Beau Birddog

 

Beau Birddog, Football Hero, Receives 

Pre-Game Attention From Lucy Collins, 

2014 Recipient of Iowa  4H  Scholarship

When I first heard news of the prisoner exchange of the Afghanistan War, I heard the name of the American soldier as "Beau Birddog".

I could not quite believe it, so I listened more attentively. There it was: Beau Birddog.

Well, I thought, this ought to be quite a shin-dig when Beau comes home! I anticipated that Beau Birddog was a very good old country boy, who when he hunted, either prepared the kill for his own meals, or donated the dressed deer to the local poor.
I assumed Beau got up before sunrise to milk the cows back when he was in grammar school. I expected his first experience with technology was reading the monitor in the cab of a high-tech farming combine, which calculated yield per acre of new and improved breeds of corn.

I fully expected a large group of men gathering in the morning at Nancy Jack's Cafe, just down the street a bit from the grain elevators of the Co-op, and opening their early newspapers to find that everyone's favorite high school football quarterback, who had broken every sports record and quite a few hearts in his career before the Army, was finally coming home.
And plans must be made for a "Welcome Home" party.

It did not work out like that.

The young man's name is Bowe Bergedahl. He was exchanged for terrorists. He went AWOL from his post and was scooped up by the Taliban.

Only, who in their right mind's goes AWOL in the midst of enemy territory, an enemy depicted as blood-thirsty terrorists.
Then it comes out he was mightily affected by the sight of an Afghan child being run over by an Army vehicle, and he began to act oddly. There was indeed a trauma, but no diagnosis of PTSD

What was he doing there in that condition?

And as for the terrorists, the reports I read is that they were Taliban people. Much as I dislike the Taliban-type, it was we who invaded Afghanistan.
The Taliban had been asked by Osama bin Laden for a refuge. The Taliban agreed if Osama and Al Qai'ida killed the leader of the Northern Alliance rebel group, which murder Al Qai'ida did achieve shortly before 9/11.
No one has ever claimed the Taliban was involved in 9/11. They refused to hand over biun Laden to the USA, upholding their end of the murderous refuge agreement. The USA invaded Afghanistan and drove the Taliban out.
Then the USA detoured into Iraq, and thus allowed the Taliban 10 years to re-establish themselves.

Since we invaded the country ruled by the Taliban, it sounds as if the exchanged prisoner from Gauntanamo were Prisoners Of War, and not terrorists, so it was a POW for POW exchange.

Another failure story. Another rush to judge. More sound and fury signifying the usual outcomes.

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note
In today's NY Times, there is a story in which the soldier's of Bergedahl's unit vehemently deny the story pof the Afghan child's being run over, an accident Bergedahl reported to his parents in an email.
How vehemently do they deny it? Too much?
Are they partisans of truth or of their own tenuous sanity?

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