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Craig Pirrong gets first dibs on the Bergdahl flap.
Obama has exchanged five hard-core Taliban held in Gitmo for Bowe Bergdahl, a US soldier who went missing in 2009, and who was captured by the Taliban and subsequently held by the Haqqani Network. (The circumstances of his going walkabout are important, as I discuss in more detail below.)
There are many, many things wrong with this. In fact, pretty much everything is wrong with this.
Negotiating exchanges with terrorists, especially at such an exchange rate, is a bad idea. It just incentivizes the capture and ransoming of US military personnel, and US citizens. I understand that presidents are under a lot of pressure to renege on pledges not to negotiate with hostage takers, but the frequent reneging perpetuates the bad equilibrium. Many have pointed out that previous administrations, including for instance Reagan’s, have engaged in such exchanges or negotiations for such exchanges. The simple fact is that because it has been done before doesn’t mean we should be doing it now: N wrongs don’t make a right. The appalling outcomes of the previous negotiations (and not just in the US-Israel too) should be proof of the futility and indeed perversity of such a course.
The fact that the five people exchanged are truly very, very bad guys only puts an exclamation point to the previous conclusion. The fact that the Qataris will allegedly hold these people so they cannot fight against the US means nothing: they will be living large, with their families, a long way from Gitmo. It is the precedent and the incentive for future hostage taking that is the problem.
This is apparently part of some grand Obama scheme to negotiate a settlement in Afghanistan with the Taliban. I cannot think of anything more delusional. …
An officer in Bergdahl’s battalion tells the story of how he came to be missing. This is from the Daily Beast.
… the truth is: Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.
On the night prior to his capture, Bergdahl pulled guard duty at OP Mest, a small outpost about two hours south of the provincial capitol. The base resembled a wagon circle of armored vehicles with some razor wire strung around them. A guard tower sat high up on a nearby hill, but the outpost itself was no fortress. Besides the tower, the only hard structure that I saw in July 2009 was a plywood shed filled with bottled water. Soldiers either slept in poncho tents or inside their vehicles.
The next morning, Bergdahl failed to show for the morning roll call. The soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Blackfoot Company discovered his rifle, helmet, body armor and web gear in a neat stack. He had, however, taken his compass. His fellow soldiers later mentioned his stated desire to walk from Afghanistan to India.
The Daily Beast’s Christopher Dickey later wrote that “[w]hether Bergdahl…just walked away from his base or was lagging behind on a patrol at the time of his capture remains an open and fiercely debated question.” Not to me and the members of my unit. Make no mistake: Bergdahl did not “lag behind on a patrol,” as was cited in news reports at the time. There was no patrol that night. Bergdahl was relieved from guard duty, and instead of going to sleep, he fled the outpost on foot. He deserted. I’ve talked to members of Bergdahl’s platoon—including the last Americans to see him before his capture. I’ve reviewed the relevant documents. That’s what happened. …
How does the president ends up in the Rose Garden with a Taliban wannabee? Or is Bergdahl’s father trying out for Duck Dynasty? Victor Davis Hanson has more substantive questions.
There has been a lot to think about during these years of Obama’s foreign policy. But the problem is not just the existential issues, from reset to Benghazi, but also the less heralded developments, such as young non-high-school graduate Edward Snowden’s trotting off with the most sensitive secrets of the NSA, the “stuff happens” outing of a CIA station chief in Afghanistan, and the failure to destroy the downed drone that ended up in Iran.
In the latter category falls the mysterious prisoner swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top Taliban inmates, given that even at this early juncture there are lots of disturbing questions: Why not as the law demanded consult Congress on the releases from Guantanamo, or at least the congressional leadership? Why swap some of the most dangerous and important members of the Taliban hierarchy? What exactly were the circumstances of the original departure of Bergdahl (in 2009 two military officials told the AP that Bergdahl “had just walked off” with three other Afghans), and why were other soldiers requested not to disclose what they knew about the nature of his departure or the costly efforts to find Bergdahl? What exactly is the present U.S. position on trading captives for prisoners/hostages? Do we really believe that the released terrorists will be kept another year in the Middle East? …
Max Boot posts on how not to handle a prisoner swap.
Ronald Reagan traded arms for hostages. Benjamin Netanyahu traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Corporal Gilad Shalit. Ehud Olmert traded five living terrorists–one of them responsible for killing a four-year-old girl by crushing her skull with the butt of his rifle–for two dead Israeli soldiers. So there is nothing new about making deals with terrorists or exchanging captives with them. It’s even possible that President Obama did the right thing by freeing five senior Taliban leaders in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been held by the Taliban since 2009. Certainly Obama as commander in chief had the power to do so even if some members of Congress are miffed at not being consulted.
What I find offensive is that the president and his team are not treating this as a grubby and inglorious compromise–an attempt to reconcile our competing ideals of “don’t deal with terrorists” and “leave no man behind.” Instead the administration seems to be taking a victory lap. The president held a White House event with Bergdahl’s parents. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel flew to Afghanistan to commemorate the occasion. National Security Adviser Susan Rice called it “a great day for America.” …
Time for a welcome change of subject. John Fund writes on the new war between the states.
Wealth and people are moving in America, from places where local policies inhibit economic growth to places where the tax and regulatory climate is sunnier.
The numbers are clear. Between 1995 and 2010 over $2 trillion in adjusted gross income moved between the states. That’s the equivalent of the GDP of California, the ninth largest GDP in the world. Some of the movement might be due to weather — that helps to explain some of Florida’s $86.4 billion gain and New York’s $58.6 billion loss. But we can attribute a great deal to the fact that capital flows to where it is best treated. Travis Brown, author of the new book How Money Walks, reports that the nine states without a personal income tax gained $146 billion in new wealth while the nine states with the highest income tax rates lost $107 billion. …
More on this with a focus on three states from Sam Brownback, Governor of Kansas. Interesting here is cooperation rather than competition.
Fifty years ago, in 1964, Ronald Reagan gave a famous speech widely broadcast on radio and television called “A Time for Choosing,” in which he described the contrast between two potential paths forward for our nation. One path was the continuation of the big-government policies of higher taxes, higher spending, soaring debt, more centralization of power in Washington, more regulation of the economy, more dependence on government programs . . . and less freedom.
The other path, the new path, he described would bring to our nation lower taxes, less spending, reduced deficits, less government dependence, less centralization of power . . . and more freedom. He described a path in which “the free men and women of this country” were not “the masses,” a “term we haven’t applied to ourselves in America.” He reminded us that “the full power of centralized government . . . was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize.” And that the Founding Fathers further understood that “outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.”
Today some call that a choice between a “red state” or “blue state” model. I say it is a choice between dependence and self-reliance, between intrusion and freedom.
While President Obama continues to implement his big-government vision for the nation, Kansas and its neighbors in Missouri and Oklahoma are charting a course based on a vision of lower taxes and leaner governments leading to a more prosperous citizenry. Together our states are implementing taxes and regulatory policies that are building a Midwest renaissance. …