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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: SGT. BERGDAHL AND THE FOG OF WAR by June 4, 2014 The “fog of war” is a reference to the moral chaos on the battlefield as well as the rampant confusion. Individuals kill others for no other reason than that they are ordered to. Things deemed unambiguously bad in civilian life are authorized and even lauded in war. The killing and maiming of acknowledged innocents — in particular children and the elderly — is excused as “collateral damage.” No wonder that some individuals thrust into this morass sometimes act differently from how soldiers behave in romantic war movies. The hell of war is internal as well as external. We might remember this as the story of Sgt. Bowe Robert Bergdahl unfolds. Bergdahl volunteered for the U.S. military and was apparently a gung-ho soldier. Americans have not been conscripted since 1973, but young Americans are propagandized from childhood with the message that time in the military is service to their country. Few question this narrative; fewer seek rebuttals to it. You have to want to face the facts that governments lie and that the service is to an empire having nothing to do with Americans’ security. This, however, doesn’t relieve military personnel of responsibility for their own conduct. In 1951 — while Americans were fighting in Korea — Leonard E. Read, one of the founders of the modern libertarian movement, published “Conscience on the Battlefield,” in which a dying American soldier hears his conscience say that he — not the army or government — bears responsibility for his deadly conduct: “Does not the fault inhere in your not recognizing that the consequences of your actions are irrevocably yours…?” Bergdahl seems to have been plagued by this question. (See Michael Hastings’s revealing 2012 article.) In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a regime that used war to keep its population too frightened to ask questions and in which the enemy could change without notice. Orwell may have exaggerated, but not by much. The United States sided with one Afghan faction against the Soviets and their Afghan allies in the 1980s, then switched when it replaced the Soviets as invaders in 2001. On the surface, the war in Afghanistan seems easy to understand. The Taliban government gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, which attacked American targets in the 1990s and on September 11, 2001. But things are not so simple. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the U.S. government sided with the future Taliban and al-Qaeda. President Reagan called the Afghan mujahideen “freedom fighters,” subsidized their war, and hosted them at the White House. After the Soviet exit and years of civil war, the Taliban became the brutal theocratic government of Afghanistan, but not an anti-American terrorist organization. Indeed, as late as May 2001, President George W. Bush was helping the Taliban suppress opium production. After 9/11, the Taliban made various offers to surrender or expel bin Laden, but the Bush administration was uninterested. (This lack of interest predated 9/11.) Taliban attacks on American military targets since the U.S. invasion should not be construed as terrorism, but rather as combat between former government officials and the foreign force that overthrew them. Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes, points out that soon after American forces invaded Afghanistan, “there was no enemy to fight”: By mid-2002 there was no insurgency in Afghanistan: al-Qaeda had fled the country and the Taliban had ceased to exist as a military movement. Jalaluddin Haqqani [whose “network” held Bergdahl captive] and other top Taliban figures were reaching out to the other side in an attempt to cut a deal and lay down their arms. But, Gopal writes, “driven by the idée fixe that the world was rigidly divided into terrorist and non-terrorist camps, Washington allied with Afghan warlords and strongmen. Their enemies became ours, and through faulty intelligence, their feuds became repackaged as ‘counterterrorism.’” When Haqqani, a celebrated freedom fighter during the Soviet war, turned down a deal from the Americans because it included detention, the U.S. military attacked his home province and other areas, killing his brother-in-law and innocent children. If he wasn’t with the Americans, he was against them, and therefore it was open season. In this whirlwind of cynicism and relativism, can anyone be blamed for wondering what the point of the war was? Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 10.
#2. To: Ada, armchair warriors (#0)
After this point, the author strayed from his desired path. Non grunts, never were grunts, must accept the underlying foundation of military AUTHORITY. This authority is written in typical legal language that needs translation. Namely a grunts job in total is very simple, do battle, kill or be killed, AND IF YOU DISOBEY, WE WILL KILL YOU. Regardless of how one becomes a grunt that pressure is always there. The author failed, as most people do, to describe the social status of the majority of grunts, whether conscripts or volunteers. That part seems to embarrass too many people, so we describe them as being stupid, social misfits, on and on.
Bergdahl is not a grunt. He's an officer, a Sgt. Will this change your opinion of him?
Bergdahl is enlisted, he didn't receive a commission from Congress that made him an officer. Point of reference.
He received promotions while he was in captivity. Dear Kenyan Leader referred to Bergdahl as "an officer" in his Rose Garden speech. Maybe He used an Executive Order to make Bergdahl an "officer?" Who needs Congress when you can use an Executive Order instead?
Obongo is an idiot, he can barely distinguish night from day. You can call Bergdahl a non-commissioned officer due to his new rank of sgt., but he's not a commissioned officer. There's a huge difference between the two, and any commissioned officer will point that out in a heartbeat.
Thanks for the explanation.
There are no replies to Comment # 10. End Trace Mode for Comment # 10.
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