{"id":7562,"date":"2014-06-12T07:15:59","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T14:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7562"},"modified":"2014-06-12T07:15:59","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T14:15:59","slug":"obama-quits-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-quits-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Quits Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bringing Bergdahl home was useful for closing Gitmo and winding down the war.<\/em><\/h3>\n
<\/div>\n
by\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/a><\/p>\n
\n
\"Photo
Photo via AFP Photo by Peter Muhly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

S<\/span>oon we shall get to the bottom of the swap of five Taliban kingpins from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for one Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl.<\/p>\n

In time we will learn whether Bergdahl really served with \u201chonor and distinction\u201d and was \u201ccaptured on the battlefield,\u201d as National Security Adviser Susan Rice has stated. Or whether, as fellow soldiers of his platoon insist, he was a deserter who left his comrades to seek out the Taliban.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We will soon discover whether Bergdahl\u2019s serious health problems or imminent danger prompted President Obama to make the sudden swap. Or whether, as administration skeptics insist, the deal was a rushed political gambit to divert attention from the Veterans\u2019 Affairs scandal \u2014 and a way to whittle down the Guantanamo population and erode laws demanding congressional approval before such detainees are released.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Amidst the swap conundrum, the president has defended the trade by referencing history and the American experience in past wars. But here, too, what the president states is not always accurate.<\/p>\n

Obama insisted that\u00a0\u201cwe have a rule, a principle, that when somebody wears our country\u2019s uniform and they\u2019re in a war theater and they\u2019re captured\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0 we\u2019re going to do everything we can to bring \u2019em home\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0 and regardless of whatever circumstances there are, it is our obligation to bring them home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Yet the United States has not routinely sought to bring captives home, \u201cregardless of whatever circumstances there are.\u201d During the Korean War, and for decades afterwards while on patrol in Korea, some American soldiers simply walked across the DMZ and turned themselves over to the North Koreans.<\/p>\n

Both in war and peace, the United States often did little to bring them back, even when the deserters had second thoughts and wanted to return. Charles Robert Jenkins stayed in North Korea for nearly 40 years after deserting in 1965. Japan sought to pressure the U.S. government to pardon him and helped obtain his release. On his return, Jenkins pled guilty to charges of desertion and aiding the enemy and was given a dishonorable discharge.<\/b><\/p>\n

\u00a0Robert Garwood left his post in Vietnam under disputed circumstances in 1965. He was not included in prisoner swaps at the end of the Vietnam War. The U.S. government made few subsequent efforts to bring him home from North Vietnam. When Garwood finally got back, more than 14 years after he was detained, he was court-martialed and given a dishonorable discharge.<\/p>\n

Obama also declared that \u201cthe transition process of ending a war is going to involve, on occasion, releasing folks who we may not trust but we can\u2019t convict.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is also mostly untrue. The U.S., in most of its foreign wars, more often waited until the conclusion \u2014 not during a \u201ctransition process\u201d \u2014 before exchanging prisoners. And how does the president know beforehand that \u201cwe can\u2019t convict\u201d through military tribunals Guantanamo terrorists like those he released, as we have with others in the past?<\/p>\n

\u00a0We are also not \u201cending a war,\u201d but only U.S. participation in it. Most likely, after our departure in 2016, the enemy, in similar fashion to the North Vietnamese in 1975, will storm Kabul, declare victory, and vitiate the long American sacrifice intended to offer the Afghans some alternative to the Taliban.<\/p>\n

The Bergdahl affair is a chapter in a much larger story. Obama campaigned in 2008 on the premise that George W. Bush had unwisely diverted resources to the bad war in Iraq from the good one in Afghanistan. Accordingly, Obama promised to step up and defeat the Taliban. Six years later, and with the U.S. military suffering more casualties under this administration than were lost during the Bush administration, Obama now feels that America has had enough.<\/p>\n

The president wants to quit the war, whether Afghanistan is subsequently lost to the Taliban or not. He wishes to close Guantanamo, as he promised in 2008, regardless of a law that demands congressional approval to release detainees, and despite the dangers incurred by the release of terrorists. Bringing Bergdahl home is part of sporadic negotiations with the Taliban about easing Americans out of the war, and also useful for closing down Guantanamo.<\/p>\n

Obama is wagering that the public does not care all that much whether Bergdahl is a deserter. Or whether the administration has negotiated with terrorists such as the Haqqani network or the Taliban. Or whether the released Taliban militants will soon return to fight in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Obama is also betting that Americans are sick of Afghanistan, and don\u2019t really care how American soldiers leave or what they leave behind, as long as they all leave.<\/p>\n

We saw that in Iraq in 2011, and we are seeing it again as a backdrop to the Bergdahl swap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bringing Bergdahl home was useful for closing Gitmo and winding down the war. by\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Soon we shall get to the bottom of the swap of five Taliban kingpins from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for one Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. In time we will learn whether Bergdahl really served with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[28,59,11,846,46,102,524],"tags":[12,965,968,1080,197],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1XY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7538,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-progressive-gitmo-myth\/","url_meta":{"origin":7562,"position":0},"title":"The Progressive Gitmo Myth","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 9, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton\/\/ FrontPage Magazine The swap of probable deserter Bowe Bergdahl for 5 \u201chigh-risk\u201d Guant\u00e1namo detainees is about more than political public relations. 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