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Streetwise Professor posts on the Taliban trade.

… So Obama has some serious explaining to do to justify this fiasco. So far his explanations have done worse than fallen flat: they’ve unleashed a firestorm of criticism. So you know what will happen: dismissing this as a manufactured DC controversy (which has already happened), attacks on the messenger (already well underway), and spin, spin, spin. Indeed, many of the media dervishes are whirling away as we sit here.

But not to worry. It’s not like anybody is noticing that Obama is feckless and incompetent, and taking advantage of that. Well, other than Putin, of course. And the Iranians. And the Chinese:

“On the surface, this may look reckless. But one theory gaining traction among senior officials and policy analysts around Asia and in Washington is that the timing is well calculated. It reflects Mr. Xi’s belief that he is dealing with a weak U.S. president who won’t push back, despite his strong rhetorical support for Asian allies.

Mr. Xi’s perception, say these analysts, has been heightened by U.S. President Barack Obama’s failures to intervene militarily in Syria and Ukraine. And it’s led him to conclude that he has a window of opportunity to aggressively assert China’s territorial claims around the region.”

I’ve often said that I hope Bismarck (“There is a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the USA”) and Adam Smith (“there is a lot of ruin in a nation”) are right. Obama is putting both aphorisms to the test.

A couple of our favorites try to understand how it came to pass we have such amateurs running our foreign policy. Kimberley Strassel introduces us to this president’s “Kissingers.”

… NSC (National Security Council) staff are foreign-policy grownups, and its meetings are barred to political henchmen.

Or that was the case, until the Obama White House. By early March 2009, two months into this presidency, the New York Times had run a profile of David Axelrod, noting that Mr. Obama’s top campaign guru and “political protector” was now “often” to be found “in the late afternoons” walking “to the Situation Room to attend some meetings of the National Security Council.” President Obama’s first national security adviser, former Marine General and NATO Commander Jim Jones, left after only two years following clashes with Mr. Obama’s inner circle.

He was replaced by Democratic political operative and former Fannie Mae lobbyist Tom Donilon. Mr. Donilon joined Ben Rhodes, the Obama campaign speechwriter, who in 2009 had been elevated to deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. Also present was Tommy Vietor, whose entire career prior to NSC spokesman was as an Obama spinmeister—as a press aide in the 2004 Senate run, and campaign flack for the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and assistant White House press secretary. In fairness, his credentials also included getting caught on camera in 2010 pounding beers, shirtless, at a Georgetown bar. America’s foreign-policy experts at work.

Not that Mr. Obama’s first instinct is even to rely on his now overtly political NSC. This paper reported in September 2013 that as the White House struggled with the question of military intervention in Syria, it summoned all the old “Obama loyalists” for advice. They included his 2008 campaign manager ( David Plouffe ), his former press secretary ( Robert Gibbs ), a former speechwriter ( Jon Favreau ), and Mr. Vietor (who had by then left the NSC to form a political consulting group).

A serious-minded NSC, in the tumultuous aftermath of Benghazi, would have responded with a sober assessment for its president of the real and continued terror threat, and of the failings that resulted in four dead Americans. Instead we find the deputy NSA, Mr. Rhodes, crafting an internal email advising his colleagues to spin, and blame it all on an Internet video. Mr. Rhodes had no interest in advising the president on hard realities. His only interest was ensuring his boss got re-elected. …

Jonah Goldberg sees the comedy. 

I think the Bergdahl story is really very serious and there are still lots of things we don’t know. My friend James Rosen’s story that Bergdahl turned mujahideen in captivity is very interesting, but it doesn’t mean — nor does Rosen say — that he was a jihadi when he left his base. And, while the case doesn’t look good for Bergdahl, we don’t know that he was a deserter yet. We only know that he was AWOL. Indeed, according to an earlier Pentagon report, we know he had a habit of wandering off base. That may make him a flake or an idiot, but it doesn’t prove he was a deserter.

Indeed, there are so many unknowns here that it might be best to withhold judgment on a lot of aspects to this story.

Save perhaps one: The White House is run by clowns. …

… My only point is that the White House’s political chops in this fiasco look about as sharp as Dom DeLuise’s forehead. That’s kind of weird when you consider that his foreign-policy shop is largely run by political hacks — as Kim Strassel notes in her excellent column from yesterday. “Obama’s Kissingers,” as Strassel calls them, should be better at the politics than the foreign policy, given their resumes. But it turns out they stink at both. When you run foreign policy like a domestic political operation, it turns out that both the policy and the politics can blow up on you. I think this is because over the long haul foreign policy doesn’t work like domestic politics. You can have the best political hacks in the world, but if you give them a job they’re not suited for, it will actually make things worse. If you want to see what I mean, ask your mechanic to do your prostate surgery. …

… They sent Susan Rice — Susan Rice! — out on the Sunday shows to beclown herself again. This woman was going to be secretary of state until she went out on the Sunday shows and read Ben Rhodes’s talking points verbatim. Apparently that’s sort of her thing. She reads what the hacks above — or below — give her. It’s like she’s the Ron Burgundy of foreign policy. But you’d think this time around she’d go over with her staff exactly what they know — and don’t know. You’d think she’d be like Roy Scheider in Jaws 2 telling the town council, “As God is my witness, I’m not going through that Hell again.” Instead she’s like Mikey from the Life cereal commercials and the White House political hacks are like the other kids. “Give these talking points to Susie, she’ll say anything.” …

George Will when a president goes rogue.

… Obama did not comply with the law requiring presidents to notify Congress 30 days before such exchanges of prisoners at Guantanamo. Politico can be cited about this not because among the media it is exceptionally, well, understanding of Obama’s exuberant notion of executive latitude but because it is not. Politico headlined a story on his noncompliance with the law “Obama May Finally Be Going Rogue on Gitmo.” It said Obama’s “assertive” act “defied Congress” — Congress, not the rule of law — in order “to get that process [of closing the prison at Guantanamo] moving.” It sent “a clear message” that “Obama is now willing to wield his executive powers to get the job done.” Or, as used to be said in extenuation of strong leaders, “to make the trains run on time.”

The 44th president, channeling — not for the first time — the 37th (in his post-impeachment conversation with David Frost), may say: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Already the administration says events dictated a speed that precluded complying with the law.

This explanation should be accorded open-minded, but not empty-minded, consideration. It should be considered in light of the fact that as the Veterans Affairs debacle continued, Obama went to Afghanistan to hug some troops, then completed the terrorists-for-Bergdahl transaction. And in light of the fact that Obama waged a seven-month military intervention in Libya’s civil war without complying with the law (the War Powers Resolution) that requires presidents to terminate within 60 to 90 days a military action not authorized or subsequently approved by Congress.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), vice chairman of the intelligence committee, says the administration told him he would be notified about negotiations for the release of terrorists. He now says he cannot “believe a thing this president says.” …

Ann Coulter has some interesting items.

… Three days before he walked off his base, Bergdahl emailed his parents:

– “I am ashamed to be an american.”

– “The US army is the biggest joke … It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies.”

– “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid.”

– “The horror that is america is disgusting.”

These emails were given to the author of a 2012 Rolling Stone article on the case by Bergdahl’s own parents.

The overwrought soldier’s father, Bob, emailed back: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!” And then, according to the Rolling Stone profile reporting these emails — as well as the Army report on the incident — Bergdahl “decided to walk away.

“Bergdahl’s unit commander, Evan Buetow, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that intercepted Taliban “chatter” soon revealed that Bergdahl was looking for a member of the Taliban who spoke English. (Other than his father.)

Buetow said he couldn’t prove it, but he believed Bergdahl began helping the Taliban attack his own unit. After that, Buetow says, the assaults were much more direct, and Bergdahl would have known the unit’s tactics and how they would respond to an attack. …

Graduation season is upon us and Dilbert’s dad, Scott Adams, has some terrible gift ideas.

… Many of you are wondering what kind of gift to buy for the innocent wretch in your life who is about to be excreted from the gentle embrace of our education system into the turd-infested pool of misery that we call work. I am here to help.

Gifts are all about the thought you put into them and the message they send. I did some online searching and discovered that all of the top graduation gift suggestions are—as far as I can tell—designed as clever revenge for the grad’s teen years. It’s payback time!

1.              One of the top suggested gifts for grads is Money Clips. Try to keep a straight face when you give a money clip to a grad that has a mountain of student debt and no job prospects. Write something on the card along the lines of “This is to keep all of your money organized.” You want to leave some doubt as to whether your intention is to be an evil revenge-monkey or you’re just a terrible gift-buyer. If you’re like me, your unstylish wardrobe for the past twenty years is all the reasonable doubt you’ll need.

2.              Luggage is another popular gift item for grads. Nothing says get out of my house like luggage. If that isn’t subtle enough, follow the example of my parents and combine the luggage gift with a one-way ticket to another state. Message received! …

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Of course, Americans look at the Bergdahl trade from our point of view. Nathan Hodges in the WSJ puts us in the shoes of Afghan villagers.

SHEYKHAN, Afghanistan—Taliban forces led by Mohammed Fazl swept through this village on the Shomali plain north of Kabul in 1999 in a scorched-earth offensive that prompted some 300,000 people to flee for their lives.

Fifteen years later, local residents here are responding with fear and dismay to the U.S. release of the notorious commander, along with four other Taliban leaders in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American prisoner of war who was held by the Taliban. The group released a video on Wednesday showing the hurried handover a few days earlier of the American captive, looking gaunt and dazed.

The villages of Shomali were once the orchard of central Afghanistan, and the plain’s carefully tended vineyards were famous for their grapes.

When the Taliban seized control of this area from their Northern Alliance rivals in 1999, they systematically demolished entire villages, blowing up houses, burning fields and seeding the land with mines, according to two comprehensive studies of war crimes and atrocities during wars in Afghanistan and human rights reports. Mr. Fazl played a major role in the destruction.

“There was not a single undamaged house or garden,” said Masjidi Fatehzada, a shopkeeper in Mir Bacha Kot, the district center. “My entire shop was burned to the ground. There was nothing left.”

Khwaja Mohammad, a farmer in the village of Sheykhan, remembered how Mr. Fazl’s men took away his son, a civilian, and sent him to Kabul’s Pul-e Charkhi prison.

“They jailed him for nearly three years,” Mr. Mohammad said. “They took him when he was on his way from the bazaar to buy oil and flour.” …

Texas congressman Steve Stockman with the best tweet of last week.

The Bergdahl swap crystallizes all that is Obama:

A man who won’t let obeying the law stop him from making a bad decision.

Charles Krauthammer says; “Free him, then try him.”

… What to do? Free him, then try him. Make the swap and then, if the evidence is as strong as it now seems, court-martial him for desertion.

The swap itself remains, nonetheless, a very close call. I would fully respect a president who rejected the deal as simply too unbalanced. What is impossible to respect is a president who makes this heart-wrenching deal and then does a victory lap in the Rose Garden and has his senior officials declare it a cause for celebration. The ever dutiful, ever clueless Susan Rice hailed it as “an extraordinary day for America.”

Good God. This is no victory. This is a defeat, a concession to a miserable reality, a dirty deal, perhaps necessary as a matter of principle but to be carried out with regret, resignation, even revulsion.

The Rose Garden stunt wasn’t a messaging failure. It’s a category error. The president seems oblivious to the gravity, indeed the very nature, of what he has just done. Which is why a stunned and troubled people are asking themselves what kind of man they have twice chosen to lead them.

Jennifer Rubin posts on the terrible “Taliban terrorist trade.”

The Taliban terrorist trade is beginning to crowd out other scandals. As with the Veterans Affairs fiasco, the outrage is not partisan. Democrats are irate that Congress was not alerted about the prisoner swap while Republicans are beside themselves over the idea of negotiating with and releasing terrorists. Both sides have huge doubts that the trade was in our favor and deep concerns that the deal doesn’t restrict the terrorists’ ability to return to the battlefield. For President Obama, there are fewer excuses because the president can’t claim that he was kept out of the loop. No, this is his doing. Indeed he imagined this would be heralded as a great strategic victory.

Why has it degenerated into a fiasco? (When Chris Matthews and the Wall Street editorial board both slam a decision, you know it really is a fiasco.) Here are four main concerns that threaten to engulf Obama:

1. The White House feels compelled to embellish if not outright deceive the public and media when it gets in hot water. Now the press is beginning to call him on it. National security adviser Susan Rice says Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl served with distinction. The White House says failing to alert Congress was all an oversight. Neither story holds up. …

Max Boot posts on how the Taliban has been rescued from the ashheap of George W. Bush’s history. 

A lot has changed in warfare since the days of hand-to-hand combat with swords and spears in ancient Mesopotamia 5,000 years. One thing hasn’t changed, however: War remains a test of wills. If you break the enemy’s will, you win. If he breaks your will, you lose. If neither of your wills is broken, and assuming you have sufficient material resources to continue fighting, the war becomes a stalemate. This is a fundamental truth and yet one that President Obama seems to miss time after time.

In Afghanistan, U.S. forces and their Afghan allies have dealt defeat after defeat to the Taliban. Yet the president keeps showing that his will is wavering by attaching deadlines to U.S. troop deployments, the most recent being a promise that, while 9,800 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan in 2015, all of them will depart by the end of 2016. The latest sign of wavering American will, at least from the Taliban’s standpoint, is the prisoner exchange for Bowe Bergdahl.

The Taliban are going to town with a video of the exchange that has become an Internet sensation. The message of the video is obvious: the Taliban are a force to be reckoned with. The U.S. has tried to portray the Taliban as mere terrorists who are on the wrong side of history, but the fact of this exchange bolsters the Taliban’s narrative that they are actually a legitimate governmental entity that will one day rule Afghanistan again. …

Scott Johnson posts on the mullahs read of our country.

In another harsh editorial — “Hapless Obama” — the New York Daily News reports on the mullahs’ reading of Obama:

“Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has bluntly taken the measure of President Obama as a paper tiger — and the United States commander has only himself to blame.

Delivering an address on a stage hung with a banner that read “America cannot do a damn thing,” Khamenei Wednesday sneeringly declared that Obama has abandoned military force as a tool of foreign policy. …”

Now for important stuff. Free Beacon reports the GOP might pick up a Senate seat in Iowa.

The U.S. Senate race in Iowa is now in a dead heat after Republican candidate Joni Ernst secured a primary win on Tuesday, according to a recent poll by Rasmussen Reports.

Ernst—a state senator and Iraq War veteran who still serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard—received 45 percent support in the poll, while Rep. Bruce Braley (D., Iowa) garnered 44 percent. The survey of 750 likely Iowa voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.

The poll indicates a bump in support for Ernst, who trailed Braley by about 7 percentage points in early April, according to a survey at the time by SuffolkUniversity. …

Father’s day is coming soon. The NY Times reviews a book; “Do Father’s Matter?”

When our young daughters first decided to play on top of our Honda minivan, parked in our driveway, my wife was worried. But to me, it seemed no less safe than chasing a ball that frequently ended up in the street. And they loved the height, the novelty, the danger. So I let them stay. They never fell. And with the summer weather here, playing on the car is once again keeping them occupied for hours.

Now that I have read Paul Raeburn’s “Do Fathers Matter?,” I know that my comfort with more dangerous play — my willingness to let my daughters stand on top of a minivan — is a typically paternal trait. Dads roughhouse with children more, too. They also gain weight when their wives are pregnant and have an outsize effect on their children’s vocabulary. The presence of dads can delay daughters’ puberty. But older dads have more children with dwarfism and with Marfan syndrome.

In Mr. Raeburn’s book, there is plenty of good news for dads, and plenty of bad. A zippy tour through the latest research on fathers’ distinctive, or predominant, contributions to their children’s lives, “Do Fathers Matter?” is filled with provocative studies of human dads — not to mention a lot of curious animal experiments. (You’ll learn about blackbirds’ vasectomies.) But above all, Mr. Raeburn shows how little we know about the role of fathers, and how preliminary his book is. Its end is really a beginning, a prospectus for further research. …