printI disagree with Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo that US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is a martyr, or anything like the man Edward Snowden is. But who can dispute the following sentiment, expressed in “Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl: Prisoner of the War Party”?
It’s hard to believe any decent human being would even consider putting Bergdahl through more trauma than he’s already endured – but in the case of the War Party, exemplified by the foam-flecked Ralph Peters [a Fox News “military analyst”], we aren’t talking about decent people. They will exact their pound of flesh from an ordinary, powerless individual caught in the headwinds of our turbulent era, just to make an ideological point: that the war was and is justified, that we’re pulling out too soon, and – more importantly – that no individual “insider,” whether a private in the Army or a top level technologist for the NSA, has the moral right to obey their conscience when it conflicts with their orders. The government decides, as Michael Kinsley argued in Snowden’s case, and not the individual – who is merely a cog in a gigantic “democratic” machine. After all, as the neocons and their “progressive” allies say of Snowden, who is he to make these decisions unilaterally?