"The four GOP arguments against bringing back Bowe Bergdahl"

[applegrove]

The four GOP arguments against bringing back Bowe Bergdahl

by Paul Waldman at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/06/02/the-four-gop-arguments-against-bringing-back-bowe-bergdahl/

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1) The first argument is, to put it bluntly, that Bergdahl didn’t deserve to be rescued. The problem here isn’t the facts that support this claim, it’s the conclusion. It’s true that Bergdahl wasn’t the model of a heroic, patriotic soldier. He didn’t get captured while saving his platoon in a firefight. He was disgruntled with the war. He walked off his base, and some of those with whom he served consider him a deserter. According to some accounts he thought he would walk all the way to India, which suggests someone who was not in his right mind.

But the question is, should the government conduct a character study on every American servicemember who gets taken prisoner, and seek the release only of those who are sufficiently virtuous? Do we leave no one behind, or do we leave some behind if they don’t pass the test?

2) The second argument Republicans are making is that we simply shouldn’t negotiate with terrorists. As Mike Rogers, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Fox News, the problem with the deal is: “You send a message to every Al Qaeda group in the world that there is some value in a hostage that it didn’t have before.” You mean that now, Al Qaeda will realize for the first time that taking an American soldier hostage would be valuable? If only we could have kept that information from them! They never would have known.

This kind of deal is always distasteful and troubling. But it happens frequently. Israel, where security concerns are rather more immediate than they are here, has exchanged thousands of prisoners over the years for a small number of Israelis whom it wanted to retrieve. To gain the release of Gilad Shalit, a soldier held for five years by Hamas in Gaza, Israel agreed to release over a thousand prisoners, including hundreds who had been convicted of involvement in terrorism. Which leads to the next argument.




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