In one of America’s most shocking wartime decisions, the Commander-in-Chief has knowingly broken the law to release five of our highest-ranking enemies in return for a young soldier who mysteriously vanished from his post days after allegedly writing to his parents, “the horror is that America is disgusting” and mailing home boxes with his books and uniforms.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, and Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member James Inhofe released a joint statement noting that President Barack Obama was required by law to provide a 30-day notice to Congress before transferring any detainees, explaining how their security threat was to be mitigated.
And the White House response?
“Unique and exigent circumstances” justified the decision. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel later claimed the Taliban’s prisoner was endangered, curiously more now than during his five years in captivity. Really?
So much for the Constitution. So much for Mr. Obama’s constant refrains about America following the “rule of law.”
But regrettably this is not just an academic exercise, nor just about the law. Nor about one soldier.
Releasing five of the Taliban’s top leaders from Guantanamo — including their former deputy defense minister, deputy intelligence minister, two governors and another top terrorist puts American soldiers and civilians in the cross-hairs of further mass casualty attacks.
How many more Americans will die because of this illegal and ill-advised prisoner exchange?
Meanwhile, their release was brokered by Qatar in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, a disillusioned former ballet dancer and French Foreign Legion reject-turned U.S. soldier who apparently told friends back in Idaho that he went to Afghanistan for “philanthropic reasons.”
According to Berghdahl’s e-mails released by his family to Rolling Stone, just before disappearing from his post along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, then-Private First Class Bergdahl wrote he was, “ashamed to even be American,” and “the US Army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies.” According to Rolling Stone, he also talked to fellow soldiers and others about walking to Pakistan if the deployment was “lame.”
But this scandal is much bigger than Bowe Bergdahl.
In 1943, could anyone imagine FDR releasing five of Nazi Germany’s top leaders for a disgruntled soldier who very likely deserted his unit? Yet that is essentially what Mr. Obama has done. American power and prestige has hit a new low.
While he cynically characterizes this as a victory in bringing home an American soldier, it’s anything but a win for our nation. While it’s positive that Bergdahl has been freed, this lopsided prisoner exchange will only embolden Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists to seek out other U.S. military hostages, under any and all circumstances, whether they are willing captives or not.
And while President Obama has lectured Americans about human rights in the context of Guantanamo, how does he explain his latest actions to the tens of millions who have suffered under the Taliban? What’s his message for Malala Yousafzai, the girl shot in the head by the Taliban for attending school in Pakistan? What does he tell the countless women and girls who have acid thrown in their faces in Afghanistan and Pakistan for similar reasons, crimes perpetrated by many of those formerly under the command of the Taliban leaders he just released?
In his haste to close Guantanamo, free as many Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists as possible, and rush for the exits in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama is not only abandoning millions of women and girls like Malala, but he’s putting all Americans at grave risk for another 9/11-style attack on our nation.
Congress should immediately hold hearings into Bergdahl’s highly suspicious disappearance and the shameful trade for Taliban top leaders. And the American people must hold Mr. Obama and his team accountable for their actions.
J.D. Gordon is a retired Navy Commander and former Pentagon spokesman who served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-2009. He is a Senior Adviser to several think tanks based in Washington, DC.
