Best Damn Thing I've Read All Day -- A personal narrative about Bowe Bergdahl

Sun Jun 08, 2014 at 08:03 AM PDT
Why I haven't (and after today, won't) commented on the Bergdahl affair
by BoiseBlue

My cousin, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, lost his life unexpectedly several years ago. He was not on active duty when he died and that somehow made his death even more confounding. His older brother was stationed in Iraq when it happened, fuming at the contractors who did a terrible job of the same work that he did for a lot more money and quite a bit less skill, and his younger brother, who was stationed in Afghanistan at the same time but remained tight-lipped about any of his feelings regarding anything related to his duty, were granted leave to attend the funeral.

My late cousin and I were never particularly close, but his oldest brother and I were for many years because I was only a year older than him and that's how cousins roll. We used to spend many summer days at grandma and grandpa's house playing "army" in their backyard. I don't attach any special significance to that in this context: that's what kids did when I was a little girl. Maybe they still do, I don't know.

What I do know is that when we were pretending to be soldiers way back when, war was not something that had any special meaning to it. It was something that happened in the past, not something that happens today. It was something we don't do because it's not a good thing.

But the myth of the soldier, the bravado and sheer toughness, is too much to not mimic and want to become when one is young and impressionable. Hell, I carried a Commando doll with me for a few years, dreaming of one day becoming as awesome as Arnold Schwarzenegger, confident that by the time I grew up women would be just as studly as men were allowed to be.

Anyway, before my cousin's death I was a faithful reader and recommender of the IGTNT series, but I haven't clicked on one of those diaries since that day.

Now, I want to be clear that I admire and respect the writers of that series and I know that it was borne of and has been continued for noble reasons.

But what happened the day that I got the news was a gut-wrenching experience. There was a WYFP diary posted later that night, and I commented that my fucking problem was that my cousin had died.

I posted the comment, shed a few more tears, and then stopped.

It immediately felt wrong to me that I had posted about it here, on this site, a specifically partisan/political site. I asked for the comment to be hidden and, to this day, that is (to my knowledge) the only comment I've ever made that was hidden.

I didn't want to exploit to his death and I immediately regretted that I had spoken of it here.

I have shared a lot of my inner life on this site, but that was a line I could not cross. Or rather, it was a line I DID cross and then wanted to take it back. So I did.

Kind of.

Since that day many years ago I have not clicked on a single IGTNT diary. It just feels wrong to me even though I know that every person writing those tributes is doing it for noble reasons.

The Wood River Valley, Bowe Bergdahl's home, is a beautiful place. I can't describe it to anyone who has never been in a high-elevation Idaho valley - it's just beautiful.

I spend a great deal of time there. It's my home away from home.... Actually, it's my home away from my NOT home. Since leaving Boise I don't want to be an Idahoan and when that feeling zaps my soul, I go to Ketchum, which is just a ten minute drive from Hailey, which is Bergdahl's hometown.

Where Bowe is concerned, time stood still there. The yellow ribbons have not moved since the day he was captured. The signs have not come down. The people have not become less passionate. A drive down the main road shows many pictures of Bowe and they have for over five years.

No one around here forgot Bowe.

The rest of the US seemed to have amnesia.

Not just about Bowe, but about the war. The sacrifice. The loss.

The price we pay for sending our young men and women to foreign countries and telling them to do something that they can never accomplish with the resources we give them.

None of these things are abstract here. They are all very real, and they are all embodied in the form of one young man who has been held captive for five very long years.

As you might expect, the media is swarming. Everyone who is anyone in "journalism" is there or has been there, and they are shoving a camera and/or microphone in every local's face about Bowe.

But no one cares about the political football it has become. One local woman, with a camera in her face, said bluntly that we're not going to worry or fight about the politics. We're just going to celebrate that Bowe is finally coming home.

And that woman speaks for me, and for every Idahoan that I know.

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There is a weird, bipolar dichotomy that Americans have when it comes to our solders. On the one hand, we revere them and consider them sacred.

On the other, (or more likely because of that), we expect them to be perfect. Strong, determined. Unwavering in the face of adversity, strife, or fucking bullets shooting towards them.

I like to think that I don't understand that mentality, but the truth is that I understand it so well that I am beyond words.

Bowe grew frustrated with the war; he sent an email to his parents expressing frustration to which his father replied, "OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE."

No one knows what happened after that, and beware anyone who tells you that they do.

I am not getting into the nitty gritty about it because there are some things I know to be true:

The world is always a better place when we trust people to follow their own conscience.

We send men and women off to war and expect them to be perfect and then have a meltdown when they're not.

Guess what? They can't be, they never were prepared to be, and if you demand that of someone else then you need to be in a perfect, stone-free house when you insist that they should be.

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Why don't we simply trust the young men and women that we send off to war?

We trust them to defend our freedom, yet don't trust them to make a conscience decision about what they feel is right and wrong.

Some gleefully send them off to war and slap a magnet on their car and call themselves patriots, yet the moment one of our supposed heroes shows any inkling of a conscience they back off and say, "He's not worthy to wear the uniform."

Fuck that.

Bowe was worthy of the uniform when he was willing to die for you, so he fucking A is worthy of it now.

The fact is that there is a REAL flesh and blood American that was held captive for a very long time.

This is the reality. This is the truth.

A young man spent five years held captive and he's not a hero, he's not a turncoat, he's not a demon, he's not a hashtag, AND HE'S NOT A POLITICAL FOOTBALL.

He's a young man that went off to war thinking that he'd be able to make the world a better place by doing so.

He was captured, then he was freed. All the rest of it is just noise.

And all that matters is that he is coming home.

That's it. That's all.

After all these years, Bowe is finally coming home.

Everyone would do well to let him fucking adjust before casting him as a hero or villain.

All of it will come out in due time.

For many of us, this is not political.

We've been carrying him with us for a long time while the rest of the world moved on, and it's incredibly frustrating to watch everyone else play politics with it when, until just recently, it seemed no one even knew his name.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/08/1304798/-Why-I-haven-t-and-after-today-won-t-commented-on-the-Bergdahl-affair