Least-Valuable Prisoners

OK, I'll make this quick because it is stupid that it is getting this much attention and heat. Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is likely a deserter.

That said, American soldiers should not have had to give up their lives in trying to rescue him if that is indeed the case (see Reality Check #2). He very likely walked away from a war that he didn't agree with, which is illegal according to the UCMJ, and should be punished in a measured manner for it. However, death is not an appropriate punishment for that crime, according to the UCMJ. Nor were his feelings uncommon with members of the military, then and now.

Republicans are currently shitting kittens because the White House made some backdoor deal with the Taliban to release five Guantanamo prisoners, senior Taliban operatives, in exchange for Bergdahl. Speaker Boehner's usually bright orange skin has taken on a reddish hue in response to this outrage. Let's take a breather and remember a few things.

Reality checks: 

1. Bergdahl is still someone's son. He might be a deserter, but not a traitor as far as we know. Doing what we could to get him back was a lot better than the alternative. The alternative is a YouTube video of a terrorist sawing his head off with a cruelly small blade for the whole world to see. 
2. The soldiers who died trying to find him lived by a code that all American war-fighters live by: no man left behind. Deserter or no, a soldier will not leave an American life to chance.
3. The Taliban members that have been released are "superior officers" only by vacancy promotion. Well-publicized drone strikes, ground action, and covert operations have pretty much dismantled the organizational structure of the group and have left it intact only as a street gang capable of suicide bombings and drive-bys on their own turf. The guys we let go are high-ranking because everyone else is dead. They will be too, most likely, once they're off of house arrest in Qatar. 
4. POW or no, if these Taliban prisoners were worth anything, we've waterboarded it out of them already. If we thought they were still dangerous, we would have not released them and sent in SEAL Team 6 to extract Bergdahl and do some interior decorating for the terrorists holding him. If they can find bin Laden in a country filled with guys who look like bin Laden, they can certainly pin down the bald white guy being led around at gunpoint.

I'm not mad that the President negotiated with terrorists to get an American out of harm's way. If anything, I'm mad that he's touring the Eastern Bloc, touting American support for democracy in the face of the Russian scourge, when we simply let Russia take Crimea from Ukraine without any resistance whatsoever. This was just a couple of months ago! What the hell? How can he even show his face in these appropriately nervous countries and promise to help them fend off annexation and occupation when we have already let it happen without firing a single goddamned shot. Sanctions that will take months or years to actually exert pressure on the Russians? Hell, the commies will already have the USSR back in action by then.

America, we have a long, colorful history of being angry. Most of the time, it serves us well. Today, though, we are letting pundits and politicians use us like puppets and decide for us what we should be mad about. If you're mad about something, don't close out everything else that you should be mad about. If you disagree with me, though, you're just plain wrong. In the end, we just need to prioritize out anger so as not to waste it. 

Let's all relax, take a breath, and be happy that there is one less dead American. If the Taliban would have actually killed this guy, deserter or not, Americans on both sides of the aisle would have gotten all riled up and called for boots on the ground, drones in the sky, carriers in the seas, and fire on the sand to punish the motherfuckers that did it. 

Why is it that when we don't get a martyr, we demand a pariah?