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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/fe-logo-13-feb-09-250-px1.jpg?resize=250%2C133&ssl=1\" "\\"Fe\\"")
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\nYet, because the White House revealed it had negotiated with the Taliban for Bergdahl’s release, the rage unleashed against him by the right and certain media outlets has been brutal. So brutal in fact that Bergdahl’s own home town had to cancel his welcome home celebration<\/a> because of its inability to handle the thousands of anticipated protestors coming to denounce the celebration of his release and his return home.<\/p>\n
The news has been an interesting circus this week. Media coverage cast suspicions on Bergdahl’s father, from his beard which made him look “Taliban-like” to his Twitter feed calling for the release of Guantanamo Bay prisoners<\/a>, which is something the President had promised to do since first elected.<\/p>\n
Ex-POW Senator John McCain was among the same parties who months, years before had complained President Obama was not doing ENOUGH to return our captive soldiers home. Those days McCain had some moral weight behind this complaint. Today he tows the party line in a chorus of Bergdahl condemnation, joining his fellow Senators in walking away from a Senate investigative hearing on the Bergdahl release before all the facts were presented. Bergdahl was a traitor. A deserter. A collaborator with the Taliban. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Senate Republicans didn’t need facts. They already have their opinion based on hearsay and their goal. Bergdahl, like Benghazi, is the other stick to be used to pound the drum for Obama’s impeachment. Its a mid-terms year. The alliteration of Bergdahl and Benghazi on a Tea Party bumper sticker is a temptation too hard to resist. <\/p>\n
Bowe Bergdahl’s story, as most stories coming out of war, is likely more complex<\/a> than what the right wing’s constant needling of the dark national id have the stomach or mental concentration to admit to, let alone investigate. By trying Bergdahl in the court of public opinion before he even comes home from medical confinement, they are setting the stage for future campaigning theatrics come fall.<\/p>\n
What’s worse is the nation’s inability to even begin to heal war’s aftermath for Bergdahl or any of our soldiers through our existing and broken Veteran’s Administration. The very people who clamored for these wars now have conveniently forgotten the fiscal, social and moral bills that we still have to pay afterwards. But they don’t forget to somehow blame Obama for it.<\/p>\n
David Rosen, also known as astrodem<\/em> here at PW, had this to say about Bergdahl on his own blog First Person Politics.<\/a> He says it clearly and its a good read: “Are Republicans talking about Barack Obama or about Bowe Bergdahl and his family? It\u2019s no accident that you can\u2019t tell the difference. Through a psychological process known as displacement, Republicans are transferring all the hate and rage they feel toward President Obama onto Bergdahl and his kin. That\u2019s why the attacks on Obama and Bergdahl sound so much alike. In the warped psychology of the American right, Bergdahl is a stand-in for Obama: an excuse to let loose all the things they believe about the president, but can\u2019t say without doing at least as much damage to themselves.”<\/p>\n
“Displacement is an unconscious defense mechanism, used to reduce the anxiety that results from unwanted or impermissible impulses \u2014 usually aggressive ones. A woman snaps at her dog because she can\u2019t snap at her micro-managing boss. A boy, angry at his violent alcoholic stepfather, takes to bullying his classmates since attacking his father risks another beating. An old man yells at a politician on his TV because he can\u2019t yell at his neighbor\u2019s kids. A political party lashes out at a returning P.O.W. because attacking a president in the same way alienates reporters and voters.”<\/p>\n
If today’s news is a snapshot of what politicians are becoming at this moment in America, I would title it “The Bergdahl Point”: the moment when America’s elected officials reached a new low. They opened fire on our own in an attempt to make political points, deflecting responsibility for the mess they created in the first place. Truth be known, President Obama was not the first US President in recent history to negotiate with terrorists, or for that matter, to release prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. Between 2007 and 2009, President George W. Bush released 520 detainees from Guantanamo, one of whom was Abu Sufian bin Qumu, a suspect in the Benghazi embassy attack.<\/p>\n
I can only opine on Bowe Bergdahl’s situation as an outside observer of the political stage and an even more removed observer from the theater of war. I leave that to this Vietnam veteran commenter on the NY Times article linked above, to sum up Bergdahl’s situation best:<\/p>\n
“Bottom line is that Bergdahl is an American. By that fact alone, he is due a fair hearing, a fair investigation. As it stands right now he is being judged and tried in the press. The second bottom line this mess is exposing is the fact that if we the American people, our Congress and our President had handled the 5 GITMO detainees in an appropriate and just manner sometime during the last decade, they would not have been available be traded away in the first place. They would be in prison, dead or released as innocent.<\/p>\n
This ol’ Vietnam vet says this is not the America I was brought up to defend and put my life on the line for, not by a long shot. We torture our captives and we question the rescuing our own. Remind me not to encourage my grandkids to serve.”<\/p>\n
Seventy years after D-Day, here we stand at this Bergdahl Point, wondering when the debt will be paid to those who fight our wars — wars caused by backroom deals and shady politics. These days, their lives after war are now used as political football. Will they ever be given true justice, let alone real peace for their sacrifice? I’m not holding my breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perverse. It’s the only word that I could find to define the chicken hawk politicization of Bowe Bergdahl’s release from prison. For those unfamiliar with the story, Bowe Bergdahl was a POW in a Taliban prison in Afghanistan whose release was successfully negotiated by the US through exchange of five prisoners formerly held at Guantanamo … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}