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We continue examining the detritus left in the wake of decisions by Empty Suit. The desertion charges against Bergdahl and the collapse of the government in Yemen are two current examples of the results of his foolishness.
Tom Bevan is first on Bergdahl.
Travel back with me, dear reader, to a magical and sunny time. It was only 10 months ago, on a glorious June morning when President Obama called the White House press corps together in the Rose Garden. There, our smiling president proudly announced that the United States had secured the release of an American serviceman held captive in Afghanistan for five years.
Flanked by the grateful parents of returning Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the president lauded his administration’s “ironclad commitment to bring our prisoners of war home.”
The soldier’s father, Bob Bergdahl, read a prayer; the young man’s mother, Jani, hugged the president. It was a story that could please all Americans: parenthood (quite properly) trumping partisanship.
Yet even as White House image-makers touted the picture of a concerned commander-in-chief looking out for the troops, a nagging bit of foreshadowing interjected itself into the narrative. For starters, the senior Bergdahl’s prayer was delivered in Arabic and began with a blessing from the Koran. While his son was in captivity Bob Bergdahl had grown his hair and beard long, Taliban-style, and now he also sprinkled his remarks from the White House lectern with a few words of Pashto, the language of Bowe Bergdahl’s captors.
More disconcerting still were the terms of the deal securing the soldier’s release, which the president referred to only fleetingly. …
The Daily Beast says “everything the White House told you about Bowe Bergdahl was wrong.”
His release was supposed to be the political masterstroke in the last days of the war. But the war is still going, and Bergdahl is going to court.
In the space of nine months, he went from being heralded at the White House to facing prison for life.
On Wednesday, the U.S. military charged Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the former Taliban captive who was freed in exchange for five GuantanamoBay detainees, with desertion and misbehaving before the enemy.
His capture, release and now charge became a parable of how narratives about the war in Afghanistan did not pan out. The soldier whose service Susan Rice, U.S. national security adviser, once characterized as “honorable” and whose release came at the price of five prisoners could now himself end up in an American prison for life. The prison exchange that some political operatives thought would be heralded was instead widely condemned. And the war that was supposed to be ending with no soldier left behind has now been extended for five months.
Bergdahl’s case will now go before an Article 32 hearing, the equivalent of a grand jury in civilian court, to determine how the case should proceed. …
Jonah Goldberg has a great take on the Bergdahl flap. Later his post morphs into a discussion of the disaster in Yemen.
What I find interesting about the Bergdahl story is that it is the quintessential Obama fiasco. If you were compiling a checklist of all the things that drive conservatives crazy — and by conservatives I basically mean people who are (a) paying attention and (b) not enthralled in the Obama cult of personality — the Bergdahl story would achieve a near-perfect score.
The Obama M.O. remains remarkably consistent. He announces some initiative, policy, or presidential action. The public rationale for the move is always rhetorically grounded in some deep, universally shared principle, even if the real agenda is something far more ideological or partisan. The facts driving the decision are never as the White House presents them. Indeed, the more confident the White House appears to be about the facts, the more likely it is they’re playing games with them.
Sometimes the facts are simply made up. There are millions of “shovel ready jobs” right around the corner! “You can keep your doctor!” The Benghazi attack was “about a video!” “One in five women are raped!” “The Islamic State isn’t Islamic!” …
… Using the above criteria, the Bergdahl story is quintessential Obama.
Invoking high-minded principle? Check!
Really motivated by partisan and ideological agenda? Check!
Made-up facts? Check!
Critics denounced as partisan ideologues opposed to high-minded principle? Check!
Group-think-driven White House’s failure to anticipate the political downsides? Check!
Flagrant contempt for Congress and its laws? Check!
The high-minded-principle part is obvious. We leave no one behind. Who can disagree with that?
But it was obvious long ago that Obama had other priorities in mind. “It could be a huge win if Obama could bring him home,” a senior administration official told Rolling Stone in a 2012 piece on Bergdahl. “Especially in an election year, if it’s handled properly.”
The other major priority was to use the marching band and fireworks celebration of Bergdahl’s return to hasten the shuttering of Gitmo. Dump the worst of the worst anywhere you can and the political rationale for keeping the place open evaporates. So trading five hardened Taliban commanders for one deserter was a win-win.
Then there’s the thumbless grasp of political reality. Maybe the president didn’t think going AWOL was that big a deal. Maybe he thought it was understandable. Maybe he assumed everyone shared his take on things. Maybe he thought he could just bluster through because the American people are idiots. Who knows?
The fact remains they knew Bergdahl had been AWOL and yet still thought this would be a clear-cut “huge win,” particularly in the context of winding down the War in Afghanistan. They had no idea this fiasco would blow up in their faces, though I like to think some of the savvier political operatives on the Obama team had at least a moment of doubt when they saw Bergdahl’s dad show up with his Johnny Taliban beard. When the elder Bergdahl started speaking Arabic and Pashto in the Rose Garden, I like to imagine that David Axelrod’s bowels stewed just a little bit. (Every political pro I know who watched that announcement responded pretty much the same way you or I would if we saw a polar bear pooping a live hamster on a bus made of graham crackers; “What the Hell am I looking at?”) …
Peter Wehner thinks the real motivation was to free five terrorists from Gitmo.
… But what made this particular case even more problematic is that Bergdahl was freed in exchange for five high-value Taliban figures who had been held captive in GuantanamoBay. As several outlets and individuals have pointed out, getting back a soldier who was almost certainly a deserter was simply a pretext. The main goal of President Obama is to empty GuantanamoBay. It is something the president declared he wanted to do during his first day in office and it’s something he is committed to doing before his last day in office. Swapping Bergdahl for five Taliban leaders–several of whom are trying to return to the battlefield so they can kill more Americans–was the convenient (if explosively contentious) excuse. The Wall Street Journal reminds us that Mr. Obama told NBC that emptying Gitmo “is going to involve, on occasion, releasing folks who we may not trust but we can’t convict.”
So we have a president with at least two obsessions: One of them is attacking the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and weakening the Jewish State of Israel; the second is to empty GuantanamoBay and release terrorists committed to killing as many Americans as possible.
We’ve never seen anything quite like this president.
Walter Russell Mead posts on our “comprehensive failure” in Yemen.
Over the weekend, several C-17 transport planes transported a reported 350 U.S. Special Operations forces out of Yemen as the country stood on the precipice of civil war. The Wall Street Journal has a trenchant summary of just how President Obama’s policy has gone up in smoke:
What happened in Yemen, according to descriptions by current and former officials and experts, was a miscalculation about the changes unleashed by the Arab Spring revolutions. It involved an overreliance by Washington on a promising new leader who ultimately was unable to hold off rival forces and tensions, they said.
As a result, a country President Barack Obama last year cited as a model of American counterterrorism success has now descended into chaos, with U.S. influence and drone strikes no match for at least four sides at war with one another.
Jennifer Rubin posts on the presser where Josh Earnest continued to pretend Yemen is a “template that has succeeded.”
… Josh Earnest had his talking point and was sticking with it (just like the talking point that Obama meant what he said when he called the shooting of innocents in a French kosher market “random”). For over three minutes Earnest refused to acknowledge their model was not a mess. Pressed again, he insisted this is still a “template that has succeeded.” An incredulous Jonathan Karl of ABC News continued to press him, but Earnest refused to admit the obvious, namely that the administration had failed in its leading from behind, light footprint.
It was embarrassing and unbelievable. But it was also instructive. The administration is failing as far as the eye can see. Iraq and Syria are infested with jihadists from the Islamic State. The civil war in Syria has killed 200,000 and, because of our failure to come to their aid in a timely and effective manner, the Free Syrian Army is in dismal shape. Iran is pulling the strings in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon while its fighters are doing what we will not, combating the Islamic State in Iraq. Our Sunni allies and Israel are exasperated with our passivity and willingness to appease Iran. The “peace process” is a joke. So the president bashes our closest ally and tells us Yemen is a success.
Consider what would have happened if President George W. Bush refused to believe the Iraq War was going poorly, denied any strategy change was necessary and never implemented the surge. Ironically, critics accused him of being stubborn or cut off from reality. Right diagnosis, wrong president.
The administration at this point plainly has no regard for the facts or else no elementary judgment. When it comes to a monumental deal with Iran or a “shift” in U.S. policy toward Israel at the United Nations, it is becoming increasingly clear this crowd cannot be trusted. Congress must step in not only where Iran is concerned but also in demanding a coherent and accurate accounting of events. …
We close with Roger Simon, who always has a way of providing a telling summary of events. Roger wonders if President Petulant is the crazy pilot.
… Obama and his minions are huddled wherever they’re huddled, busy destroying the Western World with their bizarre policies and eagerness to make a deal with Iran that is so desperate it makes the word pathetic seem pathetic. The results of this desperation have been wretched, a fascistic new Persian Empire emerging from Libya to Yemen with Obama auditioning for the role of Cyrus the Great – or is it Ahmadinejad Junior? Whatever the case, it’s horrible Even those same Democrats know it. They’re embarrassed – and they should be. But for the most part they don’t have the guts to say anything. This is the kind of administration that exchanges a creepy sociopath like Bergdahl for five Islamic homicidal maniacs and expects praise for being humanitarian. And everyone walks away shaking their heads.
It’s hard to know why Obama is doing it all. I know it sounds like a rude overstatement but in a way he reminds me of that crazy German pilot flying that plane into that alpine cliff, only the plane is us (America and the West). Does he hate us all that much – or is it just Netanyahu? Whatever the explanation, it’s mighty peculiar. At this point almost no one in the Congress appears to be backing him up – and yet he continues. Who knows what will happen next?
The cartoonists have another field day.