generalspeaking

Negotiating Swaps

"We didn't negotiate with terrorists. America's record is pretty clear on going after terrorists, especially those who take hostages, and I don't think what we did in getting our prisoner of war released in any way would somehow encourage terrorists to take our American servicemen prisoner  or hostage."
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel

"He walked off, the left his guard post. I don't know why he decided to do that, but we spend so much of our resources and some of those resources were soldiers' lives."
Jose Baggett, American serviceman in same unit as St. Bowe Bergdahl, in Afghanistan

The U.S. State Department and the White House may protest that they simply traded a prisoner of war in a fair exchange for Afghan Taliban held at Guantanamo Bay, that notorious Cuban prison complex that President Barack Obama has pledged to close down, and good riddance to rubbish, that's the way things went down, but a former Pentagon official said it was "incontrovertible" that Sgt. Bergdahl had walked away from his unit.

Desertion, in other words. A treasonous act during a time of war. Rather a serious offense. But not in this administration. Which undertook to have the Taliban release a longstanding prisoner of war, not a deserter. That gesture cost the release of five senior Taliban members, from a former founding member of the Taliban, to the deputy defence minister and commander of Taliban troops in northern Afghanistan.

Also released was the former deputy minister of intelligence, a former high-level Taliban security official and the Taliban governor of Balkh province. They are all seasoned Taliban fighters and former political players from the time that Mullah Muhammad Omar ran Afghanistan and gave safe haven to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, honoured guests of the Taliban, when Yemen became too inconvenient for al-Qaeda and its leader.

"This is a happy day. We got one of our back", said Mr. Hagel as he visited troops in Afghanistan. His happy announcement was met with a stony silence. Some servicemen clearly believe Sgt. Bergdahl should be facing a court martial as a deserter, at the very least. They obviously do not appreciate that his voluntary absence from duty occasioned concerned searches costing the lives of six other servicemen dispatched to search for the man who simply walked away.

"Our terrorist adversaries now have a strong incentive to capture Americans", commented Senator James Inhofe, leading Republican on the Senate Armed Services panel, along with Howard McKeon, Republican head of the House Armed Services Committee. "Have we just put a price on other U.S. soldiers?" rhetorically asked Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Bypassing Congress in unilaterally making the decision to proceed with that controversial 'trade of prisoners' has resulted in a chorus of 'foul!'.

Congress was rather tardily notified only once Sgt. Bergdahl was already in U.S. custody. President Obama's national security advisor, Susan Rice explained "We did not have 30 days to wait, and had we waited and lost him, I don't think anybody would have forgiven the United States government", due to the fact, she said, that there were fears for the sergeant's health. It was reported, of course, that on his release he had no trouble walking on his own to the waiting helicopter.

The Afghan Foreign Ministry in Kabul spoke of the trade as being "against the norms of international law"; perhaps they too have concerns that these five freed high-value Taliban exemplars of Islamist fanaticism will return to their old haunts and mount high level assaults on the government and the people of Afghanistan, picking up where they left off.

Los Angeles Times

As for the celebrations at the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, it would seem that a strictly limited number of supporters are thrilled that he will be returning to the United States with his full-blown five-year familiarity with Afghan fundamentalism, traditions, customs and majority language with which to embellish his own future life as an American patriot.

Labels: Afghanistan, Conflict, Crisis Politics, United States

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, June 04, 2014