Even here in Afghanistan, it's been hard to escape the torrent of news related to SGT Bowe Bergdahl, formerly the sole US soldier in the custody of the Taliban. Earlier this week, things got extremely exciting here when he was released in exchange for five senior Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

There's been a vast amount of misinformed commentary on the subject since then, some of it tragic and hurtful. Since people seem to think I know what I'm doing when it comes to military matters, here's a mixture of fact, informed opinion, and ranting on the subject of Bowe Bergdahl.

If you just read Fox News and Twitter, the exchange doesn't just seem like a bad idea, it seems like actual treason committed by our president in order to strengthen America's enemies. There are real people who are saying that actual thing on television. Here are the five arguments they most often advance, and some thoughts on them:

1. We gave the Taliban back their 'dream team.' These are the five most dangerous members of the movement.

The five who were released were senior, certainly, but that doesn't make them the most dangerous. War isn't like a video game, where you get to the final boss, who is also the leader of the bad guys, and he's the strongest one with the best attacks. These five were political leaders who were captured extremely early in the war, and are most notorious for what they did before the American invasion -- basically, they were bad people who did bad things. They are not ninjas, or super-mujahedeen. They don't have special IED designs in their brains, waiting to share. They don't come with 1,000 jihadis each. They've been off the battlefield for 12 years, and in that time Afghanistan and the Taliban have moved on without them.

All these five have is their name and their reputation. That's it. And they had those when they were in prison.

2. Bowe Bergdahl was a deserter and traitor.

That's possibly true. According to quite a few reports, Bowe Bergdahl grew disillusioned with the war in Afghanistan and wandered off his post, and was promptly captured by the Taliban. Not the smartest move, but those same reports paint a picture of a young soldier who was, at best, extremely naive. He joined the Army thinking it would be like a video game, that he'd be in combat killing America's enemies every day.

War isn't like that, though. Especially not war in Afghanistan, where most combat comes when you least expect it, in the form of an IED exploding in front of your HMMWV. When Bowe didn't get what he expected, he did what he'd done for his entire life -- tried to move on to the next thing.

None of that excuses walking off the FOB, which is essentially desertion. Now, in America was have this thing called the presumption of innocence, which means we need to give Bowe a trial before we sentence him or condemn him to rot in captivity.

And yet, that's exactly what many opponents of the trade are saying -- Bowe walked off the FOB, so he gets what he deserved. In fact, he gets worse -- if they had their way, Bowe would still be a prisoner of the Taliban, and would be forever, I guess.

That's a pretty steep price to pay for being a young idiot.

3. Bowe got other soldiers killed searching for him.

Many media outlets have been claiming that six soldiers died searching for Bowe after he deserted. What they don't tell you is how they got that number -- basically, it's every soldier who died in Paktika province (a huge province, mind you) in the four months after he disappeared.

The search was called off eight days after Bowe vanished, when it was clear that he was in Pakistan with the Haqqanis. No soldiers died during that period.

Using this logic, we could say that every soldier who has died in Afghanistan since 2009 was Bowe's fault -- after all, we've been searching for him this whole time.

Those soldiers died because they were in a war. That's tragic, and I feel for their families, especially now when they're being told that their loved ones died for a 'traitor' and 'deserter.' I also feel great contempt for the people telling those lies to the families, for it serves no purpose other than political gain, and causes them only anguish.

4. We negotiated with terrorists! The US doesn't negotiate with terrorists!

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether the Taliban are truly terrorists, the fact is the US does negotiate with terrorists when it suits our purposes. After the Iranians overran the US embassy in Tehran and kept our diplomatic personnel hostage, President Reagan negotiated extensively with them, and eventually unfroze billions of dollars of Iranian assets. There was also this thing called the "Iran-Contra Scandal," in which missiles were actually traded for hostages.

Beyond that, we negotiated with various armed groups in Iraq during that war, when they had some of our citizens hostage. Virtually every president has had to negotiate with 'terrorists' at some point.

The alternative to not negotiating with the Taliban is to accept the status quo -- that is, to be forever at war with them. The Taliban are not leaving Afghanistan; it is their home and they quite willing to wait us out. If we, or the Afghan government, don't negotiate a peace deal with them, then the war goes on forever.

This isn't like WWII, where we beat the bad guys, kill Hitler, and win because there's no one left to fight. There will always be people willing to fight us here.

5. This deal puts a price on all our soldiers' heads! Now the Taliban will try to kidnap them!

This is probably the most aggravating thing to read in the media. Seriously, what do you think the Taliban have been trying to do? They have always wanted to kidnap Americans -- we're just very hard to kidnap. The only reason Bowe was kidnapped was because he walked off the FOB at night with no weapon. That doesn't happen very often.

Americans, especially American servicemembers, have always had targets on their heads. This deal doesn't make us any more of a target.

Final thoughts.

Bowe Bergdahl was a naive young man who made mistakes. That said, he was also a soldier, and he volunteered to participate in America's wars, something 99% of Americans do not do. We shipped him to Afghanistan and put him in a situation he wasn't able to deal with. That is mostly his fault, but our role in it cannot be ignored.

We tell our soldiers that we never leave a fallen comrade behind. We don't qualify that with "unless it's hard," or "unless he's not a very good soldier." Everyone means everyone.

President Obama had to make a hard decision. In the end, it wasn't a good deal -- but it was the best deal we could get. That's how wars end in the 21st Century, and we'd better start getting used to it.