fish82;1621963 wrote:The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2013.
That's only slightly less vague then before.
Someone on the Army Reddit said what I've been trying to say much more effectively than I have:
1) We should make every effort to recover any POW, regardless of the circumstances of capture. From the legal standpoint, he needs to be investigated and charged with potential crimes, if the facts of the investigation support it. But first and foremost, he
needed to be recovered before any thing else could take place. If he committed crimes, he needed to be recovered and punished
by us, not by the Taliban.
2) People died looking for him. It's a terrible thing. He'll have to live with that for the rest of his life. If he was just some dumb kid who did inexplicably dumb things, then how is he different from anyone else in war who gets others killed? Ethically, it's similar to friendly fire incidents. Now if he maliciously deserted his post with the intent to join the enemy - that's a whole different ballgame. I'm not convinced one way or the other yet, but I hope an investigation uncovers all the details and he is charged (or not) in accordance with the facts of the case.
3) Prisoner exchange. Frankly - this is kind of a win/win for the government. The administration doesn't like having the extra-judicial prison at Gitmo any more than most of us do. They've been trying to find a way to transfer the prisoners away for years. Some have been released, others transitioned to civilian courts, still others have been extradited to other countries. Figuring out what to do with the rest has been
hard. Other countries don't want them, we don't have standards of legal proof required to get them convicted of crimes in the civilian justice system, etc. Long story short - this lets us reduce the number of people jailed there while providing convenient justification. I'm sure there have been efforts to mitigate the threat that these released prisoners pose. Maybe releasing them and observing them 'in the wild' actually yields better intel from them then we could hope to gain by keeping them locked up indefinitely?
Let's not forget -
he's one of us. Mabye a fuck-up, maybe an embarrassment, maybe confused and disconnected, but still a US Service-member.