Never Served In A War Zone? Then STFU

So the republican ‘shit on anyone you need to in order to fuck Obama’ train just keeps on-a-rollin. It’s not the lunatic fringe that the mainstream republicans can claim isn’t their problem (or creation). No, this time it’s the mainstream republicans. This time, it’s Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl who served in Afghanistan, where he has been held captive in an Afghani prison for the past 5 years. They’re going after him with a vengeance because they’re positive that he’s a deserter whose desertion caused the death of anywhere between six and eight thousand fellow soldiers, depending who you’re talking to, and how high their propensity for hyperbole and straight up bullshit is. I’m not going to get into whether he’s a deserter or not. Why? Because I don’t know, and I’m not a jackass. As a nonjackass, I recognize that we don’t have all of the information we need to make that determination and that there has been no investigation into the matter. 

If he’s guilty of anything, we have military courts for that. And for everyone who is concerned that he may get away with something, let me assure you that we have plenty of prisons here in the US. No need to leave him with the Afghanis. We are the United States of America. We don’t just abandon our own because we think they might be deserters. We have a court system to determine if someone is guilty of anything. That court system is one of the things that separates us from barbaric societies made up of angry lynch mobs. We don’t do honor killings and we don’t stone people to death. We are a civilized society and since I want to keep it that way, I felt compelled to remind some of you of that.

At this point, we don’t know if he deserted or his mental health status at the time. What if he cracked under pressure like the 167 vets that committed suicide last year (by the way, that number is going up by about 15% each year)? Or like the fifty thousand that were homeless for some or all of last year (that number has tripled since 2011)? Does that matter to you at all? Because let me tell you that if it doesn’t, I find you despicable and I don’t ever want to hear you utter anything resembling "support the troops" ever again. If you don’t care that Bergdahl might have cracked under pressure, then you don’t care about any of the soldiers that are suffering as a result of what they did for us. If you have no use or empathy for soldiers that came back broken after volunteering to fight for you, then I have no use for you. I feel dirty just knowing that you people exist.

I have no fucking idea what being in the middle of a combat situation does to a person, and unless you’ve been there, neither do you.

And by the way, for the purposes of this post, I’m giving you your assumption that he did in fact desert even though we simply don’t have enough information to make that determination yet. And I’m giving you that, despite knowing better. Four words; Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch.  

Smart people wait for information. Reasoned people know they can’t possibly judge a person in a traumatic situation they’ve never, ever been in. Only the dim witted and the despicable forge ahead with their judgments because that’s the only time of the day they will ever feel good about themselves.

I just want to throw a little cold water in your face by reminding you that you have nothing to feel good about. You’re disgusting.