Bowe Bergdahl, Just Deserts

anncoulter.com ^ | June 4, 2014 | Ann Coulter

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

BOWE BERGDAHL, JUST DESERTS

June 4, 2014

Death Penalty Month at anncoulter.com has already been interrupted by the psycho in Santa Barbara, and now it's being interrupted by the Buddhist in Bagram.

Keeping to the spirit of Death Penalty Month, let's review the execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik. Slovik's offense: desertion in wartime. (See the tie-in?)

Unlike Bowe Bergdahl, who deserted his unit, according to the accounts of his comrades, Slovik never actually deserted. He also didn't call America a "disgusting" country or say he was "ashamed to be an American."

Slovik was just a chicken.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

[wideawake]

Bergdahl was looking for a member of the Taliban who spoke English. (Other than his father.)

I actually did laugh out loud.

[Veggie Todd]

Just deserts?

[DJlaysitup]

Figure the odds that a Dad who was a world-class cyclist who would have been in the Olympics if not for Carter boycotting the Russian games due to their invasion of Afghanistan...would then have a son held hostage in Afghanistan for 5 years?

[wideawake]

Didn't know that.

Glad to hear this scumbag's Olympic hopes were crushed.

[Rodamala]

he wasn’t a deserter... it was straight up defector.

[libertylover]

The evidence will be overwhelming that he’s a deserter, and therefore Obama will pardon him before any trial.

[pingman]

...and stayed alive by “submitting” to be a TB “butt-boy”.

[Political Junkie Too]

I was hoping someone would pick up the reference from my post on Eddie Slovik from Tuesday and bring it forward to the mainstream.

-PJ

[mylife]

Hang him and take a look at the folks that surround him.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Let’s hope this piece of rat filth Bergdahl gets the same treatment as Slovik. Like Coulter was saying, Slovik didn’t get anybody killed plus he didn’t defect to the enemy. Plus now they are saying there is evidence that he HELPED the Taliban kill US vets!! So not only do you have desertion, but blatant treason! If they can prove all that and they don’t execute this F then they might as well take desertion and treason off the books because it means nothing then.

[Political Junkie Too]

Yes. Timothy McVeigh got faster justice than Bergdahl will, because it was in Clinton's interest to see McVeigh silenced.

For Bergdahl, it is in Obama's interest to avoid the spectacle of a court martial.

-PJ

[Stepan12]

I saw that tv show, starring a youthful Martin Sheen. One thing missing from the tv show, "The Execution of Private Slovak," was that the real Eddie Slovak calculated that he would just get a few years prison time. However, Eisenhower and someone else (I forget who it was) decided to draw the line at Pvt. Slovak and have him executed alongside a murderer and a rapist (I believe).

Also, the cowardly Pvt. Slovak did not act cowardly at the time of his execution. The Priest who comforted him beforehand believed the talk about Jesus that the Priest related to him before his execution, gave Pvt. Slovak strength. And it certainly seems like that was the case.

[Political Junkie Too]

...Eisenhower and someone else (I forget who it was) decided to draw the line at Pvt. Slovak and have him executed...

Even Gen. George Washington built a gallows to scare his soldiers into not deserting.

Encyclopedia Virginia: George Washington

---

French and Indian War...

On the frontier, Washington honed the iron discipline that he imposed for the rest of his life on himself and on others. On one occasion he ordered a mass execution of deserters, but relented and hanged only two.

---

The History Channel: Washington leads troops into winter quarters at Valley Forge...

---

Desperate to keep the army intact, Washington tried to stem desertion by resorting to lashings as punishment and then threatening to shoot deserters on sight...

He was further buoyed by France's agreement to join the revolutionaries in February 1778. (Washington was so happy with the news from his "powerful friend" France that, upon hearing the news, he pardoned two of his own soldiers who were awaiting execution for desertion.)

---

InfoPlease Almanac

---

To misbehaving soldiers Washington showed little mercy. In his first service he had deserters and plunderers "flogged," and threatened that if he could "lay hands" on one particular culprit, "I would try the effect of 1000 lashes." At another time he had "a Gallows near 40 feet high erected (which has terrified the rest exceedingly) and I am determined if I can be justified in the proceeding, to hang two or three on it, as an example to others."

When he took command of the Continental army he "made a pretty good slam among such kind of officers as the Massachusetts Government abound in since I came to this Camp, having broke one Colo, and two Captains for cowardly behavior in the action on Bunker's Hill,—two Captains for drawing more provisions and pay than they had men in their Company—and one for being absent from his Post when the Enemy appeared there and burnt a House just by it Besides these, I have at this time—one Colo., one Major, one Captn., & two subalterns under arrest for tryal—In short I spare none yet fear it will not at all do as these People seem to be too inattentive to every thing but their Interest" "I am sorry," he wrote, "to be under a Necessity of making frequent Examples among the Officers," but "as nothing can be more fatal to an Army, than Crimes of this kind, I am determined by every Motive of Reward and Punishment to prevent them in future."

---

-PJ

[Stepan12]

There was a book on the execution of Private Slovak that went into the calculating side of Pvt. Slovak in the desertion issue. Slovak was the only person executed for desertion. The others got about three years in jail. Slovak didn't count on his criminal record for penny ante, juvenile stuff; e.g., ripping off candy, working against him.

Still, as Ann Coulter pointed out, he was not the complete jerk that Bergdhal is and Slovak didn't give the Whermacht information on the best place to plant mines against his fellow soldiers.