Posted on 06/06/2014 10:44:18 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Americans can still be outraged by lies, but will you tell them the truth?
Dear Republican convention delegates,
Welcome to Fort Wayne. I hope you have a lot of fun, spend a lot of money and thoroughly debunk real estate company Movoto's new poll listing my hometown among the five most boring cities in the United States. How could the prospect of listening to 2,000 people discuss everything from bureaucratic minutia to gay marriage for two days be anything but scintillating?
But before you do anything you or the rest of us may regret, please spend some time thinking about President Obama's decision to exchange five high-ranking Taliban prisoners for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl – and what it suggests about the condition of the nation's governance, culture and (this is where you come in) politics.
The problem is not so much what Obama did – Israel once traded 1,027 prisoners for a single captured soldier – but the brazen, inept and constantly evolving manner in which the rescue of an apparent deserter and alleged collaborator has been justified, sometimes with much the same language the president used to honor the heroes who stormed the Normandy beaches 70 years ago.
You don't have to believe reports that Sgt. Bergdahl converted to Islam during his five-year captivity, declared himself a warrior for Islam or actively assisted his captors. Even his stated objections to U.S. policy in Afghanistan or admission that he was “ashamed to be an American” could perhaps be attributed to the stress of combat and captivity. Sometimes you simply make the best deal you can, and live with it.
But announcing the trade in a Rose Garden ceremony indicates the president expected the deal to be politically popular, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice insisted that Bergdahl had served “with honor and distinction” even though it had been widely reported that Bergdahl had been captured after walking off his base. Only later did NBC News suggest that Obama, who has vowed to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had planned to release the five terrorists anyway – and wanted to get something in return.
What do head-spinning decisions and statements coming out of Washington, D.C, have to do with a state party convention in Indiana? Just this: The Obama administration's attempt to make a returning hero out of a soldier of dubious service indicates one of three things, none of them reassuring:
The White House, despite its vast intelligence resources, was unaware of Bergdahl's alleged desertion and questionable loyalties;
Officials knew about those facts but wanted to avoid them;
They didn't care about those facts -- and didn't think Americans would, either.
The extent to which the president's usual allies in Congress and the media have questioned the swap, when added to the groundswell of anger in the general public, indicate that Americans can still be shocked and outraged by the questionable, self-serving actions of their leaders – if given the information and opportunity.
The president cannot seek a third term in 2016, but even before that there will be congressional elections in which some candidates will share his vision of a transformed America: more regulation, government spending and dependency, less personal responsibility and prosperity. More division, less unity. An emasculated military.
Republicans have proven too many times they are far from perfect, and the social issues that often dominate GOP politics are not illegitimate – the right to life is fundamental and I share a commitment to traditional marriage and religious freedom (everyone should be outraged that a judge has ordered employees of a Colorado bakery that refuses to make cakes for same-sex weddings to re-education camp).
But the most crucial issue right now is to win elections with candidates of honor, maturity and competence capable of limiting spending, building the economy, fighting oppressive regulations, supporting our friends and challenging our adversaries and, yes, restoring the public's confidence in its government.
But that government is not a church, and if purity on social issues costs the GOP elections – people actually told me they could not vote for Mitt Romney in 2012 because he is a Mormon – the party's national influence will continue to ebb at the very moment the country most needs an alternative to politicians who believe they can say anything, and that the public will believe anything.
The Bergdahl case illustrates that larger danger, but also represents a large opportunity for a party willing to fight, with ferocity, compassion, self-sacrifice, humility and integrity, for all that was, and is, good about America.
If you're that party, you have work to do when you get home.
And if you're not – well, what good are you?
Israel does what their culture expects.
We didn’t want Bendict Arnold back at any price and this jerk deserves our animus.
Israel does what their culture expects.
We didn’t want Bendict Arnold back at any price and this jerk deserves our animus.
What an incredible blunder, an historical political blunder of epic proportions.
Conservatives love circular firing squads.
Conservatives eat their own.
We lose because of PRIDE not principal.
The objective in every election is to DEFEAT YOUR WORST ENEMY!
There are no perfect candidates.
America has traded spies and POWs before, so it's not like what has happened is wholly new.
Were Berghdahl a soldier who was known to have have struggled against his captors and was taken against his will, we'd still be furious with Obama about the exchange, but glad to have an honorable soldier returned to us alive.
As it is, Obama traded five hardened combatants in a exchange for a man who, by all accounts, turned his back on his countrymen. You'd have to think that a lose-lose for the United States is a win-win for subversive radicals and the enemies of our country to begin to make sense of it.
What compounds the crazy even more, is that Nidal Hasan has been treated not as a jihadi, but as some kind of criminal involved in a "workplace violence incident." The soldiers he killed while shouting paens to Allah were somehow not the victims of enemy action. Just a workplace crazy who happened to be a major in the US Army and a confirmed collaborator with known terrorists.
Contrast that with a man who reportedly walked away from his fellow soldiers and into the waiting arms of the Taliban and whom is treated by the Administration as some sort of tragi-heroic figure who was captured in combat and taken prisoner by force.
And also to Edward Snowden, who jumped ship from the NSA for broadly similar reasons but while also detailing exactly how our government spends more time watchdogging its own citizens than potential threats.
Of the three, he stands out as the real traitor and Enemy of the State in the eyes of the current Administration. And yet he's the one who offered the least offense to his countrymen: he neither betrayed their trust in an Army officer to kill them nor forsook oath and arms to take up the cause of the jihadis. He simply walked out into the cold and offered confirmation about what we already feared from the NSA.
Anyone who thinks that electing more Republicans, or that elections in general are going to save us from this tyranny and what horror is coming - have absolutely NO CLUE what time it is.
Because if you do think electing Republicans will save us, you have a fatal case of Normalcy Bias.
Yes, no more circular firing squads !
Let’s all go 100% solid conservative right down the line with no giving in on anything.
Then we’ll all be working together !
If country club Republicans and Tea Partiers don’t come together ASAP, we will get Hillary and MORE and MORE of this LAWLESSNESS!!!
Thanks for posting the whole article, 2DV.
The first five paragraphs led me to believe it was written from a liberal slant. .....The remainder clearly indicates that my perception was wrong.
That’s what I thought too, based on the headline until I’d read it through.
The nation is a big ship and tough to turn. Three degrees to starboard is better than three more degrees to port. Incrementalism works for the left because it actually works. We need to do something that actually works; were getting our clocks cleaned.
I can’t help but wonder what stress Michelle Obama was under when she declared how ashamed she had been to be an American???
1.) “The White House, despite its vast intelligence resources, was unaware of Bergdahl’s alleged desertion and questionable loyalties;” (Not likely at all.)
2.) Officials knew about those facts but wanted to avoid them; (Tangentially true. The Obama Administration was counting on the mainstream media to obscure those fact.)
3.) They didn’t care about those facts — and didn’t think Americans would, either. (Tangentially true. Again, the Obama Administration was counting on the mainstream media to obscure those fact.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.