Obama should be impeached because America doesnt negotiate with terrorists? Wrong. Republicans accuse the president of breaking the long-standing rule against “negotiating with terrorists” to free hostages. They’re wrong on two counts: The U.S. has frequently negotiated with “terrorists,” to free hostages and for other reasons. President Carter negotiated with the Iranians who held Americans in the Tehran embassy in 1979, unsuccessfully. President Reagan famously traded arms to Iran for hostages. The entire surge in Iraq was predicated on negotiating with Sunni “terrorists” who had killed American soldiers to bring them into the government and stop sectarian violence. Besides, this isn’t a terrorist-hostage situation, it’s a prisoner of war swap, and those are even more common: President Nixon freed some North Vietnamese prisoners at the same time former POW Sen. John McCain came home from Hanoi. Even hawkish Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit last year. Such prisoner exchanges are particularly frequent when wars are winding down. It’s true that Bergdahl was never officially categorized as a “prisoner of war,” since the Pentagon apparently stopped using that designation years ago. But he was defined as “missing/captured,” which is essentially the same thing. And while the Taliban fighters who were released were likewise not formally designated prisoners of war, either, because of the odd, formally undeclared status of the war with Afghanistan, that’s what they were. As President Obama said Tuesday morning, “This is what happens at the end of wars.” IMAGINE THE OUTRAGE IF THE PRESIDENT BROUGHT THE TROOPS HOME AND AFGHANISTAN BUT LEFT BERGDAHL BEHIND. Lets not forger that no one said anything about Bergdahl being a deserter until AFTER Obama made the trade. I think its SICK how people are throwing Bergdahl under the bus, a US soldier who fought for his country, just so they can attack the president. Shame on everyone who jumps on that conservative bandwagon! SHAME!
Posted on: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 07:44:53 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015