Bowe Bergdahl: The sensitive soldier

According to Emma Graham Harrison and Rory Carroll’s news feature in The Guardian (2 June 2014), Bowe Bergdahl sounds like an unusual young man. Raised and home schooled in a book filled cabin, without a telephone, but with the Idaho countryside as his playground, he is described as ‘thoughtful and quiet.’ A well read thinker who joined the US army, Bergdahl is quoted in Rolling Stone as emailing home to say that he felt ashamed to be American because:

“These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live.

“We don’t even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armoured trucks … We make fun of them in front of their faces, and laugh at them for not understanding we are insulting them.”

His father, Bob, spoke of Bowe’s apparent disillusionment prior to his capture, the exact details of which are unclear. It is tragic to think that an idealistic, thoughtful young man, not conceited, but sensitive to the plight of the local people in eastern Afghanistan should have been ill treated by the very people he accorded human dignity and respect.

Ideally, a soldier is a peace keeper and protector of civilians. Bowe’s father describes the conflict between knowing one is not helping and being told that one is helping, as ‘The darkening of the American soul.’ Soldiers need to believe that their presence is a force for good. If, when Bowe is well again, and able to write and speak about his personal understanding and beliefs, contrasted with his US army modern soldiering experience and of his Taliban captivity, he may yet become a reluctant spokesperson for his generation. Let’s hope for an end to conceit at least, before we aspire to understanding and compassion.

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