This is the tenth and final entry in a series of posts about Serial 2, a podcast focused on the war in Afghanistan. It centered around Bowe Bergdahl, and I wrote responses to the podcast for my first semester International Relations major-required course, Introduction to World Politics. We learned about the international state system, and challenges to international politics today.
My view before listening to the entirety of Serial 2 was that I knew little of the American military presence in Afghanistan. I did not know what soldiers experienced on the ground, how captured Taliban are treated by the U.S. government or how captured U.S. soldiers are treated by terrorist organizations (the closest thing I read about it before was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, about an American POW), how long Bowe was in Afghanistan or what the U.S. was doing in Afghanistan now. I lacked the most basic awareness of Bowe’s case or what his recovery meant for American and international politics and the war in Afghanistan.
At the outset of Serial 2, I just wanted to know why Bowe walked off. I thought understanding his motives would clarify whether he was ‘right,’ and I could judge political reactions and polarization based on the facts of his case. As I listened, I found that the facts stayed obscure. The facts in the way I want to understand them do not exist. Bowe walked off because he wanted to bring attention to a crisis in leadership, and he was recovered because circumstances allowed it.
I felt also that he was very young to be a soldier, and my view now is that expecting a different judgement from Bowe is impossible. Picking apart what made him a good or bad soldier does not address the system that recruited and retained him, or made the decision to have OP Mest or FOB Sharana in place in Afghanistan. My opinion changed as I learned about the way he was enlisted in the Coast Guard, medically discharged, and returned to the military in the U.S. Army. It developed as I learned about how agencies struggle to work with each other, and that the opinions can be used to make carefully weighed decisions about engagement, but are often just roadblocks to achieving any outcome.
I still think Bowe acted under some kind of delusion, believing he would be safe in open Afghanistan desert as a U.S. military soldier, and that he could not address the issues he saw within Army channels. I thought this because he “ties in his issue with bad leadership of his platoon to an idea of personal grandeur,” and I think this position is still valid because his reasoning does not develop past this point, and is further affirmed by the diagnosis of Schizotypal personality disorder, discussed in the Hindsight episodes.
After watching the proof of life video in the Serial 2 Listening Guide, my opinion about his captivity and case feels the same. He suffered for years as a Taliban captive, and however miscalculated his decision to walk off OP Mest, he faced difficulties that even the reintegration team could not prepare him for. I think the controversial backlash he faced was both directed correctly at him and misdirected based on pinning a target on the cause.
The claim that searching for Bowe led to soldier’s deaths was not investigated. The administration that helped to bring him home did not prepare for the public relations side of his return. Congress and service-members involved were not warned that he was returning. Bowe was brought to Germany first, to American debriefers, but a protocol was not established to bring him to the U.S., for there to be set questions to ask him. And at the root of it all, Bowe’s discharge from the Coast Guard was serious and not taken seriously. Although nothing like Bowe’s case had been tackled before, there were expanses of years where a recovery plan was not hashed out, and I feel that there was time to make a plan. The video supports my opinion on Bergdahl’s physical and mental state, but on his case I also know that operations in Afghanistan were affected and people looking for him were seriously injured.
While it is disappointing, especially that he was depicted as a ‘hero,’ for service members to see Bowe treated so lightly, and allowed to return to office work, I think that Bowe was certainly misjudged and reckless, there was not a right or wrong way to treat him on his return. There was not a protocol, and the consequences of his actions simply were not documented thoroughly, and “his case is simply a very normal part of war.” He suffered as a captive, and I think that was enough.
