Barack Obama is a fucking genius. He just got rid of 5 of the prisoners at Guantanamo, who were being held without any legal justification whatsoever, got an American POW released, who was the only American POW in Afghanistan, which clears the way for a total U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and left the Republicans spluttering and whining that they weren’t notified 30 days in advance, that Obama is negotiating with terrorists, and that it was Bowe Bergdahl’s own fault he got caught, and so on, giving credence to the widely held liberal belief that if Barack Obama came out in favor of breathing, Republicans would all turn purple and die.
Bowe Bergdahl: Free at Last
It is an experiment I urge him to make.
As to the 30 day thing, if he had notified Congress 30 days in advance, they would have found a way to block it, because OBAMA, and Bowe Bergdahl would still be in prison. In principal, it’s not a bad idea for Presidents to be required to inform Congress of stuff. In practice, however, you are dealing with a congress whose #1 goal (they have said this themselves) is to make sure the President does not succeed. So, in principle is one thing. In practice, fuck them.
In business, in sports, or in military ventures, one important rule is that once something has succeeded, you stop arguing about how it was done. Success trumps going by the book, every time. Captain Kirk knew that. Barack Obama knows that. Republicans even know that, but they’re bitching anyway.
There is another example from American history, where Congress, and in fact the President, were not notified until after the fact. When Thomas Jefferson sent future president James Monroe and Robert Livingston to Paris, their mission was to buy New Orleans. They went ahead and bought the whole Louisiana territory, for peanuts. Jefferson had sense enough to just say ‘Good job.’ A few people in congress complained, but they came around.
The negotiating with terrorists charge is bullshit, too. If the terrorists are holding somebody you care about, you fucking negotiate. The alternative is to just leave your guy there. That is, in effect, what the Republicans are saying: Obama should have left an American soldier behind.
It is staggering. They are against healthy school lunches, against clean air, against health care, against paying taxes (if you are rich) against pretty much everything except polluting the environment and starting wars.
‘No negotiating with terrorists’ makes a nice slogan, but in reality it’s a policy that’s going to be broken every time.
Reagan sure did it, with far less justification.
As for their charge that Bowe Bergdahl brought it on himself, because he went off the base, well, shit does happen in wartime. He wouldn’t have been captured if he hadn’t been in Afghanistan in the first place. If you want to blame somebody for the deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan, even those soldiers who were trying to rescue Bergdahl, the blame lies squarely on George W. Bush.
If we want to prevent things like this happening in the future, we need to stop starting wars. I have my quarrels with Obama but, on that score, he hasn’t done too badly.
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