Welcome Home, Bowe Bergdahl

When Soldiers Become Disillusioned With War

Because each of the last three armed conflicts to which Americans sent soldiers was based on a lie, we should not be surprised that many a soldier has turned against the war in which he or she is fighting. I believe this phenomenon is most likely to occur for foot soldiers — those at the point of the spear — who are forced every day to confront the damage they are doing to the lives of people in whose homes they are fighting. Since I experienced this phenomenon as a foot soldier in Vietnam, I am not surprised that a soldier in Afghanistan grew disillusioned by the evidence that his own war was harming the very people he was sent to help.

The most destructive response to this pattern of disillusionment would be for Americans to question whether it is necessary to rescue captured soldiers. Every nation sending soldiers into harm’s way needs to convince them that we will do whatever it takes to bring them home. To bring home everyone captured in Afghanistan, we will need to continue to negotiate with the Taliban and offer to exchange the prisoners we are holding at Guantanamo and elsewhere. In the supply-and-demand economy of captured soldiers, diplomats, and even tourists, the right price to pay is the price that will yield the captive’s freedom. Every nation that cares about its citizens engages in negotiations, even after having stated that they will never bargain with terrorists. For example, Israel has negotiated with Hamas.

“Checking out” from war can take forms other than walking away from one’s unit. When I began following the story of Bowe Bergdahl, I was struck by its similarity to another story of a soldier’s departure. “Going After Cacciato” by Tim O’Brien won the National Book Award in 1979. It was one of the first American novels to come out of the Vietnam War. Cacciato leaves his unit in Quang Ngai Province (location of the My Lai Massacre) in 1968 with a plan to travel overland to Paris. Perhaps Bowe Bergdahl read the novel and was inspired by it. Or perhaps he is the kind of free spirit who listens to the beat of a different drummer.

In my platoon, people checked out of the war in many ways. It seemed to me that everyone had his limit — the amount of war he could handle. One squad leader reached his limit during a long operation along the DMZ during monsoon season. The holes we dug each night to protect ourselves from mortar attacks quickly filled up with water. When we heard mortars landing near us at night, we quickly dove into shallow holes that felt like bathtubs. One night the squad leader sent for all of the C4 high explosive being carried by members of his squad. With a blasting cap inserted, C4 could blow up a bunker or a tunnel. Lit by a match, a pinch of C4 could heat water for coffee in five seconds. The drawback was that it burned with a brilliant light. When the squad leader had collected all the C4 from his men, he lit a giant night-time bonfire that could be seen for miles, illuminating our defensive positions. The next morning, we sent him out by chopper to the Division hospital. I believe he eventually he returned to the platoon and resumed his role as a squad leader.

On another occasion, my squad was dispatched to provide security for a small village that had been overrun the night before. With a leap of logic that is possible only for young soldiers, we decided that the Viet Cong would not attack the same village two nights in a row. When we were invited to have dinner with a family, we quickly accepted. Dinner was preceded by a Roman Catholic prayer service that seemed familiar. After dinner we were offered a marijuana cigarette to round out the meal. Later we fell into our foxholes and slept soundly. I thought of that night as a kind of “time out” from the war.

During my final month in Vietnam, my platoon was sent to search for guerrillas who had been seen traveling down a nearby river. Where they had last been sighted, I stripped down and swam in the river until I found an underwater cave entrance. I searched the cave, but it was empty. We left behind two squads and the rest of our platoon returned to our hilltop positions overlooking the river. Around midnight, the two squads spotted boats on the river and began firing at them. When they received no return fire, they sent up illumination flares and discovered that the boats contained only women, children, and old men — all unarmed.

The men in the two squads returned to our hill with expressions of horror on their faces. The next morning we were told that our soldiers would be court-martialed, yet nothing happened. I wondered how I could avoid being part of another such tragedy. I began volunteering my team to accompany our hospital corpsman on his daily visits to nearby villages. At each village, I asked the chief if we could stay in his village at night. When I was given a night patrol or ambush assignment, I went instead to one of these friendly villages where we spent the night, hoping to avoid harming any of villagers who might be abroad after dark. In this way I managed to pass the rest of my tour in Vietnam without incident.

I hope that the military will not be hard on Bowe Bergdahl. As a nation, we have long since concluded that we cannot achieve the goals we set when we invaded and occupied Afghanistan — to establish a government capable of providing security throughout the country. We are now in the process of withdrawing our forces because we no longer believe we can remove the Taliban from the areas that they control. The Taliban may very well regain control of the central government in Kabul as a result of the current government’s corruption and ineffectiveness. Is it any wonder that a young soldier would become disillusioned with his role in a war that has cost the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people?

The very least we can do before leaving Afghanistan is to trade for the freedom of all of our soldiers, diplomats, government workers, and any NGO employees who have worked as part of this misguided venture.