Bergdahl swap (How was this not posted yet?)

[Nephlite]

Lot's of deciphering to do with the whole damn issue. Too much garbage to sift through to figure out what is propaganda and what is real.

Going off of what some of his squad was saying, if he really did have issues with desertion or if they claimed he walked off, then I'm going with their accounts over second-hand information that can be used for political game. However, some of the guys didn't actually serve with Bowe and probably never even met the guy. From what I've read on reddit and hardline, most of the so called "reports" of his desertion are fabricated and most of them contain go-words used in investigative reports and hold no real weight for the actual facts of the investigation.

Most of the guys saying he was malcontent and openly expressed his disdain for the mission are hypocrites. Everyone bitches about something. It's not a secret that the whole war wasn't popular among the soldiers and the citizens, but it was a job. Everyone bitches about their job. People who say they don't are liars. When you're sitting days on end waiting for shit to happen or you have to constantly hunch in a makeshift bunker because you're being harassed by sniper fire 24/7, you'll get a bit pissed off too. Or watch your buddies get killed beside you on a regular basis and feel there's no end or resolution in sight for this supposed "job" you were assigned to do, then you'll get a bit malcontent as well.

I was in for a bit as a grunt before I went to OCS and I have to say, if there's an issue with a CO or you feel the CO isn't cutting the grain the right way, you bet your ass that E5 or above is getting his shit pushed towards a reassignment, if not busted out of rank. You are built to tolerate a certain amount of crap, especially bitching and complaining about stuff you have to do. But your CO's actions directly influence the productivity of the unit. If you're lazy, bitch too much, don't pull your weight, constantly push assignments off your plate on to other people (designating work) without putting in your own work, then you don't deserve the stripes. While I might agree with the mindset behind your bitching and moaning, I still have to follow your orders and I still take a certain amount of pride in doing my job. You mess up? It makes me less productive, which makes my comrades less productive, and THEN we get shotgunned for failures as a squad, which causes mass in-fighting and can get people killed.

I think the prisoners we released was more of a "Look, we'll give you these guys, just leave us alone" thing. If the U.S. is looking for a total withdraw of all forces and washing our hands of the whole incident, then you have to go the extra mile as an act of good faith to let them know we want no part of it. The Taliban will continue to fight, and the Afghanistan government will continue to resist them until one or both sides are completely wiped out. That's a problem they have to solve on their own, and I think those who questioned our involvement and push for "We need to solve our own problems and not get involved in other countries bullshit", yet question this tactic of releasing prisoners and suddenly say "But aren't they dangerous terrorists?!" need to wake the hell up and decide what they really want us to do.

I get it. I wanted nothing more than to bring swift justice to the terrorists and those involved who flew those planes in to our buildings. Once they were all dead or the cells were disrupted because of key captures, we should have pulled out. Instead we got pulled in to a much bigger war and much bigger incident than we were prepared to lock ourselves in to. Obama is pushing for the withdraw because he knows we can't keep it up indefinitely and we have a lot more things to worry about. With nuclear war looming on the borders of North Korea, Russia doing... whatever they're doing, and our allies being attacked by everyone and everything, everyone is turning to the U.S. for aid because that's what we do. We're stretched too thin and running out of resources. It's time to regroup, rebuild, and get ourselves back on track before we run ourselves dry and leave us open for someone else to come in and bang us.

[Tymon]

I have two separate opinions here, one on the general concept of what happened and then another on this specific instance.

I might catch flack for the general opinion but whatever. If you sign up for the military to serve on a battlefield you should expect not to come back. You're signing up to protect your country from a threat, whatever that threat is. The military doctrine says such. Thus, if you have a "POW" (assuming you can even call him a POW, since this is hardly a conventional war and the Geneva convention went out a long time ago with the Taliban) and have this kind of situation I can't see how you can justify a 1:5 trade.

Now, I actually think the government is going to follow that line of thinking somewhat. If the 5 men released were actually high danger targets that would present an imminent threat to the military or US citizens, they would not be walking. Period. These guys are obviously not of a high concern. Thus, it's a situational issue, and my above opinion is largely irrelevant.

[mightyg]

You can put that entire burden on an individual soldier if you want. But the reality is our country knowingly recruits young and dumb out of necessity. It's a shitty thing, but that's reality. War is unethical. Our government knew and knows that situations with soldiers going AWOL are inevitable in war, just like that soldier that lost it and shot up a bunch of Afghan families. We didn't throw that guy to the dogs either. These opportunities aren't always possible, so we need to take advantage of them when we get em. He was our last soldier in captivity in Afghanistan. Obama is the commander in chief after all, and it was his call to start withdrawing troops. This chance probably wasn't going to get much better. I'm sure Obama knew he'd get shit for this, but he did the right thing anyways. Even the damn press conference he held was a turd sandwich. If he hadn't done one he'd of probably gotten shit for making the tradeoff look politically inconvenient, further shaming the soldier and his family. Meanwhile we have the flag waving "Patriots" in the RNC throwing this Soldier under the bus. Shit even Charles Krauthammer couldn't stomach jumping on the bandwagon. I literally almost choked on my food when I heard this on my lunch break. It was like Hell freezing over.

[archibaldcrane]

Wow Krauthamer. That is...surprising.

O'Reilly's response looks pretty bad in comparison.

[ronin sparthos]

O'Reilly>> One of my viewers said this swap is like back in World War II swapping Patton, Oswald and Bradley for Sgt. Schultz.

Ugh, I hate you all.

[Blubbartron]

Why can't we require television programs to have labels or symbols that indicate how poisonous and harmful they are? Worked for cigarettes and caustic cleaning chemicals, certainly it would work for protecting people from Fox News.

[quannum]

the average age of viewers of oreilly's show is 71 years old

fn in general is 68

[notorious bum]

I take great joy to point this statistic out anytime I meet some young cracker talking about what they heard on Fox lol "That's a pretty bad way to start a conversation."

[Xno Kappa]

A lot of these little bumfuck COP's and FOB's aren't entirely self-contained and you essentially have to walk out the wire just to take a shit. Bases in RC-South are notorious for this.

[6souls]

The judge in the Bowe Bergdahl trial is considering a lesser sentence because Trump called for the death penalty in his case.

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/1...r-leaving-post

No prison, dishonorable discharge, $10k fine

Thanks Trump

[Ragnus]

Pfft. Good luck paying off that $10k fine when you can't get a job anywhere.

[Day]

My right wing twitter account feed is not very happy about this boys

[Zealot]

Don't really understand the justification for no jail time, man deserted his post.

[dasva]

Don't really understand the justification for no jail time, man deserted his post.

Naw we just outsourced the jail time to the Taliban already

[Day]

Yeah I don't get it either, traded terrorists for him, didn't we lose some soldiers looking for him too? Or were they just injured? Seems fucked he didn't get at least 5 years.

[EternityEnd]

Yeah I don't get it either, traded terrorists for him, didn't we lose some soldiers looking for him too? Or were they just injured? Seems fucked he didn't get at least 5 years.

From my understanding, despite Flynn's insistence otherwise, the official investigation concluded that there was no definitive proof that any of the 6 deaths were related to the search for Bergdahl.

It's a complicated issue, because many missions at the time were greenlit under the false pretense of looking for Bergdahl, as people knew his search was high priority and thus easily piggy-backed.

That said, frankly, I think it would be a miscarriage of justice to liberate him from the Taliban's torture and imprisonment, only to jail him here. Our judicial system (and military judicial system) should be above seeking vindictive cruelty out of an emotional response.

Regardless, he'll undoubtedly not have a very good life going forward, if only because of societal scorn.

[archibaldcrane]

Trump has a really poor record of getting people he wants executed executed.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Zealot]

It's almost like those tasked with doling out justice don't appreciate having their authority hijacked by an angry old man on Twitter.

[dasva]

Trump has a really poor record of getting people he wants executed executed.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Should've gotten Killary to do it . Oh man that would be a great troll for those that believe that stuff.

[Fiye]

That said, frankly, I think it would be a miscarriage of justice to liberate him from the Taliban's torture and imprisonment, only to jail him here. Our judicial system (and military judicial system) should be above seeking vindictive cruelty out of an emotional response.

Regardless, he'll undoubtedly not have a very good life going forward, if only because of society scorn.

My feelings exactly.