"In recent years the military has continued to expand while at the same time losing large numbers of soldiers to desertion," a co-author of the report, Jo Becker, said in an interview.
If you blame Bowe Bergdhal (because of desertion, a change in religion, or any other Fox News accusation), then please remember one thing.
Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining relief system, and natural disasters such as flooding and inability of the government to manage irrigation and flood-control projects properly caused widespread loss of life and normal civility.
The military has also been plagued by mass desertions, a lack of supplies, and leadership confusion, as Afghan forces are often left in far-flung regions of the country without reinforcements or supplies. .
Every night, the normally reserved Budapest crowd gives Mr. Alfoldi a standing ovation for his performance as the AIDS-riddled hero, who survives disease, desertion and a visit from a real live angel — who, not coincidentally, looks very much like the seraph on the Millennium Column.
Sceptics may ponder the traces of Spark's interfering hands: for instance, in the narrative of her escape, in 1944, from Africa and a violent, possessive husband, the desertion of a young son is presented as an act of sweet reasonableness rather than a desperate last resort.
Fined and exiled after being accused of various misdemeanours, some true and some apocryphal, he could never conceal his hurt at how he had been treated by Len Hutton, whose devastating captain's report about his Yorkshire team-mate's conduct was not so much an act of desertion but a sacrificial surrendering of Trueman to the MCC's guns.
Desertion was a dangerous adventure – commandeering a taxi, crashing through Taliban checkpoints and hiding with relatives.
The Mexican-American War also had little to do with principle — historians on both sides of the border describe it as little more than a land grab — and desertion was a problem even before the conflict started.
During the first quarter of the 2007 financial year, 871 soldiers deserted, "a rate that, if it remained on pace, would produce 3,484 desertions, an 8percentt increase" since 2006, according to the International Herald Tribune.
Al-Qaida-linked groups seized the northern two-thirds of Mali last April, a month after a military coup that followed the army's desertion of a military campaign against Tuareg and Islamist rebels.
