There’s an overpowering and rather disgusting smell of swiftboating being generated by conservative pundits, politicians, and online trolls coming out of the woodwork to attack President Obama for successfully bringing POW Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl home from Afghanistan.
There seems to be no integrity behind these attacks, which display staggering hypocrisy. Those who for years have attacked the president for failing to negotiate Bergdahl’s release and return are suddenly feigning patriotic outrage over the president’s success in doing just that.
Let me recommend some readings.
First, I highly recommend this piece by Professor Juan Cole, “Is the Prisoner Swap Hysteria a sign of GOP War withdrawal Symptoms?” It makes an excellent point largely overlooked in other discussions of the prisoner swap.
The end of the Afghanistan War makes it impossible for the US to go on holding prisoners from that country’s Taliban regime of the 1990s, like the five former officials released on Sunday to Qatar. These individuals faced no trials either in the US or internationally. There were no grounds on which to continue to hold them. Letting them go 18 months early to retrieve the last US soldier held in enemy hands was not a difficult decision, given their imminent release in any case.
The five former officials of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan were not terrorists. They were state actors. The US civil code defines terrorists as non-state actors. State actors can be war criminals, in which case the US could refer them through the UN Security Council to the International Criminal Court. But it makes nonsense of language and law to brand them ‘terrorists.’ After World War II, tens of thousands of German Nazis and Japanese militarists taken prisoner during the war were repatriated by the allies. Where they dragged their feet, using the POWs for slave labor, the Red Cross complained that they were violating their 1929 Red Cross obligations. The US released many persons initially held as Class A war criminals, such as Nobusuke Kishi (the “Showa-era Devil”), without trial. He later became prime minister of post-war Japan.
Now we have the Geneva Conventions, which Obama argued apply to the prisoners at Guantanamo. The Geneva Conventions require that POWs be promptly released at the end of hostilities.
Obama clearly saw this prisoner swap in the light of the imminent end of hostilities in Afghanistan, as an early implementation of steps that would have to be taken swiftly in 2017 anyway, to meet US treaty obligations under international law.
You should also read the NY Times investigation of claims that tie the deaths of several soldiers to the search for Bergdahl after he left the outpost where he had been stationed (“Can Bowe Bergdahl Be Tied to 6 Lost Lives? Facts Are Murky“).
The reporting uses battlefield archives from Afghanistan previously published by Wikileaks to try and evaluate the claims. Excellent reporting.
Then there’s the howl of outrage expressed by Jim Wright’s Stonekettle Station blog (“Negotiating with terrorists“). This is pretty stark, digging right in to the point, and it’s gone viral. You’ve got to read the whole thing, and the follow-up, or counterpoint.
Here’s a taste:
When these capering lunatics stand in front of the nation, the world, and without a single shred of decency, without the tiniest modicum of self-conscious shame, without any apparent awareness of their own boundless hypocrisy, and loudly protest the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of our sworn enemies, I have to say no more.
I’ve reached the limit of what little tolerance I have for this insane hatred.
They say it’s because Bergdahl is a deserter, that he could be a traitor.
And maybe he is. Maybe he’s both.
And maybe he isn’t.
We don’t know. No one knows, except for Bergdahl himself.
And Bergdahl has neither admitted his guilt nor proclaimed his innocence as yet. There’s been no Article 32 hearing, no trial, no court martial. The military and the intelligence agencies haven’t even begun his debriefing. All we know for certain is that an American soldier was taken captive by the enemy, held for years, and returned as part of a prisoner exchange. That’s it. That’s what we know. We don’t know what events led to his capture, not all of them, not yet. We don’t know the details of his captivity. We don’t know the particulars of his release beyond the broad details that have been published in the press.
Nevertheless, Bergdahl has been condemned by the popular media, by social networks, by pundits and politicians, not because they know more about the situation than you or I do, but solely because they hate the president. If Obama was behind Bergdahl’s release, then Bergdahl is a traitor, Q.E.D. because the president must never, ever, be allowed even the slightest acknowledgement of patriotism.
This condemnation isn’t about Bergdahl, it’s about Obama.
There are several excellent pieces tracing the sequence of statements from the conservative side, first attacking Obama for failing to do enough to get Bergdahl back, and then turning around and attacking for doing so.
From The National Memo: “Right-Wing Hypocrites Demand Obama Secure Bergdahl’s Release… Until He Does.”
From Salon.com: “World’s worst Bergdahl hypocrite: The despicable return of Oliver North.”
From Vox Conversations: “8 conservatives who hated Obama for not releasing Bergdahl — and now hate Obama for freeing him.”
From FreakoutNation.com: “Before and after shots: Republicans pleading for POW Bergdahl’s release, until Obama made made the deal.”
From The Daily Banter: “Conservatives Have a New King of Bergdahl Hypocrites: Joe Scarborough.”
Taking a different approach, Richard Kreitner, writing in The Nation, turned back to a 1973 article appearing in the same magazine during the Vietnam War era (“Bowe Bergdahl and the Honorable History of War Deserters“).
The author of the 1973 essay, “The Truth About Deserters,” was Robert K. Musil, a former Army captain discharged as a conscientious objector, who worked to advocate for the rights of resisters, objectors and deserters. He later became CEO of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which in 1985 won the Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1997, Musil has been a professor at the American University Nuclear Studies Institute, and has authored books about nuclear weapons and climate change. He is one of the leading American experts on public health, environmental sustainability and nuclear disarmament.
I spoke with Musil today about how his Nation article relates to Bowe Bergdahl.
“I am shocked at the concerted effort led by pro-war elements to pillory this guy, rather than offer serious compassion,” Musil says. “Where is all that rhetoric about ‘we support our troops’? He has suffered a lot, as have others. Where is the understanding, the compassion, the humanity? I frankly think that’s the proper response to an American kid stranded in the middle of Afghanistan who feels he has no choice but to go away from his unit.”
In that sense, Musil told me, Bergdahl represents many thousands of other members of the US military who resort to desertion as the only possible escape: “When you look at them as individuals, as I did in 1973, you discover that they are Americans who have been caught in a system in which they have very little recourse if they have serious problems. Despite rhetoric of ‘support our boys,’ the support networks are extremely thin. It’s the only job in the world where if it gets intolerable you can’t just up and quit.”
In any case, comments welcome.
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NYT columnist David Brooks (deemed a conservative political and cultural commentator) agrees with Obama’s decision:
“Israel once traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners to get back one of their own. Another time they traded 1,150 prisoners to get back three of their own. They did it because of a deep awareness that national cohesion is essential to national survival. They did it because Israeli parents share a common emotional bond; the imprisonment of one of their children touches them all. In polarized countries, especially, you have to take care of your own. If you don’t, the corrosive effects will be cumulative.
“It doesn’t matter either that the United States government ended up dealing with terrorists. In the first place, the Taliban is not a terrorist organization the way Al Qaeda is. America has always tried to reach a negotiated arrangement with the Taliban, and this agreement may be a piece of that. In the second place, this is the dirty world we live in. Sometimes national leaders are called upon to take the sins of the situation upon themselves for the good of the country, to deal with the hateful and compromise with the loathsome. That’s their form of sacrifice and service.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/opinion/brooks-president-obama-was-right.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0
I’ve been enjoying Vox.com. First site I’ve seen that made Obamacare understandable. I’ll have to read their analysis of this situation.
Why are you surprised by the hateful back and forth diatribes from those that claim to be conservative and those that claim to be progressive?
Your very blog post has the affect of demeaning others that identify with being conservative. I don’t feel any better about the world now that you have established that the other guys are bad — and in return, you guys must be good.
Pointing out that the President’s critics attacked him for not negotiating Bergdahl’s release and then turn around and criticize him for getting him returned home is not demeaning those critics. They have brought the shame on themselves by their own virulent and unwavering hatred of the President, and their hypocrisy in attacking him for doing something which they had earlier said should be done.
I have no problem with catching people in hypocrisy. I just find the whole liberal v. conservative thing to completely dysfunctional. I really don’t care whether you prove your “team” to be better or not. I, like many, am just disgusted by the whole thing.
As a veteran myself, I am more than a little amazed by the GOP desire to attack our President over the recovery of one of our servicemen. The writings you quote are so correct. Sorry if it offends conservatives, but they should be ashamed of themselves for not even giving this young man a chance to defend himself.
Nobody is ashamed. This is just a never ending cackle of those that inhabit media space. Everybody in blog-sphere becomes a legend in their own minds. But nobody moves towards unity of reconciliation.
Bill —
America has long had an infamous i-am-god problem. it makes it very easy to understand the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. freedom of religion becomes freedom of rage.
(Reuters) – The father of Bowe Bergdahl, the Idaho soldier released from captivity in a controversial prisoner swap with the Taliban, has received emailed death threats that authorities are investigating, an Idaho police chief said on Saturday.
The first of the death threats sent to Bob Bergdahl at his home near Hailey, Idaho, was received on Wednesday, the same day the city canceled a planned rally celebrating the release of his son, Hailey Police Chief Jeff Gunter said.
“There were four specific emails with death threats given to the FBI and they are looking into it,” Gunter told Reuters in an interview.
Authorities are providing security to Bob Bergdahl and his wife, Jani, but Gunter declined to elaborate on those measures.
Bergdahl’s release after being held for nearly five years in Afghanistan provoked an angry backlash in Congress among lawmakers over the Obama administration’s failure to notify them in advance. Some of Bergdahl’s former comrades have charged that he was captured in 2009 after deserting his post.
U.S. military leaders have said the circumstances of Bergdahl’s capture are unclear, with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel urging critics to wait for all the facts to be known before rushing to judgment on Bergdahl.
The threats came as Hailey, a tourist community of some 8,000 people in the mountains of central Idaho, was buffeted by hundreds of vitriolic phone calls and emails.
another Salon piece actually peers into ancient American history —- long long ago, before September 2001!
“Not only did Reagan deal with terrorists as president, as revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal, the preponderance of evidence now supports the charge that his campaign negotiated with Iranian hostage-takers while he was running for president in 1980, to delay the release of hostages before the election, which could have helped Carter win reelection — what was known as “The October Surprise.” Given that Reagan wasn’t president then, but was negotiating to thwart a president’s attempt to get hostages released, this is not simply questionable behavior, it is arguably an act of treason. Democrats’ reluctance to vigorously investigate Reagan’s misdeeds — the exact opposite of GOP attitudes toward Clinton and Obama — has left much of the true story still shrouded in mystery, but what we do know is damning enough in itself, and still cries out for a truly thorough investigation.
First of all, there’s no doubt that Reagan himself set the precedent of dealing with terrorists — and encouraging more hostage-taking. He and his administration convinced themselves they were dealing with “moderates” in Iran. But they also famously sent Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to hang out with Saddam Hussein, and collaborated with Osama bin Laden in building up the most extreme mujahideen elements fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan — the very forces that eventually gave birth to the Taliban. When his own hand-picked “Tower Commission” confirmed the basic facts of the Iran-contra scandal, Reagan went on national TV and said, “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”
In short, Reagan had utterly terrible judgment when it came to the politics of the region, and the fact that he deluded himself about what he was doing and who he was doing it with was part and parcel of his terrible judgment; it only makes matters worse — it does not excuse them.”
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/07/ronald_reagan_treason_amnesia_gop_hypocrites_forget_their_hero_negotiated_with_terrorists_he_was_just_really_bad_at_it/
😀
meanwhile, from recent comments on your site, Ian, it looks like election-year emotions are already back to haunt us.
in the next 30 days, i might invest in anger-pill companies.
Obama seems to think that saying something makes it actually happen. Sort of like God said “Let there be light” and God saying it actually created light and it was very good. Obama says the war is over. He seems to think that his saying it’s over actually causes the war to be over. But the Taliban disagree. And the 5 really scary guys we sent back also disagree.
Someone wrote that Bergdahl is the only one who knows whether Bergdahl is a deserter (and, I might add, perhaps even a collaborator). That’s clearly wrong. Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers who were in his unit and directly observed his behavior agreed unanimously that he was at least a deserter and maybe a collaborator.
Actually, Ken, when the Commander-in-Chief says end all combat activities and withdraw from Afghanistan, it does mean the war in Afghanistan is over.
Unfortunately, Ken, many people don’t care about fighting and mass deaths, so long as they are not involved and the word “War” does not technically apply.
this is *very* much like the kicking and screaming in the USA, circa 1917 and 1941. Americans just should have kept to themselves and left things up to Germany and Japan. talking would have solved everything, i swear!!!!
things would be so much better now on our planet.
— die-hard absolutist
The debates of traitor or not traitor are irrelevant!Why in the world are we are spending billions and losing American lives in the deserts of Afghanistan? Our bloodthirsty leaders should be swapped to the Afghans .
There is no difference between the Repubs and Dems. It is a fact that the wars have continued under both parties. If either party didn’t want wars they would have all ended by now
Have been told that the soldier had been gone from his post a half-hour before being capture. In any case, he hardly qualified as a deserter according to military law that sets a 24 hour threshold.
And the commander-in-chief who obtain his release should be impeached, according to the crazies who pass for politicians in our absurd political climate!
yup, i think i just upped my investment in anger-pill companies. i may need to invest in heart medication companies too. blood thinners could be a real hot commodity when this year’s elections get even closer. vodka too.