Thoughts on the Bowe Bergdahl Serial Season 2 Podcast

I recently listened to the first two Serial Season 2 podcasts about Bowe Bergdahl.  Just like Season 1, I have found the Season 2 podcasts to be very well narrated and easy to get into.  After listening to the first two podcasts my opinion of Bergdahl has not really shifted.  I always thought he was probably a little mentally off and possibly should not have been in the Army much less the infantry.  With that said I don’t think he was crazy and he understood the repercussions of his actions. The podcast just reaffirms this for me because he is trying to spin a tale to defend himself about how he was going to walk over 20 miles from his combat outpost (COP) to FOB Sharana to inform his higher level leadership about the bad leadership in his unit.  He says that by leaving his outpost it would cause a mass panic that would force higher level leadership in Afghanistan to take seriously his complaints when he showed up at FOB Sharana.

For those of us in the military that have been through Inspector General investigations, the IG is the best way to get the attention of higher leadership if the complaints are valid.  Bergdahl supposedly did not know anything about the IG system.  I find that hard to believe.  Also he claims that after leaving his COP he decided he needed to gather intelligence on the Taliban to hand over to the battalion leadership at FOB Sharana to lessen his punishment.  So he decided to divert his route and in the middle of the night look for Taliban setting up IEDs and follow them to their houses.  Once back at FOB Sharana he could turn over the locations of these houses to the unit’s leadership.  Once again this may all sound plausible to civilians, but for those of us with combat tours in Afghanistan this claim is ridiculous.  How is this guy wandering around in the dark going to spot anyone much less follow them back to their house?  He had no night vision and ultimately claims he got lost that night anyway.  He claims after getting lost he found himself the next morning walking across open desert near a road where Taliban on motorcycles spotted him and detained him.

What was great about the podcast so far is how they were able to get the Taliban’s version of events of how he was detained.  They claimed that some nomads contacted villagers to say that a foreigner wearing Afghan clothes was at their tent asking about police and a bus to Kabul.  Word eventually got to the Taliban who went and checked it out and detained him.  Here is what I think happened.  Supposedly Bergdahl spent a lot of time talking with the Afghan policemen at his COP.  Bergdahl supposedly had a lot of interest in foreign cultures and tried to teach himself some Pashtun.  He was also one of these personalities that thought he was smarter than everyone else.  With him hating life in his unit I could see him possibly working out a desertion plan with one of the Afghan policemen at the COP.  He supposedly spent most of his time with them, so much time in fact that others in his unit were convinced he was either nuts or a secret CIA agent.  So what were they talking about?  If he did hatch a desertion plan with them that would explain the Taliban’s claims of him asking something about police and a bus to Kabul.  Maybe the policeman was supposed to meet him to help him get to Kabul where he could then contact the international media with his bad leadership claims before turning himself in?

It seems Bergdahl suffers from delusions of grandeur; in the podcast he even says he wanted to be thought of like Jason Bourne by completing the hike to FOB Sharana.  If he really wanted to make a huge story about himself, deserting and then appearing at the CNN affiliate in Kabul to air his claims would have been a way to do it.  Even this theory is pretty nuts, but I think it makes more sense then wandering around in the dark looking for Taliban planting IEDs to follow them home and then walk over 20 miles in the desert with one Camelbak of water to turn in the intelligence.

No matter the truth of what happened I still hold Bergdahl in the same category of Charles Jenkins.  He to was a little mentally off and deserted his post in South Korea to defect to North Korea misjudging the repercussions of that decisions.  He spent 39 years in North Korea before being released.  The Army still punished him with a month in jail before dishonorably discharging him.  I think Bergdahl should get the same punishment.  However, unlike Jenkins I don’t think Bergdahl is going to change much.  Jenkins’ honest reflections on the stupid thing he did all these years later actually makes him kind of likable.  Bergdahl seems like the personality type that will continue to believe he is smarter than everyone else and make excuses for what he did.

There is still a whole season of Serial podcasts to go that will delve deeper into this case so maybe my opinion will change.  Has anyone else listened to the podcasts and have an opinion they want to share about Bergdahl?