I’ve been a big listener of podcasts for years but very few have grabbed me the way last year’s Season One of Serial (If you are asking yourself “what’s a podcast?” I appreciate you taking the time to read the blog but you should probably check out at this point. I’ll be back to talking about my virginity, hatred of bicycles, or other nonsense later this week) did. While at times frustrated that host Sarah Koenig wasn’t always asking the right questions and in my opinion it never proved Adnan was not the killer, it was a fascinating look at the justice system and a great listen. Now comes Season Two.

You probably know by now that Season Two revolves around an Army infantryman named Bowe Bergdahl walking away from his remote combat outpost in the middle of the night and subsequent capture by the Taliban the next day. He was held by the Taliban for close to five years before he was exchanged for five Taliban detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Those are the basic black and white facts. After that (depending on your point of view) things get a little fuzzy.

Before I get into my opinion on the first episode I should give a little background on myself. I served in the Marines for six years in a non-combat position in the air wing side of the Marines. Although deployed to Desert Storm/Shield I saw no combat. I spent plenty of time in lousy living conditions on deployment, mostly in the desert, but was never shot at or felt the stress/fear of being in that position. I was for the intervention into Afghanistan (to a point) and strongly against the war in Iraq. I only give those opinions to let you know I don’t see the use of force or the military in general in black and white terms. I very much saw my time in the Marines in shades of gray. I’m proud of the fact I served but don’t walk the company line.

So yes, I’m fascinated by the whole Bergdahl issue, from both the micro and macro that Koenig alluded to in the first episode, and looking forward to how this plays out. However, there is one issue I can’t get past- You don’t walk off your post under any circumstance. Certainly not in the circumstances Bergdahl found himself in. And I don’t mean in the grand scheme or military definition of “desertion,” I mean as a soldier (or human being for that matter) you don’t walk away and abandon your platoon/friends/fellow soldiers in a combat area. You. Just. Don’t. But I also believe this story is about more than just a guy leaving his post.

I’ll start with the things I enjoyed in the first episode before moving to the problems I have with the episode and Bergdahl’s explanation for his actions. Obviously if you’ve listened to the episode it revolves around the whys and hows of Bergdahl walking into the Afghanistan desert in the middle of the night and his subsequent release.

Although it would be impossible in the time frame of the episode to completely detail what life is like at a remote combat post in Afghanistan, Koenig does a good job using sound bites from fellow soldiers to give an insight to life at OP Mest. The snippets from the soldiers on their disbelief that someone would just up and walk into the Taliban-filled desert are great as well. Overall the episode is a fascinating listen.

Like in Season One, Koenig and her staff show they are good at what they do. She draws a outline for each episode and artfully fills in that outline with audio, music, narration, personal quips, and good storytelling. Some listeners don’t like Koenig’s NPR style of telling a story. I do.

The problems start when it comes to hearing Bergdahl’s version of the events. All of the Bergdahl audio is from conversations with a movie producer who may make a movie of his story. It’s a second-hand listening of a firsthand account. Koenig never gets to ask Bergdahl a question and the listener has to trust Koenig’s context of the conversation. And like Season One you are at the mercy of Koenig and her staff’s editing. In fairness the producer does ask questions but rarely do the questions put Bergdahl on the carpet. It’s always more conversation than interview.

The other problem is (and this may change but I definitely felt this way in episode one) neither the producer or Koenig have enough of an insight into military life to ask the right questions. Some of Bergdahl’s responses should be immediately challenged by obvious questions but so far neither the producer has asked nor has Koenig brought them up.

At the beginning the producer states that Bergdahl says he did what he did “for the most important/profound reason” yet one of the reasons was to prove to the world he was a “Jason Bourne” type of soldier. Not only is this not profound but bordering on mentally unstable. Wanting to be seen as a “super-soldier” is one thing, acting on it in this way is something completely different.

The other, and seemingly more important reason, was to draw attention to the poor leadership he allegedly observed in his unit and the worry that unless he did something drastic, the situation would lead to casualties in his unit. He also stated he saw poor leadership at basic training and during his infantry training. In the macro this sounds important, but in micro of Bergdahl’s situation, it doesn’t add up.

First off, there is hardly any “leadership” in basic or advanced training. You are told (usually in the form of yelling and screaming) what to do and you do it. At that point the concept of military leadership, much less COMBAT military leadership is completely foreign. Lives are not at stake. The best comparison I can come up with is if a person had never gone to school a day in their life and one day stepped into a classroom and said “This teacher doesn’t know what they’re doing.” It would be absurd because that person wouldn’t know what the teacher was supposed to do. That is definitely what basic (boot camp) is like and advanced training isn’t much different. At that point you don’t know enough to know.

Secondly, Bergdahl arrived in Afghanistan in May of 2009 and disappeared at the end of June, 2009. According to the episode, OP Mest rarely if at all was involved in combat. That’s an incredibly short amount of time to become disillusioned with your leadership and come to the determination that leadership is so inept and dangerous it will get you and your fellow soldiers killed in combat (truth be told it’s an incredibly short amount of time to become disillusioned with the American war effort and defect to the other side if that’s what you believe were Bergdahl’s intentions). The short amount of time in Afghanistan, the lack of combat to gauge the unit’s leadership in combat, and the fact that leadership observed during basic and advanced training have nothing to do with actions in the field are never brought up. And it should have been (maybe it will in future episodes).

As to the living conditions, before anyone gets too worked up about the conditions at OP Mest (described by one soldier as “the worst place humanly imaginable”), Bergdahl and his unit spent three or four days at a time there before being rotated back to a comfortable base. Three or four days is nothing for a infantryman. He wasn’t going without food. Or water. Or being shot at every day. Having to go without internet and Burger King for 72 or 96 hours isn’t hell on earth. There are/were much more dangerous outposts than OP Mest in Afghanistan with units on much longer rotations than three or four days. Koening offers no comparison to what other soldiers were going through at other combat outposts. Shitting in a barrel, eating MREs, and sleeping in the dirt is pretty much the norm for a grunt in desert operations. Does it suck? Yes, welcome to the infantry.

As to Bergdahl’s stated intention, to cause a DUSTWUN to bring attention to his problem with the unit’s leadership, it’s easy to fall into the trap of applying one’s own personal logic to this scenario. Under normal logic his scenario makes little sense. It’s akin to blowing up a restaurant for bad service when a comment card will do. It’s hard to conceive why a person would put themselves in such an extremely dangerous situation when other avenues are available. It’s hard to conceive why a person would put themselves in such a dangerous situation even if other avenues weren’t available. It was a borderline suicide mission.

In my experience in the military there were plenty of guys whose logic never made sense. Mix youth, some stress, and inherent instability and I saw plenty of bad decisions. We had guys who would make you shake your head in the simplest of situations, much less under the stress of being a grunt at a combat outpost. I think trying to use logic from afar to a situation that doesn’t seem logical under any circumstances is a mistake. So far I don’t necessarily have any understanding of why he did what he did, I just don’t buy the reasons he gave and I certainly don’t see them as “profound” given the circumstances described in the episode.

The military side of me had a lot of problems with the first episode. Koenig’s naive and wide-eyed view of Bergdahl’s situation and worse, his explanations, needed some counter-point. Like Season One, Koenig is attempting the impossible job of trying to present the facts without prejudice. But her reaction and tone to basic combat deployment situations mislead the listener (soldiers and Marines have been burning their shit at combat outposts for a long time, it’s nothing new…..or relevant). On top of that the tough job of presenting Bergdahl’s view without being able to question Bergdahl. Even so, she should have raised some questions even without the answers.

The human side of me is fascinated. I cannot understand the psychology of what makes a person do what Bergdahl did and I want to know more even knowing I will probably never get the full answer.  I want to know more about Bergdahl’s time in captivity. I want to hear more from the guys in Bergdahl’s platoon and the higher ups in his chain of command. I want to know a lot more of this story and truth be told I enjoy Koenig’s way of presenting a story. I was hooked on Season One and I’m hooked now.