“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” ― Bertrand Russell.
The intensity of the GOP’s emotion surrounding the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl reflects political derangement, not a rational review of the President’s actions. For years, the GOP piously pleaded Bergdahl’s case. Even at his release, many GOPers were celebrating and tweeting the good news. But those celebrations have been choked, and the tweets deleted.
Benedict Arnold. Was he worse than Bowe Bergdahl?
Now the GOP would have us believe that Bergdahl was the most perfidious American soldier since Benedict Arnold. And that the five Taliban commanders released are so efficiently evil that they threaten the Earth in a manner usually seen only in superhero movies.
Let’s reel in the hyperbole. These men are no doubt hostile and may well be talented, but I doubt we have released a Napoleon or a Genghis Khan. In the final tally, The Bergdahl Affair is about just six men. American history is littered with Presidential decisions involving thousands more.
How do you compare the Bergdahl affair with the calamity that was the Iraq war? Saddam was a nasty guy. But there are lots of nasty guys. And under his dictatorship terrorists had no place in Iraq. If we had left him in place 4,488 American troops and 245 military contractors would still be alive. (Plus 150,000 Iraqis – if we care) And there would have been a power to check the Iranis.
Like Bush, Reagan had his agenda, and he was not about to let legal niceties stand in the way of deals with terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism. Nor would they prevent his fulminating against legally elected democratic governments.
241 marines killed in Beirut – how soon we forget.
And also during Reagan’s watch, 241 marines were killed in a sloppily protected barracks in Beirut.
LBJ and Nixon were not paragons of honesty in pursuing the Vietnam War – 58,209 dead.
Perhaps the most flawed reasoning on the Bergdahl affair is that it will inspire the Taliban and other terrorist malefactors to kidnap US troops. Because, of course, that idea hadn’t occurred to them before.
But it is pretty standard stuff for the Obama deranged. Let’s look at the Obama actions that incite the worst vitriol from the GOP. They want to impeach him for negotiating the release of an American POW. And the program they hate most? One that works toward giving all Americans health care.
Can you imagine the reaction if he suggested the same tax rates for capital gains as for earned income? Or removed the cap on the social security tax? Or proposed that hedge fund managers are taxed by the same rules as school teachers?
Combine Benghazi with Bergdahl and the pattern is clear. There is no limit to the political gain Republicans will try to wrest from the events surrounding a few Americans serving abroad.
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