Why Was Bergdahl In the Military To Begin With?

[Howey]

It's pretty obvious now, in hindsight, that perhaps Bowe Bergdahl wasn't the best candidate for the military. If, in fact, he questioned the war in Afghanistan and other issues, he probably should have been advised to apply for Conscientious Objector status and/or discharged.

If, and I repeat if, there were perceived problems with Bowe in his troop, who is to blame? His commander? His fellow troops who reported he left post several times in the past yet no action was taken?

How about going back just a few years...to 2004. What happened then has had a negative effect on the US Military to this day; from the number of troop suicides to friendly fire deaths, to civilian massacres, to organized disobedience after military service.

What happened was the rush by the Bush Administration to get more troops in the field to fight two escalating wars nobody wanted. Enlistment numbers were low, reenlistment numbers were non-existent. Nobody wanted to go to a war nobody wanted - to die for reasons nobody understood.

So Bush did what he felt he should do. Reduce enlistment standards. In doing so, the military services soon became filled with court-ordered recruits, alcoholics, misdemeanor offenders, those who failed intelligence and psychological standards, and...others. Our services are still reeling.

Last year, almost 1 in 6 Army recruits had a problem in their background that would have disqualified them from military service. In order to accept them, the Army granted special exceptions, known as recruiting waivers.


Recruits with medical problems made up the largest category of those given waivers. But the largest increase was among recruits with a history of either criminal conduct or drug and alcohol problems, according to data provided by the Army.

...

But that wasn't enough. They dug deeper in the barrel:

Despite the increase in the proportion of those accepted with problems in their background, the Army failed to meet its recruiting target. A total of 73,000 men and women joined the Army in 2005, down from 77,000 in 2004.

There was a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms "serious criminal misconduct" in their background.

That category includes aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats, said Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command at Ft. Knox, Ky.

The number of recruits in that category increased to 630, from 408 in 2004, reversing at least a four-year trend in which the number of recruits with serious criminal misconduct in their background had declined, Army statistics showed.

The largest increase in waivers was for recruits with misdemeanor convictions. There were 4,587 waivers granted last year in that category, up from 3,667 in 2004. The category includes those with convictions for assault punishable by a fine of less than $500, resisting arrest, public drunkenness and contempt of court, Smith said.

There were 737 waivers for alcohol and illegal drugs, up from 650 the previous year, which also reversed at least a four-year trend of declines in that category. Smith said those waivers were for recruits who tested positive for amphetamines, marijuana or cocaine during recruit processing. A waiver is required to let the recruit wait 45 days before taking another test.

Finally...Bush decided to scrape the bottom of the barrel...

...the military almost stopped the policy of denying reenlistment to undesirables at the height of the Iraq occupation, with the number of rejections falling from 4,000 in 1994 to a mere 81 in 2006.

Neo-Nazis have been joined in the military by members of African-American and Latino gangs. This came to light in an ugly and frightening fashion in 2005, when soldiers who were also members of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples beat an Army sergeant to death in an initiation gone awry while stationed in Germany. Tracking gang membership in the military is difficult, as there is no specific prohibition against belonging to a gang, and according to Kennard the FBI “cannot gauge the problem of criminal gangs in the country’s fighting forces because the military [has] refused to report gang activity.” While the killing is the most disturbing gang-related incident reported in Irregular Army, Kennard reproduces numerous photos of gang graffiti in Iraq and military personnel flashing gang symbols, indicating that the 2005 incident was not simply a fluke.

One disturbing commonality between gang members and neo-Nazis is the possibility that they look upon the military as a training ground for their own private wars. Kennard quotes Dennis Mahon, a National Guard veteran with ties to various extremist organizations, who says, “the soldiers learn from unconventional warfare in Iraq and they realize that they can use that type of warfare in America and it’s impossible to stop.” Mahon is now serving time for a bombing in Arizona. Similarly, Kennard quotes an anonymous FBI agent suggesting that gangs may use the military for training purposes, noting that they would “get great weapons training… and access to weapons and arms, and be able to use that knowledge.”

So there you have it. Gang members, rapists, neo-Nazi's, all kinds of ne'er do wells...welcomed with open arms by George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

And what about Bowe Bergdahl? They didn't care this kid who was confused, scared, and uncertain. They had a body to send to Afghanistan.

Even though he'd already been discharged from the Coast Guard two years earlier.

Before he became a Taliban prisoner, before he wrote in his journal “I am the lone wolf of deadly nothingness,” before he ever joined the Army, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was discharged from the U.S. Coast Guard for psychological reasons, said close friends who were worried about his emotional health at the time.

The 2006 discharge and a trove of Bergdahl’s writing — the handwritten journal along with other essays, stories and e-mails provided to The Washington Post — paint a portrait of a deeply complicated and fragile young man who was by his own account struggling to maintain his mental stability from the start of basic training until the moment he walked off his post in eastern Afghanistan.

“I’m worried,” he wrote in one journal entry before he deployed. “The closer I get to ship day, the calmer the voices are. I’m reverting. I’m getting colder. My feelings are being flushed with the frozen logic and the training, all the unfeeling cold judgment of the darkness.”

“I will not lose this mind, this world I have deep inside,” he wrote a few pages later. “I will not lose this passion of beauty.”

“Trying to keep my self togeather,” he wrote at another point, using his often un*or*tho*dox spelling. “I’m so tired of the blackness, but what will happen to me without it. Bloody hell why do I keep thinking of this over and over.”

I'm really beginning to think that Bowe's not the traitor, nor criminal here. It's the guy who sent him to his hell.