As I noted yesterday, it is immensely odd to me that so many people in the MSNBC/NYT/Atlantic cohort don't get why so many Americans, and so many conservative Americans in particular, take issue with the Bowe Bergdahl trade. For instance, here's Derek Thompson:
By what code or calculation is the life of a deserter less valuable, or less urgent to save? http://t.co/XjvIU4z50r
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) June 3, 2014
Again, as I wrote yesterday, I don't think this is too hard to explain if one keeps in mind the work of Jonathan Haidt. I've yet to see a poll that makes me reconsider this conjecture. Here's Aaron Blake on a new Washington Post/ABC News poll on Bergdahl:
The poll also shows Americans continue to oppose the deal that was made to exchange five Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl. Fifty-one percent disapprove of the deal, while 39 percent approve. ... In addition, when respondents were informed of allegations that Bergdahl deserted, opposition to the deal increases significantly, to 63 percent. In that case, just 28 percent continue to approve of the deal.
Both Republicans and independents strongly oppose the deal, regardless of how the question is asked.
Democrats, too, appear to be wavering. While they support the deal 62 to 30 percent before desertion is mentioned, they support it just 48 to 43 percent once that element is introduced into the equation.
This backs up numbers from USA Today/Pew released yesterday:
The 128 veterans included in the poll are much more harsh in their assessment of the 28-year-old sergeant. Only 6% of veterans who responded say they sympathized with him, while 33% say they were angry. By 68%-16%, veterans say Obama made the wrong decision.
"If he was a captured prisoner of war, we wouldn't be having this discussion," says Joe Davis, the director of public affairs for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "He put his teammates in jeopardy, and you absolutely don't do that in a combat zone."
And last week Andrew Sullivan highlighted a YouGov poll that shows Americans are much less likely to support deals to retrieve deserters than those who are captured honorably:
If the allegations about how Bergdahl was captured turn out to be true, support for the deal could fall even further, particularly among Republicans. Only 24% of Americans think that the government even has a responsibility to try and rescue a deserter who is captured by enemy combatants. This compares to 82% for soldiers that get lost and captured, 87% for soldiers who are wounded and captured. Even for soldiers that surrender to the enemy, most Americans (57%) think that the government has a responsibility to rescue them.
This isn't rocket science. Americans—especially conservative Americans—are more than happy to draw a distinction between those who do their duty and those who do not. And, further, they are more than happy to decide that we owe those who do not do their duty less than those who do their duty. We've been discussing Moral Foundations Theory for, literally, years now, and this case conforms to it almost perfectly. Conservatives value loyalty, adherence to authority, and playing by the rules much more strongly than liberals. Is it really shocking that conservatives support the deal to retrieve Bowe Bergdahl far less than liberals?