Sgt. Bergdahl was recently released by the Taliban in trade for five prisoners. Since then, a wave of criticism has come from various Republican members of Congress. This would be slightly more believable had not these same members of Congress not only made opposite statements, some earlier this year, but also attacked President Obama on his failure to free Sgt. Bergdahl. Let’s look at the quotes below:
“With 29 percent of former Guantanamo detainees having reengaged or being suspected of reengaging in terrorism, the administration’s decision to release these five terrorist detainees endangers U.S. national security interests,” said Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.). “It also sets a precedent that could encourage our enemies to capture more Americans in order to gain concessions from our government.”
This would be slightly more believable if on 22 May, the same Congressman had not issued the following press release:
A May 22 press release from Ayotte’s office read, “As part of ongoing efforts to urge the Department of Defense to do all it can to find Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl and bring him home safely, Senator Ayotte worked successfully to include a provision in the bill that presses Pakistan to fully cooperate in the search for SGT Bergdahl.”
My most disappointing Senator, John McCain said in an interview on 18 February 2014:
Well, at that time the proposal was that they would release — Taliban, some of them really hard-core, particularly five really hard-core Taliban leaders, as a confidence-building measure. Now this idea is for an exchange of prisoners for our American fighting man. I would be inclined to support such a thing depending on a lot of the details. […]
On February 24, Rep. Nugent of Florida stated:
“Last year, on the fourth anniversary of Sgt. Bergdahl’s capture, on the floor of the House of Representatives, I introduced a resolution in the House calling on the United States to do everything possible not to leave any members of the armed forces behind during the drawdown of Iraq and Afghanistan. Believe it or not, I had members of Congress come up to me and say, ‘I didn’t know we had a living POW in Afghanistan.’ That was shocking to me,” said Nugent, according to a Feb. 24 article in the Citrus County Chronicle.
After the trade, the same Rep. Nugent said:
“But what angers me so much about this situation is that knowing full well that there was strong opposition to a prisoner swap in Congress, the Administration decided to go behind our backs and release the detainees without the notification required by law,” he said.
This might be more believable if it had not been than in today’s various posts, it has been pointed out that the Administration has talked about a prisoner swap with Congress since 2012.
For a view from a Republican who dealt with issues of national security under President Bush, see the quote below:
John Bellinger, who served as a national security adviser to President George W. Bush, said in a Fox News interview Tuesday that he believed Obama did the right thing in its recovery of Bergdahl. He noted that because the war in Afghanistan is winding down — U.S. troops will be out by the end of 2016 — the administration would have had to release the five detainees soon anyway.
“Sometime in the next couple of years, whether it’s in the beginning of 2015 or shortly thereafter, this conflict in Afghanistan is winding down, and we would be required, at least under the traditional laws of war, to return people that we’ve detained in that conflict,” he said. “So it seems in this case, we’ve gotten — we traded them for reasonable deal here.”
For me the frightening part is that there will be those in 2016 who will insist that those in Guantanamo should be kept forever and ever, without trial and without hope of release, even though that would be a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the traditional laws of war, and even of the idea in the USA Declaration of Independence that people have some natural rights and the insistence in the USA Constitution that all should have the right to a speedy trial, etc.
But, for purposes of this blog post, notice the the Republican members of Congress named (and some not named) were chastising the President on not dealing with Bergdahl until the President did, after which they shamelessly spoke as though they had never supported any such idea. You see, for much of today’s Congress, neither consistency, nor integrity, nor truth are important, only transitory political advantages.
I agree with your post. I would also note that I suspect Bergdahl was working for another agency, perhaps the CIA, from the beginning. I also suspect that the five Taliban operatives who were released will not be alive very much longer. I could be wrong on both counts.
We back our President, after all he is our president.
regarless