Saving Sergeant Bergdahl

I wonder how many people think that the soldiers who died looking for Bowe Bergdahl were on a Saving Private Ryan style mission together.  That’s apparently not what happened.

They weren’t out looking for Bergdahl. They were on the lookout for him while they were out on other missions. This isn’t a trivial distinction. It means that it is in fact almost impossible to say that they died on account of Bergdahl or for his sake because they were in harm’s way for reasons that would have placed them there even if Bergdahl hadn’t gone missing. They died in combat in a combat zone and, although it sounds callous, their deaths may have been routine. So it’s debatable how much they should figure in deciding whether Bergdahl was worth saving.

But while they’re thinking of Saving Private Ryan they should be thinking about this.

Saving Matt Damon was not worth losing Tom Hanks.

Now, Private Ryan seems to be a good enough kid. Definitely not someone who deserves to die. But he’s ordinary. Captain Miller, though, is extraordinary or at least exemplary. In the grand scheme of things, the world can do without a few Private Ryans here and there, but it needs more Captain Millers. Sending Miller to die for Ryan is a great unfairness, and Miller himself feels that unfairness, on behalf of his family and his men more than on his own. But he does still feel it. It infuriates him. He resents it. He would resist it except that he accepts the principle.

We don’t judge each other’s worth that way.

We don’t say,  “Before I bother to care what happens to you, prove to me you deserve to be cared about and cared for.”

We operate from the belief that we are all worth it.  In and of ourselves and not relative to other human beings.

We are all worth it because we are all human beings.

We care about and care for everybody, including the least deserving, because it’s our responsibility to care for the whole human race. You are worth it because you are one of us, no matter how much you’ve done to make us think otherwise. In caring for you, we are caring for everybody. On the individual level that means that in saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller is saving himself.

Say Sergeant Bergdahl was a deserter, and we have to say it because we don’t really know that he was, that’s an accusation made by members of his outfit who may not have been worth saving themselves had they been taken prisoner.  Given all we know that’s gone on over there, they might have committed atrocities, they might have been cowards and shirkers, they might have been rapists. The same goes for the men who died looking for Bergdahl. We don’t know. We’re not asking. It’s beside the point, at the moment. Bergdahl may have been a deserter, he looks more like a bit of a flake with a history of going walkabout, but he may have deserted, and, again, say he did.

Does that make him less than one of us?

And by us, I mean us human beings, not us Americans.

Did he deserve to be left to die?

More than you? More than me? More than whom?

The war---wars---have been going on for thirteen years.  Every grown man and woman in the country under fifty could have volunteered to go fight.  Every one under forty still could. Bowe Bergdahl did. He fought that war for several months before he was taken prisoner. How many people now saying he deserved to be left to die did not fight a single minute because they were too frightened, too complaisant, too selfish, too indifferent, too willing to let the Bowe Bergdahls do it for them?  How then do they dare give themselves the right to judge Bergdahl’s deserving?

Bowe Bergdahl went. It didn’t work out very well for him. But he went.

In my judgment that makes him more deserving than any of the chickenhawks and Sunshine Patriots.

But who am I to judge?

What makes me think I’m deserving?

And this is another, more selfish, reason we don’t judge each other’s worth that way: In the grand scheme of things, which of us is worth it?  Which of us is all that deserving?

It’s as I’ve said, “Looked at close, none of us is worth it” or as Hamlet said, “Use every man after his desert, and who shall ‘scape whipping?”

So we don’t just treat each other as if we’re all Private Ryans. We assume we are. And we don’t assume we, ourselves, are Captain Millers. We assume we aren’t.

We don’t demand proof someone deserves saving because we believe everyone does.

And because someday we may need saving ourselves and we don’t want to have to prove we’re worth it.

In saving Private Ryan, and Sergeant Bergdahl, grandly and meanly, we’re saving ourselves.

Comments

[steve]

As in the movie it is now up to Bergdahl to make the "saving" of him "worth it".

[Chris the cop]

It's got nothing to do with Pvt. Ryan or Tom Hanks or saving ourselves or whether you're under fifty or a goddam Republican. It has to do with whether Sgt. Bergdahl deserted. If he did, then trading him for 5 high level Taliban officials is not defensible. These are the people who cut the noses off young girls and shoot them in the head for learning to read. If he was an ordinary soldier doing his job, it's still a tough call, but very defensible. What decides it are the prior actions of Sgt. Bergdahl. It's that simple.

And what is this bilge about "members of his outfit who may not have been worth saving themselves had they been taken prisoner...they might have committed atrocities, they might have been cowards and shirkers, they might have been rapists. The same goes for the men who died looking for Bergdahl?" I don't see how you can give Bergdahl this massive benefit of the doubt and wonder in the same sentence if the people who "died looking him" moght have been cowards. How in God's name could you get killed looking for someone and possibly be a coward?

[Lance Mannion]

Chris,

Whether he was a deserter is a question to be answered by a court-martial which he could only face if he was brought home. You seem to be arguing that he should have been assumed to have deserted and left to die. No trial. No presumption of innocence. No opportunity for Bergdahl to defend himself and confront his accusers.

And I think you're conflating desertion with defection.

You also seem to arguing that there are people who aren't worth saving, which is speaking straight to my point about Saving Private Ryan. And my question is how do we measure that worth and who gets to do the measuring? You're nominating yourself.

And of course there can be cowards on the battlefield. There's a long history of that. My point is that we don't know the conditions of strangers' souls or the qualities of their heart and when it comes time to saving them we don't ask. We mourn the loss of those men without asking if they really were a loss. We assume everyone is. We assume everyone's worth saving.

As for whether the White House gave up too much for Bergdahl, I'm inclined to agree with you, but that's not saying we shouldn't have tried to get him back at all. And it's another, separate debate, although apparently the debate you'd rather be having. Which is fine. But like I said, I'm inclined to agree, although there's still the matter that we were going to be releasing those five guys anyway.

One more thing,I'm on record here as not looking forward to our leaving Afghanistan because I'm afraid of what the Taliban are going to do when they take over and I wish we had plans for a major evacuation of women and children when we go but I doubt we do.

[Lance Mannion]

Steve, indeed!

[actor212]

I wondered about that.

I know it's not standard Army procedure to send soldiers out on a mission to rescue a POW unless they know precisely where he is being held, and even then, he has to be a high value soldier (officer, of course) before you can get enough brass off their asses to sign off on a mission like that.

So when I read that not one, but *six* families claimed their sons (of course) died looking for Bergdahl, I was highly skeptical, particularly when the whole "desertion" trope was tossed out.

It's nice to know my skepticism was well-placed.

[actor212]

Lance, we should also note the five prisoners who were exchanged were scheduled for release this year anyway, and they were transferred to "safe" soil, being held by the Qatari government.

[evodevo]

EMTs don't ask what kind of person they are treating following a car accident - even if you are drunk and have just killed 4 people, you are still treated like everyone else. I don't recall Fixed Noise ranting on about something like that (at least not lately). Of course, with RWNJ logic doesn't seem to apply.

[Chris the cop]

I'm not saying he's not worth saving, but if he deserted then he wasn't worth 5 top Taliban commanders, period.

I hadn't heard that the 5 guys were to be released later this year. Is there a cite on that?

And as an aside, I could care less that Congress didn't get its 30 days notice, whether Bergdahl should have been traded or not. I've never been involved in swapping human beings, but something tells me the time table in negotiations would tend to flucuate a tad.