The Nature of War

We Americans can be an awfully parochial and naïve bunch.  Many of us leave the U.S. for the first time expecting emotionally, if not intellectually, that the world is just like here.  Only the languages and the landscapes will be different.

That attitude is not unreasonable.  We live in a huge country and few of us are exposed to significantly different cultures.

 

Seventy percent of Americans don’t have passports, for instance.  For those who do travel abroad, Europe is by far the most popular destination.  In terms of cultural shock, visiting England is not exactly the same as visiting Nigeria, Vietnam or Afghanistan.  Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and his fellow soldiers were all stunned, I’m sure, by the intense poverty and “strange” cultural mores they witnessed in Afghanistan.

 

The general reaction, I imagine, was that they didn’t like what they saw and looked down on the locals with both a sense of superiority and contempt.  That’s in accord with human nature.  “Our way is better, so why do they refuse to learn from us?”  That expression is a fair summary of the common attitude.  Certainly that was the case during my time as a soldier in South Vietnam.

People in war sometimes surrender to temptations offered by the apparent absence of consequences.  A gun is power.  People being people – good,  bad – some will abuse the authority and do things they would never consider back home “in civilization”.  In a war zone, the veneer of civilization can be thin indeed.  Referring again to the apparent Afghan deserter, Bergdahl probably witnessed such things, became disillusioned with the army and made the fateful decision that he did.  Apart from the simple fact that he was not in Afghanistan as part of a tour group, who could drop out if he became unhappy, Bergdahl didn’t focus on the fact that the enemy certainly wasn’t full of angels, either.  Rather, they were known, for example, for murdering girls who simply wanted to go to school.

No, the choices are never between the saint and the devil.  But shades of gray do matter.  Our values of respect for life and freedom may be imperfectly practiced but which culture would you prefer to inhabit?  The Taliban’s or ours?  Bergdahl undoubtedly understands now the depth of his mistake.