Bergdahl To Be Tried For Desertion In The Face Of The Enemy
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Bergdahl To Be Tried For Desertion In The Face Of The Enemy
At long last, the US Army has decided to Court-martial Bowe Bergdahl for Desertion.
After his being traded for Five Taliban Leaders held in Gitmo....Obama's National Security Advisor stated Bergdahl had served with "Distinction".
Some of those traded have returned to senior positions with Al Qaeda according to Intelligence Reports.
Later investigation confirmed Obama violated Federal Law in making the Swap.
The General who made the Decision to order the Trial knew his Career was over when he made that decision as it flies in the face of how the Obama Administration wanted this to play out.
After his being traded for Five Taliban Leaders held in Gitmo....Obama's National Security Advisor stated Bergdahl had served with "Distinction".
Some of those traded have returned to senior positions with Al Qaeda according to Intelligence Reports.
Later investigation confirmed Obama violated Federal Law in making the Swap.
The General who made the Decision to order the Trial knew his Career was over when he made that decision as it flies in the face of how the Obama Administration wanted this to play out.
As indicated, the good General's life is as uncertain as is the traitors. Pretty sure however the General will land on his feet while the traitors may learn prison justice.
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Should a Republican such as Ted Cruz win the Presidency the Good General shall certainly find himself with all the support he needs. The one thing Cruz is....is one hell of a Lawyer who understands the American Judicial System and how to argue Cases before the US Supreme Court.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Not knowing the detail or emotions, a courts marital would not be improper allowing the accused to receive a fair hearing and a proper verdict.
It is not a case "March in the guilty traitor" though I wonder about that beard.
It is not a case "March in the guilty traitor" though I wonder about that beard.
The "beard" is the perpetrator's father, a converted muslim of course.
The "enraptured female" is the perp's mother - and she is dreaming of Obumma, as she no longer dreams of the guy with the beard.
The "enraptured female" is the perp's mother - and she is dreaming of Obumma, as she no longer dreams of the guy with the beard.
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Noah Feldman: Why Bowe Bergdahl faces a charge worse than desertion
U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl deserted his post in Afghanistan in 2009 — there isn’t much doubt about that. But the charge of desertion isn’t the reason he faces life imprisonment in his court-martial, announced Monday by the commanding officer at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum punishment for desertion is five years. The potential life sentence comes from a now-obscure charge with origins in the articles of war enacted by the Continental Congress on Sept. 20, 1776: the charge of misbehavior before the enemy.
What, exactly, is this crime of misbehavior — and should it be applied to Bergdahl? The story begins before the creation of the United States, with the early history of formal military regulations issued by the British crown for its soldiers. Known as “articles of war,” the British regulations of 1762 stated that “whatsoever Officer or Soldier shall misbehave himself before the Enemy, or shamefully abandon any Post committed to his Charge, or shall speak Words inducing others to do the like, shall suffer Death.”
When the U.S. declared independence from Britain and the Revolutionary War began, Congress needed regulations of its own in a hurry. It therefore did what most new governments do: It copied and pasted from the British model. Today’s UCMJ Article 99, “Misbehavior before the enemy,” is the direct descendant of that provision, which makes it a crime for any member of the armed forces “before or in the presence of the enemy” to run away, abandon any place he or she has a “duty to defend,” commit “cowardly conduct,” or perform other wrongful acts.
As late as World War II, the charge was apparently used frequently against combat soldiers who fled or otherwise displayed cowardice. In the long war that began on Sept. 11, 2001, desertion charges have been frequent, but the misbehavior charge has been extremely rare, used in only a handful of instances.
There’s something positively archaic about criminalizing fear, as the brilliant (and brilliantly quirky) Bill Miller of the University of Michigan Law School noted in 2000 in one of the very few contemporary academic articles about the misbehavior crime: “Making cowardice a capital offense strikes us as a kind of barbaric survival from a rougher age.” We no longer think that pure fear in the face of combat should be harshly punished.
What’s more, today’s warfare is increasingly far away from the style that lasted through World War II and beyond, in which large numbers of troops had to move forward in unison with little or no covering fire. Under those circumstances, one soldier’s panicked flight could be infectious, spreading to other soldiers and thwarting a charge. That danger gave particularly strong reason to punish the misbehavior of fleeing before the enemy. Arguably, it’s less of a concern today, which may help explain the declining use of the charge.
But there’s a plausible reason to keep the charge on the books and even use it: the fact that the alternative desertion charge carries only a five-year penalty. Some misconduct seems so serious that conviction for desertion isn’t a strong enough moral condemnation. In the eyes of many current and former U.S. military personnel, Bergdahl’s abandonment of his post, with the consequent dangerous search and eventual trading of important Taliban figures for his return, seems more morally blameworthy than simple desertion.
We don’t yet know all of Bergdahl’s motives. But his interview in the first installment of the “Serial” podcast already shows that he intended to create a “crisis” when he deserted. By his own account, he wasn’t acting out of fear, but out of a desire to draw attention to himself and to what he considered problems in his chain of command.
Filtering out political bias and the desire to embarrass the president who traded to get Bergdahl back, it’s still possible to understand the depth of the moral condemnation of Bergdahl’s unilateral act. The chain of command exists for a reason, and lives are saved or lost depending on whether it’s respected. This almost certainly explains why a general officer would decide to charge Bergdahl with misbehavior, even though independent military lawyers recommended lesser charges.
But Bergdahl’s own story, provided it’s true, also gives a plausible reason he should be acquitted of the misbehavior charge. By his account, he didn’t “shamefully” abandon or “surrender” in the face of an enemy attack, nor did he commit “cowardly conduct.” He deserted in a kind of fantasy haze of self-gratification, imagining himself, he said, as Jason Bourne.
Article 99 could be interpreted loosely to cover Bergdahl’s conduct. He did, after all, “run away” in some sense. But Article 99 is supposed to cover something more than mere desertion. On its face, it applies to desertion for specified bad motives, especially cowardice. And Bergdahl’s motives, while foolish and even delusional, weren’t precisely the motives that the misbehavior crime is supposed to cover.
My bet is that Bergdahl won’t be convicted of the misbehavior charge, or that a military appeals court would overturn such a conviction. Meanwhile, the charge itself conveys the depth of the Army’s moral condemnation of his dangerous conduct.
Noah Feldman is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard.
U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl deserted his post in Afghanistan in 2009 — there isn’t much doubt about that. But the charge of desertion isn’t the reason he faces life imprisonment in his court-martial, announced Monday by the commanding officer at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the maximum punishment for desertion is five years. The potential life sentence comes from a now-obscure charge with origins in the articles of war enacted by the Continental Congress on Sept. 20, 1776: the charge of misbehavior before the enemy.
What, exactly, is this crime of misbehavior — and should it be applied to Bergdahl? The story begins before the creation of the United States, with the early history of formal military regulations issued by the British crown for its soldiers. Known as “articles of war,” the British regulations of 1762 stated that “whatsoever Officer or Soldier shall misbehave himself before the Enemy, or shamefully abandon any Post committed to his Charge, or shall speak Words inducing others to do the like, shall suffer Death.”
When the U.S. declared independence from Britain and the Revolutionary War began, Congress needed regulations of its own in a hurry. It therefore did what most new governments do: It copied and pasted from the British model. Today’s UCMJ Article 99, “Misbehavior before the enemy,” is the direct descendant of that provision, which makes it a crime for any member of the armed forces “before or in the presence of the enemy” to run away, abandon any place he or she has a “duty to defend,” commit “cowardly conduct,” or perform other wrongful acts.
As late as World War II, the charge was apparently used frequently against combat soldiers who fled or otherwise displayed cowardice. In the long war that began on Sept. 11, 2001, desertion charges have been frequent, but the misbehavior charge has been extremely rare, used in only a handful of instances.
There’s something positively archaic about criminalizing fear, as the brilliant (and brilliantly quirky) Bill Miller of the University of Michigan Law School noted in 2000 in one of the very few contemporary academic articles about the misbehavior crime: “Making cowardice a capital offense strikes us as a kind of barbaric survival from a rougher age.” We no longer think that pure fear in the face of combat should be harshly punished.
What’s more, today’s warfare is increasingly far away from the style that lasted through World War II and beyond, in which large numbers of troops had to move forward in unison with little or no covering fire. Under those circumstances, one soldier’s panicked flight could be infectious, spreading to other soldiers and thwarting a charge. That danger gave particularly strong reason to punish the misbehavior of fleeing before the enemy. Arguably, it’s less of a concern today, which may help explain the declining use of the charge.
But there’s a plausible reason to keep the charge on the books and even use it: the fact that the alternative desertion charge carries only a five-year penalty. Some misconduct seems so serious that conviction for desertion isn’t a strong enough moral condemnation. In the eyes of many current and former U.S. military personnel, Bergdahl’s abandonment of his post, with the consequent dangerous search and eventual trading of important Taliban figures for his return, seems more morally blameworthy than simple desertion.
We don’t yet know all of Bergdahl’s motives. But his interview in the first installment of the “Serial” podcast already shows that he intended to create a “crisis” when he deserted. By his own account, he wasn’t acting out of fear, but out of a desire to draw attention to himself and to what he considered problems in his chain of command.
Filtering out political bias and the desire to embarrass the president who traded to get Bergdahl back, it’s still possible to understand the depth of the moral condemnation of Bergdahl’s unilateral act. The chain of command exists for a reason, and lives are saved or lost depending on whether it’s respected. This almost certainly explains why a general officer would decide to charge Bergdahl with misbehavior, even though independent military lawyers recommended lesser charges.
But Bergdahl’s own story, provided it’s true, also gives a plausible reason he should be acquitted of the misbehavior charge. By his account, he didn’t “shamefully” abandon or “surrender” in the face of an enemy attack, nor did he commit “cowardly conduct.” He deserted in a kind of fantasy haze of self-gratification, imagining himself, he said, as Jason Bourne.
Article 99 could be interpreted loosely to cover Bergdahl’s conduct. He did, after all, “run away” in some sense. But Article 99 is supposed to cover something more than mere desertion. On its face, it applies to desertion for specified bad motives, especially cowardice. And Bergdahl’s motives, while foolish and even delusional, weren’t precisely the motives that the misbehavior crime is supposed to cover.
My bet is that Bergdahl won’t be convicted of the misbehavior charge, or that a military appeals court would overturn such a conviction. Meanwhile, the charge itself conveys the depth of the Army’s moral condemnation of his dangerous conduct.
Noah Feldman is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard.
Hopefully the court martial will truly lay out the facts, as well as they can be known.
What the accused is guilty of, I am not sure. Hard to imagine that leaving his post was not contrary to his orders. It was certainly contrary to his duty. What was his motivation? Fear? Some form of insanity? To give comfort to the enemy? I don't know and not sure what press accounts to believe, if any. So hopefully a properly established court will justly determine whether and what crimes he committed.
He did, by his actions, endanger his fellow troops when we naturally tried to retrieve him. He did create an extremely difficult situation for his leadership, including the Commander in Chief. His actions certainly did not reflect credit upon himself, his service or his country. As a soldier he is responsible for his actions, unless for some reason he could no longer make responsible choices.
Again, I hope that the facts will be revealed and that he will be dealt with justly.
What the accused is guilty of, I am not sure. Hard to imagine that leaving his post was not contrary to his orders. It was certainly contrary to his duty. What was his motivation? Fear? Some form of insanity? To give comfort to the enemy? I don't know and not sure what press accounts to believe, if any. So hopefully a properly established court will justly determine whether and what crimes he committed.
He did, by his actions, endanger his fellow troops when we naturally tried to retrieve him. He did create an extremely difficult situation for his leadership, including the Commander in Chief. His actions certainly did not reflect credit upon himself, his service or his country. As a soldier he is responsible for his actions, unless for some reason he could no longer make responsible choices.
Again, I hope that the facts will be revealed and that he will be dealt with justly.
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What justification can there be to excuse Desertion in a combat zone?
"What justification can there be to excuse Desertion in a combat zone?"
None that I accept. So, let's take the offense seriously, get the facts out properly and apply justice fairly according to the UCMJ. The "facts" reported in the media and by the multitude of pundits don't meet the standard.
I'm not offering any new ideas, and have no agenda regarding the guilt or innocence of the accused. I just want to support the diligent use of due process, minus politics and public opinion, for a situation that occurred in a very difficult place and time in this man's life.
None that I accept. So, let's take the offense seriously, get the facts out properly and apply justice fairly according to the UCMJ. The "facts" reported in the media and by the multitude of pundits don't meet the standard.
I'm not offering any new ideas, and have no agenda regarding the guilt or innocence of the accused. I just want to support the diligent use of due process, minus politics and public opinion, for a situation that occurred in a very difficult place and time in this man's life.
I have a feeling there will be continuances and delays (citing the severity of the charges) that will "just happen" to extend the case until past the November elections, and perhaps the inauguration....
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From what I've read, he cannot be accused of cowardice. He didn't run away from danger. What he did was abandon his post and his comrades in a combat situation and went over to the enemy. That gave the Taliban a huge propaganda victory and eventually resulted in the release by the US of some very dangerous captured enemies who, it would seem, are now back in the fight. He should be forced to face the legal consequences of his treachery.
To be convicted of a charge of desertion, the court will have to find that he actually "deserted". I'm not saying that he didn't, but what did he intend when he walked away from his post? Did mere wandering away progress to an unintended capture or did he intentionally walk to the enemy and give them comfort? Of course, mere "wandering away" can be considered an offense too. The court needs to make findings of what actually happened, and convict him of the appropriate offenses.
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Nice to see people being judge, jury & executioner from behind the safety of their keyboards in a nice, warm, safe house in a safe country.....I thought we had moved on from the 1800s 
"Nice to see people being judge, jury & executioner from behind the safety of their keyboards in a nice, warm, safe house in a safe country.....I thought we had moved on from the 1800s "
I suppose some are, but I am trying not to. We owe to our brothers and sisters in the armed services to take this situation seriously, deal with it according to law rather than just throw up criticism, or just as bad, sweep it under the rug.
I suppose some are, but I am trying not to. We owe to our brothers and sisters in the armed services to take this situation seriously, deal with it according to law rather than just throw up criticism, or just as bad, sweep it under the rug.
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Anyhoo...
Whilst I don't agree with some of the opinions stated what is the point of places such as this if not for people to share their's? Indeed, if you can't handle other people having differing opinions without throwing out spurious retorts why are you even here?
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He's lucky that President Obama is on his side, otherwise rather than receiving a trial, he'd receive a Hellfire missile and no trial.