This is the third of four installments of the interview with John Bernard. Readers who are interested may watch the entire interview on Vimeo, or in two parts on YouTube: Part 1 and Part 2. The full transcript is available here.
Interview With John Bernard, Part 3
Let Them Fight or Bring Them Home!
Who set these rules of engagement?
The rules of engagement are established well above battalion level, well above, frankly, the division or even MEU [Marine Expeditionary Unit] level. In this particular case they were actually set by General McChrystal, but they were blessed from somewhere above.
The argument that I’ve made right along is that these things don’t happen in a vacuum. You don’t send a military out onto the field of battle without a very specific plan, without a very specific goal. And that goal emanates from Washington D.C. and specifically from the White House. So, while we were working under one set of rules under President Bush — and I’m not going to give him any sway in this; things had started to deteriorate under him, as late as 2008 — they certainly went downhill a lot faster under President Obama.
Now, I don’t believe there was anything in President Bush’s background or belief or hope, anything suggesting that he gave sway to Afghan civilian lives over American military lives, but that is certainly the case under President Obama. So what he does is he turns around and gives out he would call his “Commander’s Intent”. The Commander’s Intent Statement is something that resides in the five-paragraph order. The five-paragraph order is put together at the level of Pentagon. But those things again don’t happen on their own; they are in response to the Commander’s Intent. The President of the United States says, “I want to do this, and I want it done this way. Go for it — write an order and let me take a look at it.”
So the orders that were rewritten under General McChrystal were probably significantly different than they were a year prior. Certainly the rules of engagement got a lot tighter.
So that’s where the stuff starts, is with the President’s vision. That’s when you start looking at what the President has done in his first few months. You say, “What’s up with this guy? What’s he thinking?” Going to predominantly Muslim countries and apologizing for being American, essentially. Apologizing for things we can’t even begin to imagine. Making comments that the United States is not a Christian nation, which those of us who are indeed Christian would have a hard time arguing against that. I don’t think that every person who claims to be a Christian is, but certainly we [have] a Christian ethic, in our writings and in our laws.
And then further going and saying to some people in those communities that we are in fact a Muslim nation; we see things through the eyes of this peaceful Islamic belief system. It’s just ludicrous. The point is, when you follow him, what he typically believes, or holds in his heart, is to do well by the Muslim community of the world, even if that means that America is going to pay a horrendously bloody price for it.
He clearly does not have the better [interests] of American troops in his heart.
Part 4: How much does control does Iran exert over Afghan affairs?
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