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defrogAt least I hope it is.
So ... everyone’s flipping out over this.
And admittedly, there’s a lot to flip over about – at least at first glance. But the more I look at it, the more all the hooha seems based on speculation and “what if”s.
Maybe it was illegal because Obama didn’t consult Congress on the swap. Unless maybe he did. And unless maybe it’s not actually illegal.
Maybe Obama abused his executive privilege – although some of the people now complaining about Obama’s use of executive orders weren’t all that worried about them when it was another executive giving the orders.
Maybe the deal will encourage terrorists to take more U.S. hostages (because it’s possible it never occurred to them to do that, or maybe they’ve been waiting for more US soldiers to wander off from their camps for mysterious reasons).
Maybe it doesn’t count as negotiating with terrorists since Qatar did all the heavy lifting. Maybe the Taliban don’t actually count as terrorists since they’re more like guerillas, with whom we negotiate all the time, unlike terrorists (unless we need to raise money to fund other guerillas in, oh, Nicaragua, say).
Maybe it’s a bad idea to let these five senior Taliban guys go free (though “free” in this case means staying in Qatar for a year under constant monitoring before they ever make it back to Afghanistan).
Maybe.
It’s hard to know. The media and the talking heads are still in wild uninformed speculation mode, and every day since the news broke, lesser-circulated reports have filtered in suggesting there’s a lot more nuance to this. As there usually is, though most people ignore it because COMPLICATED.
Still, there’s one thing I think we can be absolutely sure of – Republicans will milk the hell out of this to prove what they’ve been saying all along about Obama (OMGOBAMAINCOMPETENTMUSLIMBENGHAZI!!! … something like that).
For myself, all I’m wondering about for now is just what Obama had in mind when he okayed the swap. He had to know that releasing five Gitmo detainees – all of them pretty bad news, by most accounts – was (1) potentially risky to national security and (2) not going to go over well with both Republicans and the majority of Americans who have been told that all the inmates at Gitmo are too evil and dangerous to be put in a supermax prison on American soil, let alone released into the wild.
Granted, the latter doesn’t really matter – Republicans generally criticize Obama for everything he does, even things they otherwise support. And there is a political upside to bringing a US soldier back home – although critics like to point out that we’re talking about a guy who may have deserted his post.
Either way, is the GOP position really going to be that they’d rather let captured US soldiers rot and die than indirectly cut deals with the enemy as long as they’re soldiers who aren’t that supportive of the war effort? Because that’s kind of hard to square with the fact that many Republicans have pressured Obama to do whatever it takes to get Bergdahl home.
Anyway, this is why I just can’t help thinking there’s more to this story than what’s been revealed so far. There usually is. I’m pretty sure there’s something here that made Obama think it was worth the trade. Some are speculating that it’s his way of dealing with the fact that Gitmo can’t stay open forever, and if we can’t prosecute the detainees, we can at least get some use out of them as bargaining chips.
One day, we may find out what his reasons were, and whether it was the right call.
But we won’t find any of that out from the inevitable Senate hearing. In principle I’m not opposed to a hearing – something like this pretty much requires an explanation to the public, and it had better be good – but if recent history is anything to go by, I don’t think we’re really going to learn anything worth learning, except just how badly Republicans want to find something they can embarrass or impeach Obama with, and wreck Hillary’s 2016 bid in the bargain. And we already know that.
That’s my prediction anyway. I could be wrong. But at this stage I think most of the politicians and pundits demanding answers are not all that interested in finding out the truth (not if it doesn’t serve their particular agenda).
Let’s put it this way: when you have a Fox News commentator and former Bush admin official arranging media interviews with those soldiers who have been bad-mouthing Bergdahl the last few days, that tells me how interested they are in digging deeper into this story.
Something for nothing,
This is dF
So ... everyone’s flipping out over this.
And admittedly, there’s a lot to flip over about – at least at first glance. But the more I look at it, the more all the hooha seems based on speculation and “what if”s.
Maybe it was illegal because Obama didn’t consult Congress on the swap. Unless maybe he did. And unless maybe it’s not actually illegal.
Maybe Obama abused his executive privilege – although some of the people now complaining about Obama’s use of executive orders weren’t all that worried about them when it was another executive giving the orders.
Maybe the deal will encourage terrorists to take more U.S. hostages (because it’s possible it never occurred to them to do that, or maybe they’ve been waiting for more US soldiers to wander off from their camps for mysterious reasons).
Maybe it doesn’t count as negotiating with terrorists since Qatar did all the heavy lifting. Maybe the Taliban don’t actually count as terrorists since they’re more like guerillas, with whom we negotiate all the time, unlike terrorists (unless we need to raise money to fund other guerillas in, oh, Nicaragua, say).
Maybe it’s a bad idea to let these five senior Taliban guys go free (though “free” in this case means staying in Qatar for a year under constant monitoring before they ever make it back to Afghanistan).
Maybe.
It’s hard to know. The media and the talking heads are still in wild uninformed speculation mode, and every day since the news broke, lesser-circulated reports have filtered in suggesting there’s a lot more nuance to this. As there usually is, though most people ignore it because COMPLICATED.
Still, there’s one thing I think we can be absolutely sure of – Republicans will milk the hell out of this to prove what they’ve been saying all along about Obama (OMGOBAMAINCOMPETENTMUSLIMBENGHAZI!!! … something like that).
For myself, all I’m wondering about for now is just what Obama had in mind when he okayed the swap. He had to know that releasing five Gitmo detainees – all of them pretty bad news, by most accounts – was (1) potentially risky to national security and (2) not going to go over well with both Republicans and the majority of Americans who have been told that all the inmates at Gitmo are too evil and dangerous to be put in a supermax prison on American soil, let alone released into the wild.
Granted, the latter doesn’t really matter – Republicans generally criticize Obama for everything he does, even things they otherwise support. And there is a political upside to bringing a US soldier back home – although critics like to point out that we’re talking about a guy who may have deserted his post.
Either way, is the GOP position really going to be that they’d rather let captured US soldiers rot and die than indirectly cut deals with the enemy as long as they’re soldiers who aren’t that supportive of the war effort? Because that’s kind of hard to square with the fact that many Republicans have pressured Obama to do whatever it takes to get Bergdahl home.
Anyway, this is why I just can’t help thinking there’s more to this story than what’s been revealed so far. There usually is. I’m pretty sure there’s something here that made Obama think it was worth the trade. Some are speculating that it’s his way of dealing with the fact that Gitmo can’t stay open forever, and if we can’t prosecute the detainees, we can at least get some use out of them as bargaining chips.
One day, we may find out what his reasons were, and whether it was the right call.
But we won’t find any of that out from the inevitable Senate hearing. In principle I’m not opposed to a hearing – something like this pretty much requires an explanation to the public, and it had better be good – but if recent history is anything to go by, I don’t think we’re really going to learn anything worth learning, except just how badly Republicans want to find something they can embarrass or impeach Obama with, and wreck Hillary’s 2016 bid in the bargain. And we already know that.
That’s my prediction anyway. I could be wrong. But at this stage I think most of the politicians and pundits demanding answers are not all that interested in finding out the truth (not if it doesn’t serve their particular agenda).
Let’s put it this way: when you have a Fox News commentator and former Bush admin official arranging media interviews with those soldiers who have been bad-mouthing Bergdahl the last few days, that tells me how interested they are in digging deeper into this story.
Something for nothing,
This is dF
