Much of what is being put forth by the Obama administration as well as the media about the just-released Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl appears to be questionable. For example, Susan Rice’s statement that Bergdahl “served with honor and distinction” has raised a furor with those soldiers who served with the sergeant. They believe that Bergdahl, before falling into the hands of the Taliban while on duty in Afghanistan, deserted his post, which could be classified as an act of treason.
The Obama administration claims there was no time to consult with Congress about Bergdahl’s release because he was seriously ill and the government had to move fast. But Senator Dianne Feinstein, who runs the Senate Intelligence Committee, maintains that she “heard no evidence that Sgt. Bergdahl was in immediate medical danger that made it necessary to act without consulting Congress.” Still, as Charles Krauthammer asks in theWashington Post, why is Congress exercised over a war power, where its claim is weakest? After Obama’s 23 violations of his own ACA, after Obama enacts by executive order the DREAM Act, after Justice unilaterally rewrites drug laws, Congress now is affronted over the lack of a 30-day notice of a prisoner swap?
“Disconcerting” is what the WSJ calls the mockery coming from Qatar about the administration’s claim that the five former senior Taliban intelligence and military officials will be under close supervision and their ability to move about will be constrained. Reuters reports one source as saying the five men will be able to “move around freely within the country” before they leave. Another inconvenient truth is that several thousand U.S. troops will still be in Afghanistan when the Taliban killers do leave Qatar, and the Afghan-Paki border will still be a sanctuary for al Qaeda.
Perhaps President Obama, by hosting the parents of Sgt. Bergdahl in the Rose Garden, was hoping to deflect from his administration the disgrace of the VA scandal by turning the swap into a foreign-policy triumph. But little could be more removed from the truth than Ms. Rice’s pronouncing that the swapping of five Taliban leaders for one POW under dubious circumstances is “a great day for America.”
In his former life as a newly elected senator, Mr. Obama’s took umbrage with George W. Bush’s disregard of parts of laws passed by Congress. But as former judge Andrew P. Napolitano asks in the Washington Times about this president who thinks he can enforce only the laws he likes, “Did we break away from a king, who thought his powers were given to him by God, 240 years ago, only to elect a president who behaves like a king?”
Remember when President Obama infamously chastised Eric Cantor with “elections have consequences,” followed by “I won”?
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Debbie Young
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