America’s forgotten POW: Bowe Bergdahl
Guest Post: Why hasn't Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl become America's Gilad Schalit?
An
undated family photo of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from before his capture.
Inset: A still image of Bergdahl taken from a Taliban propaganda video
from July 18, 2009. (Credit: Reuters/AP)
[Glenn Greenwald is on vacation this week and three writers will be filling in for him]
By Murtaza Hussain
By Murtaza Hussain
The decision to send young men and women to kill and die in
foreign lands is one which is often taken without much real thought for
the welfare of these individuals, often barely past the age of
adulthood, despite the massive amount of rhetoric and jingoism which
surrounds their deployments. Soldiers are killed and maimed with
depressing regularity, registering as a brief news story and then in
most cases disappearing from the public consciousness forever. Perhaps
even more painful psychologically is the plight of soldiers in conflict
who disappear into the hands of those they have been sent to fight,
continuing to exist in a state of living death, often mistreated and
without means of contacting their loved ones or a clear prospect of
when, or if, they may ever safely return home again. During the years of
his detention in the Gaza Strip, captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit
became a symbolic figure in his country whose name was known to every
citizen. Through his suffering he became an iconic figure in Israel,
where concern about his fate was almost universal and public pressure
eventually forced the government to make his status a priority in its
policy decisions. Similarly, most every Palestinian knows the plight of
their own prisoners languishing behind enemy lines and popular opinion
ensures that their fates are front and centre in every political
negotiation carried out by their leaders.
Those in the United States who advocate war often cite the
need to Support the Troops, ostensibly to show them legitimate support,
but in practice usually as a means to stifle debate in order to further
their own agendas. “Supporting the Troops” is an end-all response and
bludgeon to any criticism of the massive, opaque wars being fought
around the world; but how much does it really correspond to reality?
What would be the reaction of Americans and American politicians,
especially those continue to support military intervention, to their own
captured soldier? Who is the American Gilad Schalit, the iconic figure
of sacrifice whose fate is the concern of every one of his compatriots?
There is no figure who occupies such a place in the American imagination, but if there were to be one it would rightly be Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
For nearly three years Bergdahl, a 26-year old from Sun Valley, Idaho
has been held captive by the Afghan Taliban. Captured in an attack on
his unit in Paktia province in Eastern Afghanistan, the only glimpses
his family and the outside world have seen of him over the past several
years have come through intermittent video transmissions
released by his captors to confirm his continued detention. In the
first of these videos released in 2009, Bergdahl can be seen visibly
choking back tears as he describes his life in detention, “Well, I’m
scared,” he says. “It’s very unnerving to be a prisoner.” From what
little intelligence that has come out about his life in captivity since,
it is known that as recently as 2011 he made an escape attempt from his
captors only to be recaptured and confined permanently in shackles to
prevent any further attempts. The last video footage released of him,
also in 2011, shows a young man who appears haggard and scared, a far
cry from the smiling military photograph of him before his deployment to
the Afghan battlefield.
Despite his nearly unfathomable suffering, Bergdahl is as
out of sight and out of mind to the average American as the average
Afghan, Iraqi, Somali, Pakistani and Yemeni victim of the past decade of
war. One person who has not forgotten about him however is his father,
who last year released a heart-wrenching video appeal for his release
which should be mandatory viewing for all those who make a point of
sloganeering about Supporting the Troops, or who advocate for them to
continue to be sent on “interventions” into foreign lands without
enunciating what clear, pressing national interest they will be serving.
Bound by suffering with others who have had their lives torn apart by
these wars, Bergdahl and his family are as much the victims of the
cynical maneuvering of politicians and the lobbying of special interest
groups as are the Afghans being killed and imprisoned over this war
today. In his video Bergdahl’s father appeals to the Taliban to
sympathize with his son’s plight by citing his empathy with Afghans
presently being detained by NATO forces, “No family in the United
States understands the detainee issue like ours. Our son’s safe return
will only heighten public awareness of this.”
Perhaps that may be true, but where is the public awareness
in the U.S. over the plight of its own captured soldier? Among those
who advocated sending young people such as Bergdahl to kill, die, and be
captured on an Afghan battlefield, who is advocating on his behalf and
campaigning to make his safe passage home a priority? Sgt. Bergdahl has
been detained for nearly three years, yet his image is unknown to the
average American, his name is obscure, and his fate is seldom brought up
in public discussions of the conflict. Unlike Gilad Schalit, he has not
become a cause celebre in his society, despite widespread insistence
that military service-members are sincerely revered and supported. Like
an untold number of nameless Afghans and Iraqis who have been detained,
tortured and killed, he remains an expendable pawn to those whose
interests have been served by these conflicts and who continue to
campaign for their expansion to new fronts.
Of those whose lives are ultimately affected by war, the
overwhelming majority have little or no say in the popular discourse yet
are made to bear the brunt of others ill-thought out or malicious
decisions. The same neoconservative ideologues who advocated the
invasion of Iraq and who have supported the continued occupation of
Afghanistan are now calling for Americans to be sent to fight and die in Iran, despite the widespread consensus within the military
that a war with Iran would be directly contrary to U.S. national
interests. What almost all of these enthusiastic war advocates have in
common is that they have never served in the military and have never had
to deal with the horrific consequences of their recommendations,. Such
costs are borne by people such as Bowe Bergdahl, who are forgotten and
abandoned once they cease to serve a political purpose. Those who
continue to call for more young men and women to be sent into the abyss of war
but who choose never to pay the cost of these grave decisions
themselves are the modern iterations of Henry Kissinger who in a moment
of candor famously described soldiers as “dumb, stupid animals to be
used as pawns of foreign policy.” The neoconservative pundits slavishly
campaigning to send American troops into Iran today can be seen to
evince the same dismissive view of those like Bergdahl who do the
fighting for them, even if they have learned to be more circumspect in
their wording than their famous ideological forefather.
Israelis, Palestinians, and others are admirable for their
tireless commitment to their detained compatriots and through their
actions truly exemplify the meaning of supporting those who fight for
them, all jingoism aside. Those in the U.S. who claim to Support the
Troops would find an appropriate place to start by bringing public
attention to the plight of Sgt. Bergdahl and by putting pressure on
their leaders to make his safe, speedy return an immediate priority. His
suffering and terrible sacrifices have gone on long enough and it
should be the duty of his patriotic fellow citizens to raise awareness
of his circumstances. Three long years in a young life is too high a
price to pay in lonely obscurity, ignored even by those who campaigned
to send him to war. It is time for Bowe Bergdahl to be brought home.
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