The following is a list of
thoughts on President Obama exchanging
five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo
Bay for captured Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.
1. Innocent Until Proven Guilty
Regardless of accusations against
Bergdahl, the American justice system—including the military justice system—is
premised on the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Unless and until Sergeant
Bowe Bergdahl is court martialed and convicted, he is simply an American army
sergeant who was captured and held by the Taliban. Rushing to judgment on Bergdahl
would be a foolish mistake. Just ask the French about Captain Alfred Dreyfus.
The same neocon operatives
who in an Orwellian fashion made distinguished Vietnam War veteran John Kerry
seem like a cowardly traitor and the frat boy weekend warrior George W. Bush
seem like a war hero appear to be at work in the Bergdahl story. Regardless of
what turns out to be true about the nature of Bergdahl’s capture by the
Taliban, the hatred
aimed at him by neocons provides a stark counterexample to any rhetoric about
supporting the troops. For neocons, troops are nothing more than cannon fodder
to be used to fight pointless corporatist wars of choice. Bowe Bergdahl
volunteered to serve his country. That is more than enough to earn him the
benefit of the doubt until all the facts are in. Serving in the military is far
more than chickenhawks like William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Paul
Wolfowitz, or the rest of the Trotskyite gang that couldn’t think straight ever
did.
2. Mental Health
Issues
Assume that Sergeant Bowe
Bergdahl did walk off his base and become AWOL. How can anyone be certain that
mental health issues were not an important causal factor behind his actions?
Prior to joining the army, Bowe Bergdahl was discharged
from the Coast Guard for psychological reasons. If he was not psychologically
fit to serve in the Coast Guard, might it also not be the case that he was
unfit to serve in the army?
Bergdahl also told his parents
that he witnessed an Afghan
child run down and killed by a military vehicle. If this actually occurred,
then it is possible that it led to him suffering PTSD. If it did not actually
occur, but he believes that it did, it is a possible sign of mental illness.
When Bergdahl slipped away from
his camp, he was armed
only with a knife, water, a digital camera, and a diary. Walking out into a
hostile terrain filled with potentially deadly enemy insurgents is not prima facie the kind of thing that a mentally
stable individual does. The point is that one cannot be certain about his
mental state at the time he walked away from his post.
What is certain is that Bergdahl
requires mental health care after five years in captivity. Bergdahl has claimed
that he was tortured
and kept in a cage by his captors. The Taliban is notorious for using torture,
so Bergdahl’s claims are hardly implausible. Draft dodging Senator Saxby
Chambliss is skeptical
about Bergdahl’s torture claims, but his treatment of Max Cleland in the 2002
election demonstrates what Senator Chambliss thinks of veterans.
If Bergdahl does turn out to have
been suffering from PTSD or other form of mental illness, he may well become
emblematic of the failed neoconservative/neo-progressive wars of choice in the
Muslim world. He will be another disposable human being cast aside by the
warmongers after he was no longer useful. While it happened on President
Obama’s watch and he is responsible, the VA scandal is a symptom of the
attitudes that both parties have had toward American military personnel for a
long time. The anger toward Bowe Bergdahl just confirms this.
3. 5 for 1
President Obama traded five
Taliban prisoners in exchange for the return of Bowe Bergdahl. Israel—a nation
that faces actual terror threats and does not need to cook up phony terror
plots to foil like the FBI does—traded 1,027 Palestinian and Arab-Israeli prisoners
in 2006 in order to bring about the release of its soldier Gilad Shalit.
Of these prisoners, 280 were serving life sentences. Combined, the released
prisoners were responsible for the deaths of 569 Israelis. This deal was authorized
by Israeli PM and Likud Neocon Benjamin Netanyahu. If an Israeli soldier is
worth 1,000 Palestinians to the Israeli government, what does it say about the United
States government that so many think that an
American soldier was not worth 5 Taliban insurgents?
According to Brig. Gen. Mark
Martins, the chief prosecutor in the military commission, the five Taliban
prisoners exchanged for Bergdahl—Abdul Haq Wasiq, Mullah Norullah Noori, Mullah
Mohammad Fazi, Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa, and Mohammad Nabi Omari—were all
unlikely to be successfully prosecuted. If they are not convicted
criminals, then these men—as unsavory as they may be—are essentially POWs. The
Taliban is not a terrorist organization but is an insurgency made up of members
and supporters of the deposed fundamentalist Afghan government. As such, the United
States should be planning on releasing such
fighters now or in the not too distant future. When the Nuremberg Trials were
completed, the United States
did not hold German or Japanese POWs indefinitely. If the United
States was not afraid of soldiers who fought
for the Axis, then it should not be afraid of soldiers who fought for the
Taliban. If such an insignificant group as the Taliban is viewed as a
legitimate threat to the United States,
then the nation is simply not as great or as brave as it once was.
4. Impeachment
In the area of foreign policy,
there are several things which President Obama has done which could technically
constitute impeachable offenses. Among these actions are his unconstitutional
“kinetic military action” in Libya,
his drone campaign in the Middle East, and his
assassination campaign which led to the deaths of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki
and his son. However, President Obama moving the five Taliban members from
Gitmo without Congressional authorization is not among those potential
impeachable offenses.
Under the Constitution, the
President is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The Guantanamo
Bay detention facility is a
military prison. Whether President Obama signed the legislation requiring the
President to notify Congress in advance regarding the movement of detainees
from Guantanamo Bay
is irrelevant. The President may not consent to unconstitutional actions.
The Constitution grants Congress
the power to declare war. Congress has unconstitutionally ceded this power to
the executive branch. However, enumerated powers are not something that can be
traded. Congress cannot assume the power to have advanced knowledge or input
into the movement of military prisoners just because it has given up powers
elsewhere to the President. Article
I, Section 8 grants Congress the power to “make Rules concerning Captures
on Land and Water.” While charitably this may grant Congress the power to make
laws concerning how prisoners which will be sent to Guantanamo
Bay are captured, there is nothing
in the Constitution which gives Congress any power over these detainees once
they are captured.
The main reason that Republicans
in Congress have been so quick to seize on this point is that it is a very
unique situation that is not likely to be repeated. Therefore, there is no risk
of discouraging the next Republican President from being an Imperial President.
Neoconservatives and other militaristic Republicans want their party’s next
Commander-in-Chief to be able to unilaterally wage war like Caesar. Therefore,
they are far less likely to criticize President Obama from doing the same in Libya
or for his drone campaign.