When the Haqqani Network released deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in 2014, an anonymous Defense Department official told CNN’s Jake Tapper he didn’t think the wayward former paratrooper would face any punishment. “Five years is enough,” the official said, referring to the time Bergdahl spent in Taliban captivity.
The official was wrong and the drama surrounding Bergdahl is almost over. In an appearance Monday at Fort Bragg before Col. Jeffery A. Nance, the Army judge presiding over his trial, Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy– two of the most serious charges in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Bergdahl admitted to walking away from his combat outpost near the Paktika Province village of Yayakhel on June 30, 2009, setting off a furious manhunt. He was quickly captured and imprisoned (by the same group responsible for kidnapping Joshua Boyle and Caitlin Coleman) until his release in June 2014.
Col. Nance will now preside over a hearing to determine Bergdahl’s sentence, which could be life in prison. It is fair to say President Trump, who said during the campaign that Bergdahl was a “traitor,” will not commute his sentence the way President Obama granted clemency to unrepentant serial leaker, Chelsea Manning.
the words no one wants to hear
Bergdahl said he didn’t mean to trigger the manhunt, telling Col. Nance: “I didn’t think they would have any reason to search for one private.” To every man and woman in uniform who harbors any doubt–and even to those who don’t–trust me this is not the case. As one who worked both on the ground in Pakitka Province (although years before Bergdahl was there), and in the Army Operations Center where such things are tracked, I can tell you the one phrase people want to hear less that “KIA” is “DUSTWUN,” short for “duty status: whereabouts unknown.”
When a soldier goes missing, the “leave no man behind” instinct kicks in, regardless of the circumstances of the soldier’s disappearance. The Army’s chief of staff personally briefed the parents of Matt Maupin, captured in the attack on a contractor convoy in Baghdad in 2004, in the Pentagon at least twice a year until his body was found. And the search for Ahmed al-Taei didn’t stop until his body was found, even though it was known that he was captured after sneaking out of Baghdad’s Green Zone to meet his Iraqi wife, who no one knew he’d married while on-leave in Egypt.
The Pentagon spokesman at the time, Rear Adm. John Kirby, summed it up when he said in 2014: “We’re going to do all we can to get you back. That’s an obligation that we have, all the people that put on this uniform.”
deadly consequences of poor choices
Other soldiers in Bergdahl’s platoon insist the ensuing search resulted in six combat deaths. The Pentagon leadership does not draw a direct connection between the two, but Col. Nance allowed prosecutors to enter those deaths and other wounds into evidence. That decision was among the legal setbacks that convinced Bergdahl to give up for a second time.
Additionally, when you consider the Obama administration swapped five dangerous Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl, you can understand how tempers are still hot over the whole affair. Bergdahl will likely become a permanent guest of the nation at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
Sgt. Bergdahl, soon to be Pvt. Bergdahl, will have plenty of time to reflect on that there.
