In July, many veterans who served in Afghanistan and took part in the search for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl were stunned by the news that the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia had vacated the 2017 court-martial convictions against Bergdahl.
For those of us who were deployed at the time, the vacated case not only reopened old wounds from a forgotten war but highlighted the grave injustices surrounding Bergdahl’s grossly lenient sentencing.
In 2009, Bergdahl deserted his firebase in eastern Afghanistan at the height of the war against the Taliban and other terrorist groups. As then-President Obama ordered a surge of troops into Afghanistan in an attempt to break the downward slide in the war, our operations at the time came to an immediate halt as Bergdahl went missing.
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U.S. forces in the region were ordered to shift away from their objectives to defeat the Taliban in order to search for Bergdahl. I led a task force of Green Berets, who along with every unit in the eastern half of the country, searched for Bergdahl to no avail.
Instead, an estimated eight Americans were killed and dozens seriously wounded in militant-occupied areas attempting to locate the deserter.
Obama announced in 2014 that he had secured the release of Bergdahl — by exchanging five senior Taliban from Guantanamo Bay. I was furious over Obama’s Rose Garden ceremony touting such a lopsided and dangerous deal for a man we knew had betrayed his country and his fellow soldiers. Then-national security adviser Susan Rice claimed Bergdahl had served with "honor and distinction."
Notably, four of the five Taliban prisoners exchanged went on to become senior officials in the Taliban’s totalitarian dictatorship in Afghanistan. I was the first veteran to go on national television and proclaim that Bergdahl was not a hero but rather a traitor.
To the Obama administration’s embarrassment, Bergdahl pled guilty to desertion and misbehavior in the face of the enemy, was given a demotion and a fine, but was given no jail time.
For a man who betrayed our country by walking into the arms of the enemy and whose actions resulted in the deaths and injuries of U.S. service members, this didn’t go far enough. While Bergdahl was treated brutally by the Taliban after he was no longer useful to them, he ultimately walked out of the courtroom a free man unlike those killed and wounded as a result of his actions.
But surely enough, Bergdahl continues to defy justice.
Bergdahl no longer has a criminal record despite the fact that he pled guilty to the charges. The decision to vacate his conviction and sentence was due to a legal technicality that the presiding military judge was applying for a position as an immigration judge in the Trump administration.
Further, for the appellate judge to claim the military judge showed undue bias when Bergdahl was given no jail time defies logic. The irony is that the military judge received significant public criticism, including by me, for giving Bergdahl such a lenient sentence.
The American people shouldn’t stand for this decision and the veteran community deserves better.
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In the end of July, I sent a letter along with four other veteran lawmakers urging Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Attorney General Merrick Garland to review options for a new trial for Bergdahl.
We are concerned that the political leadership in the Biden administration — many of whom served in the Obama administration — will have little interest in pressing forward with a new trial to avoid rehashing the embarrassing mistakes of 2014 and have every political interest in allowing the case to fade away as we head into an election year.
But the cold hard reality is Bergdahl’s desertion cost American lives, disrupted critical military operations, and saw five dangerous Taliban leaders freed in return for his release.
The veteran community will not forget Bergdahl’s betrayal and on behalf of the wounded, the Gold Star families and the Afghans once again being brutalized by those Taliban leaders, we will not allow this case to be swept under the rug.
That starts by appealing for a retrial for this traitor.
