the nerve to ask: “Why are we doing anything to get this guy back? He’s ashamed to be an American.” As Silk explained, “The metaphysics of Americanism say that we get back our own only when they deserve it. If they don’t deserve it, they’re not our own.”
But those who voluntarily don American military uniforms are our own. They should not be judged, nor should they be abandoned.
Who wrote this sh*t?
Gene from new Jersey?
The heavily drugged and mentally challenged editors at “The Jewish Daily Forward”.
The editors were so brave to write it that they won’t put their names to it.
He is not me.
Very good post. (and thank you for your service)
Your point about moral relativism (one choice is as good as another, they are all personal and for one person to decide whether it is good or not) is spot on.
We are endowed by God with a sense of right and wrong, and when we deviate from that for our own purposes, it is weakness and sometimes evil.
I went into a Universalist “church” once for a craft fair, and there were a lot of things indicating activities for children. A sign, aimed at teenagers said “Nobody can tell you what is right and wrong. That is for you to decide, and only you.”
I looked at it, and turned it over and thought “My God. What a thing to tell a child!”
We had to get him back to try, and subsequently, kill him for treason.
Private Eddie Slovik.
We shouldn’t judge? That is all the libs do. If they didn’t judge there would be no way for them to “feel” superior.
When I was in Israel I met a surprising number of young people who avoided military service due to religious reasons. One woman made it sound like that 100% service requirement was more like a PR campaign for outsiders than a fact of life.
Ping to post 19.
Poster doesn’t seem to know who posted posts 1 and 2, so he posted this to me instead.
Hmm..
I wonder if Israel would have swapped Hitler, Himmler,Goebbels,Hess for one prisoner?
These left-wing newsprint, TV and internet rags don't even need instructions from on high....they know exactly what to do and how to do it. They work in tandem as the designated arm of the Demonrat Party and of the Obama thugocracy.
Across the country this left-wing media dutifully heeds the call when its master's trumpet sounds. Today, the mission is to whitewash the Bergdahl treason. The propaganda effort may be overt or subtle, but it will be massive. The above article is but one example.
Always remember, the enemies of freedom are within our gates...and busily practicing their craft on us, i.e., media spin, dissimulation, deception, subversion, lying and distortion of facts.
Leni
“History
The Forward is a legendary name in American journalism and a revered institution in American Jewish life. Launched as a Yiddish-language daily newspaper on April 22, 1897, the Forward entered the din of New York’s immigrant press as a defender of trade unionism and moderate, democratic socialism.”
This is a communist website, masquerading as a Jewish one — with a name like “Forward” and their own admission. So this article shouldn’t be a surprise...
“We are all Bowe Bergdahl now...”. Embrace the shame, America. /s
With this Iraq fiasco, I wonder what trick Zer0 will use to distract us from his ineptness. Maybe he will pull Malaysian Flight 370 out of the hat with all the passengers alive and make the world so thankful to der Zer0.
Haqqani commander is quoted as saying Bergdahl DID NOT convert to Islam.
Also the “military source” that initially reported the conversion, also reported at the same time that it was part of Bergdahl’s plan to gain an opportunity to escape. He gained his guards trust until he was rewarded with enough freedom to slip away from them. He was captured three days later.
Great post!
My Dad flew in 3 wars, dying in the third. I’ve flown combat over Iraq and did a ground tour in Afghanistan. My SIL did 2 tours in Marine Infantry in Fallujah. My daughter did a tour in Iraq with the Marines. My son has done 2 tours, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Both of my nieces are married to men who have done tours in Iraq. My only nephew is in Afghanistan now.
So yeah, I feel free to judge someone whose behavior was totally unacceptable. I feel free to say we could have left him to die in Afghanistan because anyone who deserts is...well, a DESERTER. The penalty for that can be death.
And when I was in Afghanistan in 2007, I never met ANYONE who didn’t understand what might happen if you fell into the hands of the enemy. None of us sought it out. Most of us planned to keep a few rounds left to shoot ourselves if we were about to be captured, per Kipling:
“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.”
And if Bergdahl wanted to ‘go to his Gawd like a deserter’, then I’m willing to let him.
Lets put this in perspective. I have no problem with sending in the special forces extraction team to get anybody back. Trading 5 high value terrorists for them is a different story. Very freaking different.
Lovely sources. Never mind Haqqani taqiyyah.
2 for 2--you're batting 1.000!
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