Before I was exposed to the Serial podcast, Bowe Bergdahl was white noise from the five o’clock news my mom played while cooking dinner. Thanks to Sarah Koenig and other investigative journalist from the Serial team, I now have delved deeper passed ten second soundbites into more than ten hours of the story of the infamous “Dustwun.”
My outlook on the Bergdhal case began ambivalent (check out the “Dustwun” post below). Initially, I had a lot of sympathy for a soldier who had been captured when he already felt trapped in the military world. I also had a lot of questions: Why did he go into the army? What did he do there? Was he a “good soldier”? What exactly is a good solider? Who is Bowe Bergdahl?
As I’ve learned, Bowe Berghdal was a guy with values that bound him to a rigid moral system. He was a little tough to figure out, and is a lot misunderstood. And through these 11 episodes my view of the Berghdal case has evolved from sympathetic to…a lot more sympathetic.
Moving through the episodes uncovered other’s selfish motives for being angry at Bergdahl. One of the biggest arguments against his pardon was the claim of death of soldiers who went looking for him. In the last episode of Serial Sarah Koenig tells us this-
“But, rather miraculously, no one died on those missions. The six names of soldiers who died, they were all on missions that happened later, seven to ten weeks after Bowe disappeared. And none of those missions was a search-and-rescue mission.”
The one concern I had with the Bergdahl case while listening to the podcast was that Bergdahl would come home safe while other soldiers died looking for him. However, to find out that “looking for Bergdahl” was not only that derailed my trust in the soldiers who had been interviewed in the podcast.
“We put in FOIA requests with the army long ago on all these cases, but haven’t gotten anything back. Again, the army itself hasn’t formally investigated the question of whether people died looking for Bowe”-Sarah Koenig.
So how did the idea that soldiers died looking for Bowe solidify? Did it come from people’s anger? Spark from a game of telephone? Some of it came from the parents of Darryn Andrews, a second lieutenant killed in Paktika Province in a village called Palaw, His parents were told that Darryn had died in an RPG attack on a mission to arrest a high-value Taliban member. Though when they received word of Bergdahls return they were ready to tell the “true story.”
My mind is boggled by the anger so many people feel knowing the conditions Bowe was in. Look at the proof of life videos posted to Serial and see his suffering. The struggle and exhaust Bowe faced ring in his scripted answers, and add to the support I have for Bowe’s case.
The Bergdahl case came to a close on November 3, 2017 with the sentencing to be dishonorably discharged from the Army. Yet, there is still a lack of sympathy that carries on as even President Trump continued to call Bergdahl a “dirty rotten traitor.” Check out this New York Times article:
Bowe Bergdahl Avoids Prison for Desertion; Trump Calls Sentence a …
I have thoroughly enjoyed learning the story of Bowe Bergdahl. If you haven’t’ given Serial a listen, tune in! Here’s the link:
It won’t disappoint.
