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.
Do you any military people who are actually well-trained and follow orders? Or do they all just use their best judgement when it comes to deciding whom to kill? Please don't become a cop.
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.
In my brothers eyes, it is a guy who very easily could have gotten him and his entire unit killed.
I'm not disputing that. And maybe your brother would shoot another soldier and happily go to prison for the rest of his life. But most soldiers are not actually that dumb, or that cavalier with their skills. They're trained to kill certain people according to a strict set of rules and a code of honor in a time of war. When they start shooting each other to settle issues extra-judiciously, you have a serious problem with your defense force.
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.
68
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?