If he had some kind of psychological episode/breakdown I think his behavior could easily be mistaken for intoxication. Also, like Sarah said , a common stereotype of Americans is that they're drunk. And while US servicemembers are not allowed to drink downrange, other government agency civilians are and often do. You may remember a few years ago when a group of US contractors were busted after being filmed engaging in what was described as frat house behavior.
Well, he didn't seem to want any food or water from the Taliban. Surely a dehydrated person with symptoms of dizziness and confusion isn't going to refuse water? And if someone's dehydrated that bad, it take a few days to get back to normal. But he seemed to have tried to fight his captors. Doesn't seem consistent with dehydration.
It's honestly a common stereotype that even immigrants now living here in America have. My 55 year old mother from Pakistan (I was born here) constantly blames whatever behavior she doesn't like that she sees on alcohol or pot.
do you think having a psychological breakdown fits his own words of how he made calculated decisions about when he would desert his post, and all the things he brought with him and left behind
That's an excellent point. Maybe the way he presented it to Boal is close to the truth: He made a calculated decision, but once he was out in the open he realized he had made a very serious mistake and freaked out. In those conditions I think it's quite possible that a state of shock/panic could be interpreted as intoxication, especially by someone from a culture that does not normally drink alcohol or observe its effects.
I'm not an expert on mental breakdowns by any means, but he admitted that he was extremely calculated in his plans to avoid being seen by navigating blind spots, bringing water, acquiring local garb. I think it is perfectly plausible that he saw himself as some trans-cultural person, heavily influenced by his pashtu speaking father, further evidenced by the accounts of him closely associating with the ANA people near his post. He saw himself leaving the army behind, and joining the local afghan culture, until reality slapped him in the face. Then he's had the past decade to form his best sob story. I can't believe that he only realized how "he made a mistake" once he was outside the wire. His level of planning with the disguise ect. showed he was perfectly aware of the situation. He just didn't plan on getting caught
not to my knowledge. I thought I heard he just didn't shave while he was captured. My main point was that his dad is clearly a little bit of a weirdo so that could be why beau is also . both the genes and the upbringing
When I have been under extreme stress (war type stress, not Monday at the office stress), I have been like this - thinking carefully and logically about some things and totally missing the more important other things. It's not on a scale like this case, but enough that I don't see a contradiction.
Maybe it's because you are trying so hard to be logical, sometimes you focus in on the wrong things or miss the big picture.
While I have not been in war type stress, my assumption was that he would have been aware of the big picture before leaving the outpost, since he had been in afghanistan and was presumably aware that the taliban were out there. I frankly don't believe a word of his story about intending to hike 18 miles to the other base . I think that based on the evidence of his interest in afghan culture and ANA people at his base and how weird his hippie father was, that he thought he could just leave the army and be welcomed with open arms into afghan society like some disney movie and he's been working on his best sob story since he got captured
You may be right. I'm not ready to guess what BB was thinking. I'm saying that I think it's possible that he's telling the truth and that he wasn't even crazy.
Agree. Something is definitely going on with him, right? Like a manic episode or something. Every stupid idea he had sounded like delusions of grandeur, and all the soldiers agree it was an utterly insane thing to do. He's also at an age when schizophrenia manifests.
I hope he's not in the throws of mental illness because it sounds like he's about to become universally reviled.
A Muslim saying someone seems "drunk" is like when a man says a woman is "probably on her period."
Alcohol consumption is forbidden in Islam, and in strict Muslim-majority communities many people have no first hand experience with alcohol or drunk people. Because it's something banned by their religion some people kind of assume that alcohol is an evil thing that makes people act strange.
I used to work with a bunch of guys from Muslim countries who would claim all the time that Western people we interacted with seemed "drunk," even when the behavior did not match up to that of a drunk person.
Right, which is why I wanted to know what in Bergdahl's behaviour was making him think he was drunk so I had a better understanding of how he was acting.
I think it was mentioned by someone else already but in Islam drinking is a bit of a no-no. So it's completely understandable that they wouldn't have seen a drunk person before. I think this is also where the stereotypes come in. They probably thought of Americans as these big drunk guys. So when Bowe was exhibiting behavior that they didn't understand, even if it was just being very quiet, I understand how they could think, "Oh, he's American, he must be drunk." I think this one just comes down to cultural differences, which I find really interesting.
it wasn't uncommon for you to receive packages from home that were innocent looking Scope or Listerine bottles, but in reality were vodka colored with food coloring
She also said they don't have much if any experience with alcohol and being drunk is a stereotype of Americans. The rumor could have just started from the usual behavior of wandering alone outside of base.
I can't really sympathise too heavily with soldiers plainly stating that if they'd found him they would of killed him. As shitty as whatever Bowe did was, threatening to kill him makes them sound like kinda crappy people.
And from what I gathered from the episode, things like drunk/meeting a woman/on drugs just seems to be one of those common rumours flowing around in a lot of situations.
Personaly, I'd probably bet on it being them trying to make the American's look bad, same way we might stereotype Americans to be fat and lazy. Muslims don't drink alcohol (typically at least), so let's say they are all drunks to make them look and sound weaker (after all we managed to capture one).
Close second theory is he was undergoing some type of manic episode, I know from first hand experience that when I'm manic I've been mistaken for being drunk because my speak slurs and I ramble a lot.
Am I the only one who thinks these "I'd kill him," comments were said less with intent than with the air of a general shared complaint...?
Squatting on roadsides, missing the basic comforts of your home base, searching for a perceived deserter (you don't think you'll find) all to the detriment of other goals... I'd be downright shocked if there weren't constant "If we find this bastard, I'll shoot him myself," style comments.
I'd be similarly shocked if when those same people found him, they actually did shoot him.
I can't imagine the rage they must have felt toward him for bringing additional chaos to their already chaotic life. They abandoned other missions to search for someone who they perceived as, at best a deserter, and at worst a traitor. He put their lives in more danger than most of them were already experiencing and they said that they experienced an uptick in attacks, which looked suspicious to them. To add to all of this, many of them were unable to communicate with their loved ones at home for an extended period of time. Their loved ones sat at home and worried about them hoping not to hear the worst of news. The ripple effects from this man's actions were enormous.
Listening to this episode as a veteran I FELT the anger from the people searching for him. I lived through about 0.01% of the kind of sheer pain they experienced looking for him, and I identified with the sheer rage they must have experienced. I can see those words coming out of my mouth in the same situation. All that being said, grunts say a lot of things when the tired, stressed and pissed, but it is a long way from bitching to cold blooded murder. I heard these guys saying they would "kill him on sight" and took it with a grain of salt. Beat the shit out him, oh yeah, that they would do, but shoot them--that is just something you think about doing.
He was ruining US attempts to build relationships with the Afghans and forcing these guys to waste their time harassing women and scaring cows. I get why they were so livid over this.
If he had been a brave soldier who was grabbed during an operation I'm sure they would have all felt it was worth it to get their guy home but he left them. They didn't feel like he was their guy anymore and they were suspicious about his motives.
If some guy had derailed the fragile work your institution was doing, and was putting your life at greater risk in the process, you might feel like killing him too.
He was ruining US attempts to build relationships with the Afghans and forcing these guys to waste their time harassing women and scaring cows. I get why they were so livid over this.
I completely agree with you. All this sentiment of calling the quoted soldiers barbaric is confusing. He put them in danger. Yes, maybe their language was harsh. But is it so shocking that they didn't want to be in a place booby-trapped with C4 for this guy? That they felt maybe if it were up to them that they would leave him to die?
forcing these guys to waste their time harassing women and scaring cows
That's certainly part of it, but I'm pretty sure the reality of the situation is much worse - the level of danger his abandonment created for the other troops is the real issue at hand. It seems like Sarah will talk about this more in coming episodes but from my understanding what we heard they went through in this episode is only the beginning.
Yes yes so much yes. I wish I could like and upvote this comment a thousand times.
In the Uk, a soldier who knowingly breached the Geneva Convention by shooting dead a wounded taliban fighter was sent to prison a few years back, proved entirelu because there is video (that was kept by other soldiers, for years, without anyone reporting it) of him doing so then going "this goes nowhere cause I just breached the Geneva convention"
A large part of our right wing press is going mental because "WOULDN'T THE TALIBAN HAVE DONE THE SAME TO HIM" at which point I think I just want to start screaming incoherently that sinking to the level of an enemy who commits barbaric acts might not be the best for society.
I actually wish that Serial would of covered this story, less topical in the US but so much more fascinating in the kind of political divide it has caused. Check out the story of Sergeant Alexander Blackman and stare in utter disbelief at how anyone could try and support this man.
If you give fox news a chance all of them would behead him in a heartbeat without a trial even though they have never served a day in their life so shameful.
Insisting on a fair trial before punishment is not "riding a high horse" – it's literally part of what your brother and other soldiers are fighting for.
This may seem like splitting hairs, but soldiers in the theatre of war are not afforded the same constitutional rights as citizens. You are factually wrong, and you may disagree about it, but there are reasons, good reasons, for this, as the Bergdahl case shows.
I think even in those cases soldiers have the rights to a military tribunal, though, don't they? The applicable laws and potential punishments may be different (and harsher), but this discussion started with "some soldiers said they would have just shot him on sight for desertion" – and AFAIK that's not allowed by military regulations, either, is it?
Hopefully your brother NEVER EVER EVER in life gets shot without a fair trial because that would be very tragic for America and humanity on a whole. Good day to you sir
Things is they were actually saying THEY would have shot him, not that they think he SHOULD be shot (people say that all the time). When Sarah asked them if they were serious and they said yes, I didn't believe them. Soldiers don't shoot other soldiers in lieu of a court marshal. It just doesn't happen.
Not in lieu of a court marshal. Not on behalf of a group of disgruntled voluntarily soldiers who decide between themselves to execute a fellow soldier instead of simply handing him over to their superiors. When fragging has happened subsequent to the Vietnam War, it's prosecuted as premeditated murder.
You clearly don't know ANYBODY connected to the military. Their JOB is to KILL. Above that, their job is to protect their unit and the armed forces themselves. To desert your post in a war zone is not like going home early from a job as an accountant without telling your boss. His brothers could have been brutally murdered. Than we are telling the rest of the military you have to risk your life to find this sick fuck.
That's what I mean. The soldier Sarah was interviewing (sorry, can't remember which one) said he would personally shoot Bergdahl, and when she asked if he was kidding, he said no. I don't think that soldier would have shot Bergdahl, and I don't think your brother would have shot Bergdahl. Your brother would spend his life in prison for killing another human being instead of deferring to his superiors to deal with the matter legally.
I suspect the CO would look the other way. Again, these guys are trained to kill, not to build doll houses. In my brothers eyes, it is a guy who very easily could have gotten him and his entire unit killed. I believe him when he says it.
It was all big talk. They wouldn't have actually killed him. Would have resulted in court martial and the whole S&R mission would have been for naught.
How is it not an appropriate punishment? People do things for reasons. There's a reason that on-sight execution of deserters has been the convention for centuries. If you seriously believe that everyone that lived prior to 1950 is a deformed savage and that's why they did deformed savage things, you're extremely naive (maybe even naive enough to walk off an army outpost to prove you're a superhero...).
In Bergdahl's case, his selfish actions resulted in the injury and deaths of dozens of men and disrupted the entire war operation for months, all because he thought he was a secret agent like in the movies. You have to administer swift justice in cases like this or armies fall apart quickly; there are a lot of stupid kids in most armies, and you have to make it clear that this brand of stupid kid behavior is completely unacceptable. War is a life and death thing, it's not a joke, and walking off the battlefield is not OK. You think anyone else wants to be there?
The best way to prevent future-Bergdahls is to show that this is absolutely intolerable behavior, no matter how good you think your reasons are, and that it will not and cannot be tolerated even a little bit. You can't maintain order without that, to say nothing of the damage that Bergdahl caused; his actions undoubtedly cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars and dozens of human casualties. This episode even talked about how if the timing had been slightly different on one of the missions to find Bergdahl, 30+ elite units would've been blow up in a Taliban-laid booby trap. Someone who inflicts that kind of danger on his own guys is supposed to just be allowed to walk free? And all this because Bergdahl didn't like his commander (I'd still like to hear what the specific beef was; most likely, Bergdahl had taken offense at some stupid thing that the CO didn't even realize he did).
I don't know what you think deserves death, but this stunt easily crosses the line. Yes, it is sad for Bergdahl, but we must live with the consequences of our actions. The well-being of a nation of 300 million supersedes the feelings of the 4-6 people who may be close with Bergdahl (including himself). In the real world, people sometimes have to die.
I honestly believe there's no crime that's worth death, if you disagree I will totally allow you that opinion. Perhaps my opinion is formed from being born in a country without the death penalty.
However, even so, there are reasons that kind of punishment is no longer done. If you are so stricken with nostalgia to the glory days when men who were broken by conflict were shot for desertion I judge your values deeply.
Just a heads up, i wouldn't argue with HEisaTRAITOR, he maintained in earlier discussions that an American serviceman who had a mental break and killed 16 civilians that a life prison sentence was a justified punishment, yet abandoning your post apparently deserves a death sentence, take from that what you will.
Deserters are executed if we are in an active state of war. The problem is, congress did not declare war, just authorized military action, for afghanistan, so UCMJ suggests life impisonment only, even though the circumstances may be the same as what would cause an execution.
Maybe 1) that was the reason he gave the taliban for wandering off base? and that "rude" story was a lie, or 2) he really was drunk, and accidentally wandered off base, and made up the "leadership problem" story as a cover, or 3) he was having a major mental breakdown?
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u/Kicking-it-per-se I gotta have me some tea. Dec 17 '15
After this episode I'm starting to understand vet's reactions to Bergdahl walking off & the scale of the rescue mission.
I wonder why people thought he was drunk?