By NJ Asencio
Clash Daily Guest Contributor
It’s hard to tell today where reality ends and fantasy begins, and vice versa. Case in point – anyone who has ever obsessed over Showtime’s Emmy-award winning show, Homeland, can tell you that the current release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from an Afghan prison after a five-year-long confinement is sounding eerily, and uncomfortably, familiar. Originally created and produced in Israel by Gideon Raff, and developed for American television by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, Homeland is the story of Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody, an Iraq war veteran who is ‘rescued’ after eight years of having been imprisoned in Damascus by al-Qaeda operatives. What we, and the CIA, come to realize is that Brody has been ‘turned,’ and that al-Qaeda is using Brody’s new found status as a ‘war hero’ in order to use him to commit terrorist acts in the U.S.
Cut to May 31, 2014, when President Barak Obama releases five senior Taliban officials imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay in exchange for one Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been imprisoned by the Taliban in Pakistan for five years. Bergdahl is the only known American prisoner of war in the Afghan war, and the circumstances surrounding his capture have left many questions unanswered. According to records, 23-year-old Bergdahl ‘disappeared’ from his base in southeastern Afghanistan on June 30, 2009; and it is rumored that he simply walked off the base, prompting his fellow service members to consider his disappearance an attempt to go AWOL, and Bergdahl more of a deserter than a hero. But Bergdahl himself left many indicators before his capture that this may have been the case; three days before his disappearance, Bergdahl emails his parents telling them that:
Mailing home boxes containing his uniform and books, he added:
On June 27th, 2009, in Bergdahl’s last email to his parents, he expressed that:
To which his father, Robert, answered:
Two days later, Sgt. Bergdahl was gone.
Clearly, objections to American foreign policy are neither uncommon nor treacherous on their own merit; history is replete with Americans who have spoken out about the war policies of the United States. One of the most famous objectors, John Kerry, a member and the spokesman for the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, openly spoke out against the Vietnam War, appearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1971 where he deemed that U.S. war policy in Vietnam was the cause of “war crimes.” Mr. Kerry went on to work in the public sector, rising to prominence as the 68th, and current, U.S. Secretary of State.
However, Bergdahl’s father’s strange twitter postings during his son’s imprisonment seem to shed light on a very different narrative, causing some people to sit up and take notice. According to Twitchy.com, Sgt. Bergdahl’s father, Robert Bergdahl, tweeted:
@ABalkhi is the twitter handle of Abdulqahar Balkhi, a Taliban spokesman. The tweet was deleted on Saturday, when Sgt. Balkhi was released. Of course, Robert Bergdahl could have very well tweeted this message out of frustration and perhaps, in hopes that in so doing, it would inspire his son’s captors to set him free; however, considering that he advised his son to “obey” his conscience when he expressed disdain for U.S. operations in Afghanistan, and also considering that Robert Bergdahl continues to call for the release of even more Guantanamo prisoners, you’ve got to wonder what is really going on here.
Only time will tell how things turn out for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, but if art is any indication, I’d tread lightly if I were him. Eventually, things caught up with Sgt. Nicholas Brody. Way, way up.
Originally published at Honey Get Over It
NJ Asencio: Poli-Soci commentary from the perspective of an innocent bystander.
Ok, maybe not that “innocent”… and not quite “standing by,” but you get the picture.
