2 June 2014
Last updated at 11:34 ET
Soldiers conflicted on Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange
Some US soldiers are angered by casualties incurred during the search for Bowe Birgdahl
On
Saturday President Barack Obama announced the US had reached a deal with
Taliban forces to exchange captured soldier Sgt Bowe Bergdahl for five
Taliban officials being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
Defenders of the deal noted that prisoner exchanges with unsavoury elements are a common part of war, particularly as a conflict is drawing to a close.
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Nathan Bradley Bethea The Daily Beast"Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.”
The news has also sparked a
debate within the military community, as some veterans of the
Afghanistan war have come forward to wonder whether efforts to rescue Mr
Bergdahl were worthwhile.
In the Daily Beast, soldier-turned-journalist Nathan Bradley Bethea details his experience as part of the extensive search-and-rescue effort the US military conducted after Sgt Bergdahl's disappearance - and its cost.
"Bergdahl was a deserter," he writes, "and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down."
He says that the US conducted daily search missions for Sgt Berdgahl "across the entire Afghanistan theatre of operations":
It was hard, dirty and dangerous work. The searches enraged the local civilian population and derailed the counterinsurgency operations taking place at the time. At every juncture I remember the soldiers involved asking why we were burning so much gasoline trying to find a guy who had abandoned his unit in the first place. The war was already absurd and quixotic, but the hunt for Bergdahl was even more infuriating because it was all the result of some kid doing something unnecessary by his own volition.
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Brock McNabb Former US Army medic in Iraq"Each soldier in the US is a valued treasure, and we knew that if we were ever captured, our guys wouldn't stop looking”
He goes on to name US soldiers
who died during these operations, as well as those who were killed
elsewhere because, in the opinion of a fellow soldier, intelligence
resources their units could normally rely on were being redeployed to
assist in the search.
Other news outlets have quoted US soldiers who echo Bethea's concerns.
Former Pte Jose Baggett told CNN that Bergdahl abandoned his guard post.
"Nobody knows if he defected or he's a traitor or he was kidnapped," he said. "What I do know is he was there to protect us and instead he decided to defer from America and go and do his own thing."
"I had a responsibility while I was there to the guys I was with, and that's why this hits the hardest," Javier Ortiz, a former combat medic who served in Iraq, told the Washington Post. "Regardless of what you learned while being there, we still have a responsibility to the men to our left and right. It's terrible, what he did."
Other soldiers emphasised that the US pledge to rescue captured troops, no matter the cost, is a comfort to those in combat.
"As an active participant in door-to-door, close-quarters combat in Iraq, one of the things that brought me hope was the fact that I was valued enough by my country that I knew my nation would do everything within its power to bring me home if I was ever captured," former Army medic and Iraq War veteran Brock McNabb told Time magazine. "Each soldier in the US is a valued treasure, and we knew that if we were ever captured, our guys wouldn't stop looking."
In the end, Bethea writes, he has forgiven Bergdahl because "it was the only way to move on".
"I wouldn't wish his fate on anyone," he says. "I hope that, in time, my comrades can make peace with him, too. That peace will look different for every person. We may have all come home, but learning to leave the war behind is not a quick or easy thing."
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