The wife of a soldier who was wounded and paralyzed while on a mission to find Bowe Bergdahl is asking, in a Facebook post, “Which guy is the hero”?
Shannon Allen, wife of Sgt. 1st Class Mark Allen, wrote “Meet my husband, injuries directly brought to you by the actions of this traitor. He can’t give an account of what went down, because he can no longer speak. Now, which guy is a ‘hero’ again?!? Sick.”
Mark Allen, who is from Loganville, Georgia, was injured when a sniper bullet pierced the armor in his helmet in Kabul, Afghanistan. The bullet entered through his frontal lobe, rendering him paralyzed.
The injury occurred only one month after he arrived to Afghanistan.
Shannon Allen’s comments add to the growing surge of public outcry over the circumstances surrounding Bergdahl’s capture by Taliban forces, as well as his release.
Five Taliban fighters were let out of detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for Bergdahl’s freedom last week.
According to critics, Bergdahl deserted his post at a U.S. Army base in the Paktika province of Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. Soliders that served at the same time and were deployed to search for him accuse him of deserting the U.S. Military that night.
‘We all served together and we were all in it together over there and he broke that bond by leaving us,’ Army Sgt. Josh Korder said on the Today Show on June 3.
The outcry is also gathering online. The Facebook group ‘Bowe Bergdahl is a Traitor’ currently has over 69,000 likes. The banner on the top of the page shows the pictures of six soliders who died while searching for Bergdahl.
The Facebook page posted Shannon Allen’s message, which received nearly 60,000 likes and more than 5,000 comments.
Bergdahl’s family gets an invite to the White House to appear at a Rose Garden press avail with the president. What did Mrs. Allen and the other family members of those who fell looking for Bergdahl get?
They are non-people. They have been disappeared because their presence is inconvenient and unwanted. They don’t play into the narrative the White House would like the American people to believe: Sgt. Bergdahl served with honor and distinction; he’s a confused victim of circumstance who was near death when President Obama swooped in and rescued him. The price was high, but hey! We don’t leave anyone behind so shut up and sit down.
Meanwhile, the families quietly grieve over their loss — a loss not incurred as a result of combat that advanced America’s war effort, but in an attempt to bring one wayward soldier home who may have deserted his post and thrown in with the enemy.
The juxtaposition of Bergdahl and those who fell looking for him is painful. It reminds us that life isn’t fair, the good die young, and any other timeworn cliche that actually makes sense. Bergdahl for Allen? Bergdahl for any of the other soldiers who fell? The scales don’t balance and we are angry.
While the White House works at damage control, trotting out spokesmen who lay it on thicker and thicker as the days pass, they make herculean efforts to avoid any discussion of Bergdahl’s worthiness to be exchanged for five terrorists. We must wait to hear his story, we’re told — despite his comrades going on national TV and swearing that he is a deserter. They, too, have become non-people and subjects of a smear campaign by Obama sycophants. They’re “psychopaths” or were put up to it by Republicans.
They risked their lives to try to find their former comrade and this is the thanks they get?
Mrs. Allen’s plea to remember who the heroes are will fall on deaf ears at the White House. The administration has played the torture card, as a “senior US official” told several news organizations that doctors treating him say he was beaten and tortured by his captors:
Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was physically abused during his five years in Taliban captivity and is suffering from psychological trauma, a senior U.S. official told CNN on Friday.
The information bolstered the White House argument that President Barack Obama needed to move quickly to secure Bergdahl’s release in a May 31 exchange for five Taliban figures held at Guantanamo Bay.
According to the official, who spoke on condition of not being identified, Bergdahl tried to escape at one point but got caught, and his captors then confined him in small enclosure described as a cage or box.
At an American military hospital in Germany where he was taken after his handover near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, doctors said Friday he remained in stable condition and continued to improve, but wasn’t ready to travel back to the United States.
Note that there is no timeline leaked with this information. Was Bergdahl tortured before or after he played soccer with his captors, converted to Islam, became a “warrior for Islam,” and participated in target practice with his jailers? In the summer of 2010, he managed to escape for five days, according to the Eclipse Group reports. Was it after that futile break for freedom that the mistreatment began?
Evidently, there was no leak about whether Bergdahl has admitted deserting or not. Big surprise there.
With this strategic leak, the White House is trying to flip the playing field and generate sympathy for Bergdahl. This is not to say the torture didn’t take place. But the motive for leaking this information can certainly be questioned and it should be.
Meanwhile, the non-people — the non-families whose loved ones lost their lives in search of Sgt. Bergdahl — are left out in the cold by a commander in chief who can’t afford to acknowledge them without his entire media strategy to explain his release of five high-value terrorists for one apparently conflicted American soldier falling apart. So they sit in the darkness and wish their lost loved one was still alive, while men and women who have no sense of honor try desperately to keep the light off and the door shut.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member