When It Comes to Bowe Bergdahl, ‘We All Really Failed’

I am a veteran. My older brother committed suicide as we were told from the Army. There was no follow up, no feedback of any type of investigation or understanding. I am a psychologist now in my seventies and the inadequateness and wonder if it's any different now.

My son is a vet. He served in the GA National Guard and did a tour in Afghanistan. This screams disgruntled vet trying to say the army failed not the individual... sure we recruited lots of people we shouldn’t have... but all of them managed to not walk off a base during a war... he should have been punished for what he did... he wasn’t (or at least not enough)... lots of people like to quote 3 people were injured on rescue missions but dozens more were injured on missions that were launched because we had intel he might be somewhere but it was just a ploy to ambush US troops...

I write this as a Vietnam veteran who served proudly even though we've all learned how flawed the policy was and how we stumbled into to it. I have also been diagnosed with PTSD and have spent seven years in therapy with the VA learning what it is, accepting that I have it and learning how to manage it for the remainder of my life. It has been recognized and accepted that he was not qualified to enlist, but was accepted anyway. Is it his fault or the military? He returned from captivity and, according to your article, assisted our intelligence services and enabled them to better do their jobs. Has he been recognized for this contribution? I can't imagine anyone who was a POW coming home and not suffering from PTSD. I just can't. The military and those officers who presided over his trial have denied him the treatment that he needs. The VA is not available to him because of the nature of his discharge. How many careers will not be available to him due to the nature of his discharge? Is this his reward for successfully help our intelligence agencies to keep us safe? So they took and unqualified young man into the military and completely blamed him for his behavior and capture and then threw him under the bus. I wonder if they ever served in a rifle company under that stress? Reduction in rank to Private? Sure. Discharge from the military. Okay. But Dishonorable Discharge? Is there an attorney among you who will step forward and help this man?

Go ahead, join the US military; learn how to destroy things and kill people. Get sent into combat and come home in a bag or broken. For what? The honour of serving in Vietnam, Version 3.0? Another pointless, losing forever war. As noted, being in the military is indeed wonderful preparation for being homeless, which is the final proof of the soldier having been used and thrown away. Only fools enlist, and by doing so they enable the waste of American blood and treasure by an institution, the DoD, that has a string of objective failures and has not had one real, enduring victory since 1945. Boycott the military; force the government to reinstate the draft and thereby ensure that when y’all go to war everyone has skin in the game. Maybe it will make you pay attention when your government decides it needs your child for another bloody quagmire.

I agree with the author's opinion - that we all failed. I also agree that the public hatred and vilification of Bergdahl is unwarranted. Bergdahl certainly paid a heavy price for his behavior - both in the months of being held and tortured and in his dishonorable discharge from the army. Not everyone is emotionally fit to be a soldier.

What bothers me most is the readuced standards today for Mikitary service With 25-30% entering service with a pre exiting mental illness and drug issues the effect on Military Readiness is frightening Not to mention the impact our 100% physically wounded PRE9/11 Veterans feel when trying to receive VA Care and Benefits. The VA these days is nothing more than an old time state hospital for the insane....

Bergdahl lasted 27 days in Coast Guard boot camp and was sent home. The Army was so desperate for warm bodies that their recruitment standards were lowered to the level that qualified Bergdahl to enlist, end of story.

Down towards the end of the interview, is the little nugget of gold that should make us all step back. The Army, having a difficult time finding people to volunteer to man a quagmire, enlisted people whom they should not have accepted. They accepted people who were more fragile both physically and emotionally - and if the author is to be believed ethically and morally. Was Bergdahl fit to serve, emotionally? Our military and veteran policy leaves a train wreck behind of unemployment - for people trained to action and adrenaline - PTSD, ailments, injury and disability for which the nation has few resources and fewer solutions. We could consider not sending our young people off to useless wars. Which will never happen. In lieu of that, we need to step back and explore the stories like Bergdahl's without the overtones of the idea of the military dredged up from old John Wayne movies.

Reading the review of Matt Farwell's book about Bowe Bergdahl, raised the question in my mind: What war, after World War II, has America won? Perhaps it is time for America to put it's power, it's money, and it's trained young people to work fixing the aged infrastructure in America, and improving the education and health of it's people, instead of killing them off in foreign lands.

I concur most closely with WJH's comments. Having served in Vietnam when I was in my early twenties -- I agreed to, and commited to, certain responsibilities. AND I never deserted my post and will never view with favor someone's actions which impacted his unit. If I had I should have been held accountable -- in spite of my personal warts or insecurities.

I take care of veterans through the VA. In order to qualify for VA benefits, the veterans need to have at least a general discharge under honorable conditions (that is my understanding). So Bergdahl could not qualify. Maybe you don't care, but think. PTSD is a real thing. With rare exceptions, I can recognize when a soldier has seen combat, even years later such as in Vietnam, Korea, or WWII as well as other unnamed and unknown conflicts. Many come out as alcoholics, in bar fights, and sometimes arrested. Years later, they might be ministers, business or community leaders, good family men and women. Some of the soldiers who are dishonorably discharged commit crimes as a symptom of PTSD, which is a real entity. Some don't believe in it, they think they could suffer torture, stress, moral injury, and never break. I doubt it. Many first admit this when 50, 60, or even older. When a soldier is placed in extraordinary stress that combat can be, and is injured by that, either emotionally or physically, it seems that we have responsibility to help that person recover. The VA has counselors who are very good at helping former soldiers heal. I guarantee that Bergdahl is injured. He made a wrong decision, but he would never have been in that situation if not in the military. For these reasons, I believe that dishonorably discharged veterans, if injured while in the military, should be able to have their service-connected injuries treated by the VA.

Thank you Matt Farwell.

My friends from Blackfoot 1-501 still hate him and want him strung up. I get that. But at this point, I wonder if we'd be better off if they just kick Bergdahl to the curb, and let him go back to his little corner of Northern Idaho and return to obscurity. Learn the lessons, of course, but just let him go be creepy in a cabin somewhere for the rest of his life, never to bother my friends again, and never to be bothered again. Dragging this out again and again is just salt on the wound.

I look forward to reading this book.

An excellent article about the failure of the politicians, the military and the media to recognize that soldiers are not robots, but human beings. There are plenty of (mostly ignored) articles about the soldiers who kept themselves together until they came home then fell apart, as Farwell did. America is filled with veterans who are neurotic or psychotic, sent to do ugly, mindlessly brutal, senseless things by politicians and bureaucrats who've never been in battle. All of these post-WW II wars have been concoctions of the CIA/MIC whispering in presidential ears. That real people will be physically or mentally ground to bits is not their concern. And when will some competent journalist put together a book about why we really went into a country with no oil, whose only assets of export came from the juice of poppies and luxuriously fed diverse mafias and those in high and low places who they paid off? Is all of the media walking off of the high-risk job as Bergdahl did?

Mr. Farwell: Bergdahl's rescuers were injured attempting his rescue and his freedom was eventually secured by the Taliban in exchange for three enemy combatants - steep consequences. The only military punishment Bergdahl received for his recklessness was a a dishonorable discharge - lite punishment. How do you believe Bergdahl should have been held responsible instead of his discharge?

Good interview, book review. I may be forced to temporarily abandon my escapist Westerns to read it, even knowing it will make me sad, and probably angry to recap our mistakes. Two comments stand out; the tiny portion of our country that bears the burden of war, and the role of our quote ally Pakistan. We need a universal draft of men, women, young, old, and we need to stop calling nations that support terrorist extremists our allies. Our past mistakes were bad enough. Hopefully, we can, as this review indicates, learn from them?

I served twenty years and did a tour early in the Iraq War, yet I'm still very conflicted about Bowe Bergdahl. I don't know if I'm in any position to judge him. One thing I am sure about is that our draft dodging President is not.

Boo Hoo, poor Bowe Bergdahl. I can only wonder why the military does not make the final approval of his sentence. It's ridiculous that he is still on active duty.

Was it Frederick the Great who said that war is an extension of politics? If true, then this 17 year war in Afghanistan is a lesson on just how corrupt our political system is. The original rational for invading Afghanistan was to seize Osama Bin Laden. Then the mission was not to seize him. Then the mission was to choose up sides in the Afghan civil war. We simply chose the Northern Alliance because they seemed likely to prevail, not because they were any less violent and corrupt than their opponents. Then our mission was nation building. That changed to one of several 'surges' to defeat enemy fighters and secure the Afghan government. Then we went back to national building, more surges and finally a huge, costly training mission augmented my massive bombing that may have killed many Pashtun fighters, but has also killed thousands of innocent civilians. At each stage the Army was doing what the various presidents were asking them to do. And none of these missions were ever designed to either A) win the war or B) exit from the war. The media is also at fault. We've had countless stories about the war but congress has rarely been the focus of these reports. Yet, is is congress that funds this war and turns its back on its tragedies. All because no one wants to 'appear soft'. So killing and dying continue because political leaders are too concerned about their image to do anything. This is a textbook example of what a politically corrupt system looks like.

An excellent article. Humane, informative, not shying away from complexity.

Thank you for this story Mr. Katzenberg. I've always felt that sergeant Bergdal was unfairly treated. The five years of his captivity with the Taliban and the physical torture he suffered was punishment enough for him, without the public scrutiny, the court martial and humiliation. They are our "Sacrificial Lambs" who give up their lives in military ventures which have nothing to do with protecting our country. These military adventures around the world blinds us to the sacrifices our brave men and women are submitted to without much in return!

Couldn't agree more than I did five years ago with Mr. Farwell's view of this. In 2014, I countered a man declaring Bergdahl a deserter by stating, "We send these kids over to Afghanistan, subjecting them to hellacious conditions so we are responsible for the outcomes of that." I am an American interested in the history and politics of my country; and I have a good, long memory. It isn't always convenient but is almost entirely accurate.

Hm. I appreciate the military perspective from someone who served in Afghanistan. Farwell explains everything so clearly and eloquently. He acknowledges Bergdahl’s desertion was wrong, but the war is inherently wrong. People have been suffering for decades while governments are locked in political chess. Farwell gives more of an intimate understanding of the war with a rare perspective of empathy for Bergdahl - an opinion you don’t hear as much from the older generations of soldiers who served in Korea or Kuwait - and I find him more credible as a journalist/writer for it.

I'll try again. Bowe Bergdahl was found guilty by a military court and sentenced to be Dishonorably Discharged. So far, he is still on active duty as the military tries to decide what's next. This was a clear cut case of an active duty soldier walking away from his post. I think the author is making way too much of this.

This was an excellent story. It brings in the multifaceted issues involved in this case. The legal, moral, governmental, military and personal issues that make up this case. The author should be proud of his work. There may not be a definitive ending to this story but there is plenty to ponder.