The Washington Post published an article today based on private writings of Bergdahl. Normally I would think twice about posting something like this (his family has suffered enough), but these writings, including a journal and correspondence from Afghanistan right before he went missing, were provided to the Post by some of his friends and relatives who are upset with the constant attacks on his character. I thus see no problem with amplifying their message here.
The picture the documents paint is not one of a deserter or a defector, but one of a troubled, sensitive, and unstable young man who should never have been in the Army in the first place. He had been discharged from the Coast Guard under murky circumstances in 2006, after less than a month of service; the reasons for the discharge appear to have been psychological. He was accepted into the Army in 2008; although he must have received a waiver to allow him to enlist, such waivers were being handed out left and right by desperate recruiters at the time.
The full article is well worth reading; here are a few snippets. From Bergdahl's journal, pre-deployment in Afghanistan - he was hearing voices:
“The closer I get to ship day, the calmer the voices are. I’m reverting. I’m getting colder. My feelings are being flushed with the frozen logic and the training, all the unfeeling cold judgment of the darkness.”
And, from Afghanistan:
In a file dated a few days later, repetitions of the phrase “velcro or zipper/velcro or zipper/velcro or zipper,” cover nearly two pages.
There are more quotes, but all of them serve to illustrate that Bergdahl was struggling with something, and had struggled for years even before enlisting in the Army. Although I am not a doctor and cannot presume to judge whether someone is mentally ill, the simplest explanation for his disappearance appears to be that he walked off the base in Afghanistan because of his troubled state of mind. Not because he was a coward. Not because he wanted to join the Taliban. But because he was sick.
In light of this information, I can't imagine what his family and friends must have felt like over the past week. Their loved one was sick and a prisoner, for five years, half a world away. And when he was released, they looked forward to a celebration, and then to helping him heal. But then came the vultures in Congress, and in the media, crowing about Bergdahl being a deserter or a defector, tripping over each others' feet in their haste to smear his character and take maximum political advantage of his release.
For shame.