Hi clo,
Be careful not to fall into a trap. "According to reports..." Knee-jerk reactions and political insinuations aren't balanced arguments based on a full set of facts.
I assume that he served the US cause until, morally, he felt he could not. And then he made a decision to remove himself. If he felt the war, or the conduct of the war, was immoral, what were his choices?
Also, don't forget that the folks he served with did not like him, his independent, disloyal way of thinking and his mode of exit.
He deserted - military term. Doubtless he will receive the punishment for it. But generally he seems to have been a sincere man who wanted to succeed in the mission he thought he was performing. To help Afghans have a better future. When he perceived that the mission was less about altruism and more about domination, he was loyal to his ideals rather to the flag. Is that desertion? Or consistency?
Loyalty is always a question of perception. Clearly, folks who believe in the righteousness of US military adventures will think anyone who views them in a different light is the enemy. In his case, the enemy within. So for them, Bergdahl is Judas. But when I think about Judas, I always remind myself of the great story by Borges called Three Versions of Judas: "The famous text "He will sprout like a root in a dry soil; there is not good mien to him, nor beauty; despised of men and the least of them; a man of sorrow, and experienced in heartbreaks" (Isaiah 53:2-3) is for many people a forecast of the Crucified in the hour of his death; for some (as for instance, Hans Lassen Martensen), it is a refutation of the beauty which the vulgar consensus attributes to Christ; for Runeberg, it is a precise prophecy, not of one moment, but of all the atrocious future, in time and eternity, of the Word made flesh. God became a man completely, a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of being reprehensible - all the way to the abyss. In order to save us, He could have chosen any of the destinies which together weave the uncertain web of history; He could have been Alexander, or Pythagoras, or Rurik, or Jesus; He chose an infamous destiny: He was Judas."
People with ideals often do things that hierarchical loyalists abhor. Indeed, strict hierarchies often fashion and reveal the ideals. Ideals often seem to derive their firmness from an environment that demands subservience regardless of the hierarchy's own misbehaviour. Would there have been a Martin Luther without intransigent Catholicism? "Hier stehe ich. Ich knann nicht anders."
I think it is no coincidence that the US yields more than its share of Mannings, Snowdens and Bergdahls. Each one appears to have been a humanist. They believed in the values that US citizens are brought up to believe they represent. That is, regardless of country and hierarchy.
They support a zone of privacy. They encourage the establishment of civilization. They believe in the rule of law. They see candour as a virtue. These are the things they talk about. And that the agencies they work for dispense with them.
If people who believe in these proclaimed ideals frequently end up disillusioned, then maybe this expresses something important. That the established order is not as virtuous as it believes itself to be. Perhaps the establishment shuts them up because it cannot withstand the open challenge to its own authority. Perhaps it cannot withstand the mirror.
Kerry reviles Snowden because he reveals who Kerry actually is rather than who he pretends to be. Set against a man of ideals, a politician looks like a weathervane.
The NYT has an article which seems to show Bergdahl made little difference to the normal frequency of deaths in that area. The connection between him and the individual deaths looks tenuous. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/world/middleeast/can-gi-be-tied-to-6-lost-lives-facts-are-murky.html
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