Unless you live under a rock in the middle of nowhere on a planet in a galaxy far, far away you’ve most certainly been bombarded by stories involving the freed hostage, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Most of them have been nothing more than brutal attacks on the administration, while a few defenses of the administration’s actions have been sprinkled in here and there. The life of the man and the very interesting details of his final days before being captured are now being thrust into the headlines for distinctly political purposes only, and by both sides of the aisle.

 

Obama and the Democrats are hurting right now, and bad. The scandals brought to light over the last year or so are piling up, and it only seems as though more are waiting for their chance to steal the spotlight. After the prior week’s announcement concerning the winding down of troop presence in Afghanistan, the chance to bring home the last American held captive there must have seemed like a political goldmine. Boy were they wrong.

 

So now Republicans can smell blood in the water. The VA scandal has only just begun and the Directive 3025.18 scandal has barely been brought to light. The IRS scandal is still lingering in the background, while Benghazi and the NSA continue to make headlines. Throw in Bergdahl-gate, and you have a veritable smorgasbord of juicy morsels with which to pummel Democratic candidates come this November. And on top of that there’s Judge Napolitano and the curious case for impeachment.

 

The motivations of both sides, presumably barring Napolitano, are atrocious. Using a man’s life to earn political points is disgusting; further evidence that politics and government are the true (arguably unnecessary) evils of mankind. In this endeavor, though, we will not concern ourselves with the purposes of the administration in this boondoggle. For whatever they truly were, they accomplished the fantastic goal of bringing another one of our soldiers home, alive. However, we will focus on the main attacks of the Republicans, pundits, and finally the soldiers themselves.

 

Before we begin though, let’s make one item crystal clear: Bowe Bergdahl is no hero. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But not being a hero does not makes him any less of a person, nor does it make him deserving of being left behind in the hell where this government dropped him off.

 

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we can begin with the biggest bones of contention for Republicans. In another article I brought forth the specific quotes from the likes of McCain, Graham, Cruz, Rogers, McKeon, and Inhofe, and so here we will dress them down.

 

We’ve released the “hardest of the hard core,” the “Taliban Dream Team.”

 

Hyperbole much? Stop and think about that for just one second. When one attaches the “Dream Team” tag, shouldn’t it reference participants comparable in their own field to the likes of Jordan, Pippen, Johnson, Bird, and Ewing? Or has the phrase undergone a massive metamorphosis relegating its meaning to utter mediocrity or even obscurity?

 

None of the 5 released Taliban detainees has ever been listed among the “high-value detainees” by either the Bush or the Obama administrations. Not a single one can definitively be shown to have ties to Al Qaeda according to the Pentagon. Aside from participating in military action against an attacking and occupying force, the worst transgressions these men are supposed to have committed, the ones that McCain and Graham would have you quiver beneath your bedsheets over, are only “reportedly” so. Simply put, they are “suspected of” acts and associations with Al Qaeda, however not confirmed of having committed them. Yup, sounds like a “Dream Team” to me.

 

And if that isn’t enough, consider the fact that these exact 5 Taliban detainees were openly mentioned as being candidates for release in 2012 simply “to help further the peace process.” No one batted an eye. Then again in 2013 the Taliban requested to trade Bergdahl for these 5, however Afghani president Hamid Karzai, not Congress, squashed the deal.

 

“You’ve sent a message to every Al Qaeda group” that “if you capture a U.S. soldier, you can trade that soldier for five terrorists,” which is now going to “threaten the lives of American soldiers for years to come.”

 

The Appeal to Emotion fallacy is strong in this one. We are lead to believe the new reality of three utterly absurd notions by this argument. The first is that there is now a higher value placed on the lives of our soldiers then there was at any other point in this terrible war. As if using POW’s as bargaining chips has never been done before.

The second is that 5 for 1 is a terrible ratio. Congratulations American citizens and soldiers, heaven forbid you should ever find yourself in a similar situation, your life is held in the hands of a Congress that values potential intelligence more than its own people. Feel comfortable? (For the record, 5 for 1 is fantastic. Just ask Israel, who gave up 1,000 detainees for Gilad Shalit. Now I bet you feel real cozy, so go ahead and drape yourself in that flag.)

 

Finally, the third is that US soldiers are now much more vulnerable to evil mercenaries. Congress apparently values the ability of military leaders to exercise wise tactics, and the training of the grunts just as high as they value their lives in exchange. There is, however, one sure-fire way to make sure this type of situation never happens again: stop occupying foreign lands.

 

It’s “disturbing that these individuals would have the ability to re-enter the fight.”

 

Do you know how many detainees have been released so far? I don’t know exactly, but what I do know is that the number is somewhere in the hundreds. That’s hundreds of supposed enemy combatants who have been released and who could possibly re-enter, or could have already re-entered the fight. And guess what; you know who also could “re-enter the fight?” Released US prisoners.  Again, these 5 detainees are no “Dream Team,” so who cares. As stated above the best way to limit their ability to “re-enter the fight” is to stop occupying foreign lands.

 

Obama “[ended a] chapter in American history where we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

 

Regardless of what Breitbart and other right-wing media outlets (and even some Obama darlings) have to say about the matter, the above statement is one of purely disingenuous propaganda. To understand how so, one must recognize that the State Department, under both Obama and Bush II, has not ever designated the Taliban as a terrorist organization and that negotiating with groups of their ilk has been done throughout our history.

 

ABC News, usually a friend to the administration, has attempted to justify the designation by stating that Bush II went around the State Dept. and labeled the Taliban through Executive Order. Well first, EO’s are like presidential anuses, they all have them, and they’re all disgusting; nothing other than examples of usurpation of legislative authority. Second, even though King Bush II made such a proclamation in order to freeze assets and offer a reward for information leading to the capture of Mullah Omar, it still did not make his own State Dept. recognize the Taliban as a terrorist organization. On the merits of law and fact, ABC and the complainants are completely wrong.

 

The more specious claim in that argument, though, is that the US has had a policy of not negotiating with terrorists. Even if it is conceded that the Taliban is indeed a terrorist organization, the case does not become stronger.

 

Is negotiating with rogue entities and states like the Viet Cong and Iranian Mullahs in the 1970’s not nearly, if not exactly the same thing? Isn’t selling arms to the proxy of a terrorist organization in an effort to facilitate the release of hostages, aka Iran-Contra, the same, if not worse? How about negotiating peace settlements with the IRA? Because no hostages were involved that suddenly becomes not negotiating with terrorists?

 

The claim is baseless and more importantly an outright revision of modern American diplomacy.

 

With the arguments of the Republicans shown for nothing more than the politicking that they are, it is important to now turn to the impeachment discussions begun by Judge Andrew Napolitano. According to the Judge, “[Obama] and his team violated the federal statute which makes criminal providing material assistance to a terrorist organization,” and therefore “[he] should be impeached for this.”

 

Now let me preface this by stating that I have the utmost respect for Napolitano, and think that he is on the right side of just about every other argument I have ever heard him in. With that being said, I have no idea where he is coming from with such a charge. There are two major problems with his thesis.

 

The first problem, and probably the most serious, is that Obama cannot be said to have committed a High Crime and Misdemeanor by releasing detainees. The president was fully within his constitutionally granted authority per Article II, Section 2, Clause 1: “The President…. shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” There is not much more that needs to be said after that, but here’s a poignant argument put forth by Anthony Gregory of the Independent Institute to really drive the point home:

 

               “The president incarcerated those people. It would be perverse if the president could pardon inmates of judicially authorized detentions, but not of detentions he himself is directly responsible for. If the chief executive with full pardon power except in cases of impeachment, who is also the commander and chief of the Armed Forces virtually exclusively responsible for a given detainee’s captivity, can’t decide when to release that detainee, then I don’t see who else possibly could have that original constitutional prerogative.”

 

The second problem, as has been mentioned above, is that the Taliban is not classified as a terrorist organization. And quite honestly, it probably shouldn’t be. The Taliban was a ruling regime which was toppled and has been relegated to a rebellious group due to our actions within the borders of their country. Whether the analogy is agreeable or not, the Taliban is just as much a terrorist group as the Continental Army was. The idea that they should be classified as terrorist because they fight against our occupation is repugnant to the very idea of liberty.

 

And if it is felt that they should be classified as a terrorist organization because they provided material support to Al Qaeda, think about a few things: who originally funded Al Qaeda, who has been providing support to terrorist organizations in Syria, and who has been providing support to the similarly terrorist-like forces in the Ukraine? Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

 

The last group of arguments that must be attended to are the arguments of the soldiers themselves. The two main points that have been hammered home by the soldiers who had served with Bergdahl and by others is that a, he was a “deserter,” and b, he put his fellow soldiers at risk through his actions. Essentially, because he no longer wanted to be part of this massive mistake of a war he put the other soldiers at risk and therefore he should not have been traded for, but because he was and is now home he should face a military trial for desertion.

 

I will always find it curious that people who claim to fight for liberty and freedom are so opposed to liberty and freedom in what seems to be quite a few cases. The idea that someone should be punished for “desertion” is one of the most totalitarian concepts that exist in this so-called republic. What is one to do when his conscience no longer allows him to take part in the actions of his peers? Is he supposed to continue on due to some notion that he owes it to someone or others?

 

No man or woman can ever relinquish the ownership they have over their bodies and minds indefinitely. No one has a duty to senselessly die for another human being, especially when the purpose of that death is to enrich politically favored entities thousands and thousands of miles away. He broke his contract and should be penalized for it under the basic understanding of contract law. Should he be confined, per the max penalties of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice? Absolutely not. Discharge and loss of veteran privileges, sure.

 

Then there’s the “he put his fellow soldiers at risk” charge. Well no, no he did not. The commanding officers who changed the mission to hunt him down are the ones who put people at risk. Better yet, the government who sent them all over there is who put them at risk. Bergdahl did not ask to be found, at least not at that point. And if the response to that is that it is the duty of a soldier to not leave one of his  “brothers” behind, then it is very apparent that the soldier should have been aware of that risk upon joining and knowing full well that he was about to enter a combat zone.

 

Soldiers put themselves at risk, for whatever purposes they deem fit, by virtue of joining the military, and especially during a time of war. Designating some risks as an unnecessary and additional hazards is not credible, but just more examples of anecdotal appeals to emotion. Put the blame for risk where it belongs. Logic will not suffer those who refuse to use it.

 

In conclusion, this whole mess has become a circus, putting on display the vile repulsiveness of the game of politics. Our world would be such a better place if people would simply accept personal responsibility and embrace the virtues of voluntary associations. Until then, we are all held captive by these apparent subhumans who see our lives only as political leverage for more power. I only hope that more will see this all for what it truly is.

 

- Chris Lewis  06/05/14 08:00 AM CT