Back pay? Really?

WORD AROUND the campfire is that the Army is looking into whether it has to cut a check to Bowe Bergdahl for back pay.

No, really.

Gentle Reader will recognize the name Bowe Bergdahl, for he is the soldier who walked away from his base in Afghanistan in 2009, was captured by the Taliban, and put his fellow soldiers at risk when they went looking for him. In court earlier this month, he was given a dishonorable discharge and busted from sergeant to private. Which always seemed strange to some of us, this habit in the military courts of demoting somebody to the rank of private. We’ve known quite a few young privates—many in Basic Training—and they all seemed honorable, if wet behind the ears. And they worked hard—extremely hard, with drill sergeants barking in their ears night and day. And they went on to serve their country until they made corporal or specialist. Shouldn’t there be a rank below private so as not to dishonor the 19-year-old infantrymen and tankers by association?

Bowe Bergdahl somehow avoided prison time. How is a question the courts martial might one day answer. He should feel lucky.

But there is a school of “thought,” such that it is, that suggests that he, like other captured soldiers, is entitled to back pay, and hostile-fire pay, on top of basic compensation. And in Mr. Bergdahl’s case, it could be close to $150,000, and some reports say as high as $300,000.

It would be money well spent for an honorable soldier taken on the battlefield. A nation should pay its debts.

But this guy pleaded guilty to desertion and was dishonorably discharged.

One United States congressman from Arkansas, Rick Crawford, has joined nearly 100 other lawmakers in signing a letter calling on the Army to withhold any such back pay in this matter.

It shouldn’t take an act of Congress to make such a common-sense decision. But if it does … .

Then an act of Congress it should be.