Catholic and Enjoying It!
VIDEO: Bergdahl’s release…
Qatar allowing released Taliban men to move freely in country…
Reintegration: Military hides Bergdahl from public view…
FLASHBACK: ‘Converted to Islam And Taught Captors Bomb Making Skills’…
NYT: Left note explaining desertion before going AWOL…
REPORT: Wanted to Renounce Citizenship…
Team Leader: ‘A lot more to story than soldier walking away’…
Death sentence ‘in the realm of possibilities’…
Pentagon knew whereabouts but didn’t risk rescue…
14 SOLDIERS WERE LOST Searching for Bergdahl…
Never Officially Listed as POW…
White House apologizes for ‘oversight’ in notification failure…
FATHER: ‘I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners’…
MAG: White House Overrode Internal Objections To Terrorist Release…
‘Suck it up and salute’…
RANKING DEM: ‘Dangerous Precedent That Puts All Americans At Risk Throughout The World’…
Rubio: Obama ‘Believes He’s Become Monarch Or Emperor’…
LAW PROF: The President That Richard Nixon Always Wanted To Be…
Senate Dems desert…
I’ve been holding off remarking about this since The Boy Wbo Cried Wolf Syndrome that is now the congenital condition of the Thing that Used to be Conservatism has taught me to be very cautious before accepting This Week’s Emmanuel Hussein Goldstein Hysteria at face value. Since it is a given that if Obama so much as hiccups, Right Wing Media will freak out and FB will blossom with WORST. PRESIDENT. EVAR!!!! memes, it’s hard to sort wheat from chaff and know if the thing the fulminators are fulminating about at present is worth bother with.
FWIW, (and I’m only guessing here since I lack the omniscient mind-reading power of the dyed in the wool Obama hater), it looks like Obama decided (unilaterally, as is His Majesty’s habit, since he is so much smarter than everybody else in the room) to take advantage of some intel, grab this guy, and do a Reagan style “arms (or in this case, GITMO detainees) for hostages” exchange. (Oddly, the Boys Crying Wolf never mention Reagan’s Iran-Contra deals as a precedent.) That was stupid enough, since the message is “Take more hostages”. But in addition, whether by dumb bad luck or some kind of misplaced zeal for showing Muslims we’re nice, they managed to liberate a guy who appears to have deserted to go build an newer, purer life devoted to the Way of the Prophet. I say “appears” because the news on this makes up for hard facts with a lot of high decibels from right wing media that have a strong interest in wishing it to be true. After all, this story follows hot on the heels of the Obama’s excecrable treatment of our vets in the VA scandal. So it’s high stakes. Obama needed this rescue to look like he Cares About Troops and the Thing That Used to Be Conservatism needs this story to be a scandal so we can forget that they just used our troops as human shields by hold their benefits hostage to their warmongering.
Blood-in-the-eye Obama Haters have already tried him for treason and are sure that this is all some kind of gigantic Muslim conspiracy. Much nonsense is being spewed and it’s hard to parse. But I think at the end of the day, what this comes back to is Obama’s hubris and tendency to unilateralism exploding in his face in a particularly embarrassing way. He might wind up with some kind of censure (though I doubt it) but, if I know my Movement Conservatives, I think it far more likely that the shrill obsessive hysterics they emit about this foolish move are going to fairly quickly manage to snatch defeat from the jaw of a brief public relations victory.
Meanwhile, as ever, the real story is not among these Beltway Cannibals jockeying for power as they try to eat each other. It’s the troops who died looking for this guy. As I say, unlike the combox experts who are already calling for his execution, I think I’ll wait until the military decides to try him for desertion and then wait even longer to see if they find him guilty. I know that’s old-fashioned in this new age of lawless bloodthirsty “conservatism”, but I think that a unilateral President is bad enough. A unilateral public (also known as a mob) is even worse. I say, investigate, try, and, if necessary, punish him in court, not in the press.
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