Posted on 06/03/2014 12:23:24 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The Taliban prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl might do some good, but fear and anger are getting in the way of a realistic appraisal.
Richard Hofstadter opened his 1968 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," with this line: "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds."
He continues, "Behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind."
One wonders what Mr. Hofstadter would have to say about the great gnashing of teeth and anger today over President Barack Obama's prisoner swap for US soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Lurking behind this is not just disagreement with the decision – to release five men, four of them very senior Taliban leaders at the time of their detention in 2001, in exchange for the army sergeant – but a seemingly deep-seated belief that Obama is unpatriotic, more interested in helping American enemies than helping America.
Lending to the outrage is credible evidence that Bergdahl, an odd duck who had grown to hate the war according to people who served with him, deliberately walked off post before his capture. Nathan Bradley Bethea, who was serving in Afghanistan at time with Bergdahl's unit (the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment) makes it clear that Bergdahl went AWOL from his platoon's small outpost in Paktika Province in an in-depth piece on the events before his capture and how members of his unit, which lost soldiers trying to track him down, feel about the event. Many are understandably angry and consider the man a deserter....
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Obama promoted him to Sgt. so he wasn’t trading Taliban officials for a private.
“None of the men were ever charged with any crime against US citizens or soldiers”
Wasn’t one guilty of the war crime slaughter of a thousand people?
Just saying.
Only our war criminals ever get investigated.
The Obamza infantryman who murdered Momar Gaddafi (with our help, as Hillary Clinton herself claimed) killed a POW in captivity (after parading him around and torturing him).
The guys who slaughtered the noncombantant Brown & Root guys and hung them from a bridge, yadda yadda yadda
Only Commies could try to spin that these guys were innocent as a fresh snow fall.
The Left realized the pile of sh!t they were being asked to defend was stacked a bit too high this time.
The CSM lost credibility a decade ago.
Yep. They don’t even allow comments at their BS piece/site. What does that tell you? (They can’t handle the truth!)
Yeah, they had a long time to plot their strategy.
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