Jerry Boykin has parlayed his tenure as a charter member and later commander of the Army’s crack counter-terrorism unit, Delta Force, into becoming perhaps the most (in)famous “warrior for Jesus” in this country. He’s been a darling of the religious right ever since declaring in 2003 that Islamists hate America because it’s a Christian nation, and has ridden that fame into becoming executive vice president of the Family Research Council. Seen in this light, a suggestion he made in an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas this past weekend should send a chill down the spine of any fair-minded person. Boykin declared that Bowe Bergdahl should have been killed in a targeted drone strike while he was in a Taliban POW camp in Afghanistan. Never mind the welter of circumstantial evidence that Bergdahl was tortured by his captors at various times during his five years in captivity.
The interview was done as part of a story in which Boykin spewed the usual right-wing shibboleth calling for President Obama to be impeached over the Veterans Affairs scandal and the #Benghazi affair. But People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch uncovered something chilling that Boykin told Thomas in the video–something not mentioned in the accompanying story. PFAW managed to get a clip of that exchange here. In that exchange, Boykin claimed that the only reason Bergdahl was released was that the White House was so desperate to empty out Guantanamo Bay that it was looking for an excuse to release the five Taliban fighters who were freed in return for Bergdahl. If it wre up to Boykin, Bergdahl would have gotten the same treatment as Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American Islamist imam and al-Qaeda strategist who was killed by an American drone in 2011. Quoting Boykin:
“Al-Awlaki was an American citizen. He was assassinated by the Obama administration because he was a traitor, he had turned on America. I’m glad he’s dead. I have no issue with that. But what’s the difference between al-Awlaki and Bowe Bergdahl?”
Here’s the difference, Jerry. Bergdahl suffered an ordeal so traumatizing that he spent over a month at a U. S. military hospital in Germany recovering from his ordeal even though he was physically ready to return to this country. During that time, he told military doctors who oversaw his recovery that he’d tried to escape at least twice–and as punishment, the Taliban kept him in a shark cage for several weeks or months. He also said he was beaten on several occasions. And yet, if Boykin had his way, we would have rewarded him by killing him.
Boykin also claimed the Army had actually tried Bergdahl in absentia and found him guilty of desertion–an offense that potentially carries the death penalty. There’s one problem with that claim–it isn’t true. As I mentioned last month, the Army did investigate Bergdahl in 2010. That investigation failed to turn up any conclusive evidence that when Bergdahl left his unit in 2009, he intended to “remain away” from it “permanently”–the definition of desertion under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In the absence of such evidence, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to try Bergdahl for desertion. Notably, the investigation failed to find any evidence to support claims that Bergdahl wrote a note stating his intent to desert. Experts in military law say that there is a strong convention against POWs being court-martialed unless there is overwhelming evidence that they sold out their country. Short of such evidence, it is very unlikely that Bergdahl will be disciplined. The most benign interpretation of this claim is that Boykin probably knows most of his audience willfully shuts itself off from the mainstream media–otherwise, they would have known about the 2010 probe.
As we all know by now, such details as facts and decency never get in the way of a good conspiracy theory. Even so, Boykin’s statements are nothing less than an outrage. There is something fundamentally wrong when a retired Army officer openly calls for us throw away basic standards of decency and kill a POW who was tortured by the enemy. I thought the swiftboating campaign against Bergdahl had reached the absolute bottom when it emerged that his parents had actually been the target of death threats. Boy, was I ever wrong.
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Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
