US swaps 5 Gitmo prisoners for US soldiers release, but many questions remain

[theophilus777]

Good response. Somewhere along the way, they always try to turn everything into a discussion about him.

Which you entirely missed w/o having someone else to point it out to you. You really think your finger is on the red button? We need to coin a new term: "Obama complex"

 

[theophilus777]

I'm not sure, but I think it's a general purpose sympathy generating misdirection. Which is ironic, since Bergdahl certainly sounds like he may be suffering the same condition. If nothing else, this thread serves as a wonderful demonstration of how facts are secondary to ideology in so much political discussion. You have 2 guys who sound quite similar in a lot of ways, but who people either condem out of hand or desperately cast as a tragic hero depending on party affiliation.

Well at least this comment brings us back on topic in the sense of putting into perspective how we switched gears to the Mexican border incident. Now, care to explain how party affiliation differentiates between people's stance here?

Next, the POW doesn't seem at all like the one jailed. The POW was high on hash according to those who saw him last before capture, after he deserted his post. He also took off on his own before; not so bad on your own time, but not so good when on military duty. He also had some psych problems before all this, which does raise the question how he was not screened out, at least before deployment.

How does this compare to the one jailed? Well, it doesn't. He was discharged before his arrest. I don't see anyone saying Berghdal should've been left to rot, only that its very fishy to trade the 5 most dangerous terrorists on the planet for him, and even worse to simply let them go, which is basically the final disposition of that case.

I think both these guys should be treated similarly, meaning do what we can to bring them back. It is the inequality in our approach to them that has me mad at Obama, and I think he rightfully deserves that.

 

[TLK Valentine]

How does this compare to the one jailed? Well, it doesn't. He was discharged before his arrest. I don't see anyone saying Berghdal should've been left to rot, only that its very fishy to trade the 5 most dangerous terrorists on the planet for him, and even worse to simply let them go, which is basically the final disposition of that case.

First of all, these guys might have been "the 5 most dangerous terrorists on the planet" 10 years ago -- not so much anymore. The more dangerous ones are the ones we couldn't catch; the most dangerous ones are the ones we don't know about... yet. Don't mistake fame for danger.

Second, we kind of had to let them go as part of the trade -- that's more or less how these prisoner exchanges work.

I think both these guys should be treated similarly, meaning do what we can to bring them back. It is the inequality in our approach to them that has me mad at Obama, and I think he rightfully deserves that.

They're treated inequally because their situations are unequal. Bergdahl might be a deserter, but he was taken prisoner by the enemy in a combat zone. Tahmooresi is just an idiot who got arrested for multiple offenses by a legitimate police agency.

 

[MachZer0]

First of all, these guys might have been "the 5 most dangerous terrorists on the planet" 10 years ago -- not so much anymore. The more dangerous ones are the ones we couldn't catch; the most dangerous ones are the ones we don't know about... yet. Don't mistake fame for danger.

Second, we kind of had to let them go as part of the trade -- that's more or less how these prisoner exchanges work.

That's only because they haven't had time to get back into terrorist mode. Give them time, and thank Barack

 

[TLK Valentine]

That's only because they haven't had time to get back into terrorist mode.

And what exactly is "terrorist mode," Mach?

 

[GondwanaLand]

Well, quite. PTSD is awful, I could tell you stories that would turn you white. But, generally speaking, it doesn't make one lose one's common sense nor basic presence of mind. If this guy is SO unwell that he can't cope finding his way around a place he's been before, really, he's not the sort of person I'd be comfortable around knowing he was heavily armed.

There's nothing wrong with having PTSD, and it certainly doesn't make anyone more likely to start blazing away indiscriminately. It does, however, make one prone to extremes of emotion, and if this guy is so deeply affected, one doesn't wish to imagine how volatile he could be.

Or driving, frankly, if he is supposedly really that unwell.

 

[theophilus777]

They don't care about "peace" they just want it to be theirs.

You also said the Talibs are neither crazy nor stupid. I find these 2 statements incompatible.

Who said their goal needs to be realistic? It's what they want.

They have the guns -- who says they need to be "legitimate"? Power doesn't need to be "legimitate," it just needs to be secured.

Wrong, wrong, and more wrong -- all they need is to have a political goal THEY THINK is attainable and reasonable; they do.

Again, I find all this to be indications of stupidity and lunacy. And you said their only political goal was to hold Afghanistan. I pointed out they were training people to attack us when we weren't there, and you said of course. None of this is logically consistent. Clearly they have goals beyond merely holding AF, and do we have any reason to think they're content with the borders of AF?

Iran used to be, and may again be, the boogyman for quite some time

"Axis of evil," if you please

, and while their government is certainly something that bears watching, they're in the middle of some long term social reforms that might mellow them out....

But we have to deny them nuclear (sorry, nukular) generated electricity

.... unless the US intervenes and makes things worse, which, given our history in the area, is more or less a given.

So you are in favor of Obama's latest statements, indicating a shift to non-interventionist policy. You are also in favor of learning from our past mistakes. Not only do I agree on both points, but this is the best thing I've ever seen come out of Barry, far and away ...

You still haven't demonstrated that you understand what my tactics are -- you've gotten them wrong every time you're tried -- so you're not really in a position to say this.

I've pointed out weaknesses in it, and the impracticalities that I see.

They have a goal. Either show them that their goal is unattainable, or find a way to give them what they want, and the problem is solved. They want us out of "their" territory. If we no longer need to be there, everyone wins.

Like I said, this is impractical. First, we already showed them their goal is unobtanium. How long did it take us to get a military "win?" Any sane person would've caved, but not these guys. This indicates they've got nothing to lose, to which you replied I don't understand them. I understand the actions of a desperate militia, and you're not going to beat them w/o killing them. This is a stark contrast to the loyalty of Saddam's soldiers.

How do we arrive at the place where we no longer need to be there? The closest we come to that is modernized warfare such that drones reduce our need for boots on the ground. This is progress, which does not mean I approve of the extent of Barry's reach on this one.

So neither of your (finally) stated strategies is tenable. And here I was hoping you and I would achieve world peace? (Not really of course, just like my butter and blankets scenario was never realistic because it would never be implemented, even if it would actually work)

Simple -- we didn't learn our lesson from Vietnam; but that doesn't mean we couldn't learn because we didn't win, as you claimed.

No Sir, my claim included quite a bit of subtlety you're willing to steamroll over. IF we had won in Nam, we'd have quite a lot of info to apply to both Middle Eastern fronts. Since they won, we don't have that BUT the means by which they won don't really give us useful info on how we could "win" either front. Unfortunately. The best it should tell us is how not to lose in the same way. Apparently we failed to learn that lesson, as well as the lesson of AF being the empire breaker.

Have a political goal for the region and achieve it -- either militarily or through some other means. I really can't make it any simpler.

This is what I referred to as an "exit strategy." I actually saw 2; one being just start with the Nation building thing, since AF was already bombed to smithereens before we ever got there and there was no need. Yes, this would require the bravest "soldiers" to ever set foot on a battlefield, and maybe the Talibs really are so stupid and insane as to keep killing both aid workers and accompanying media, but you have failed to realize that the only string attached in this plan is to give people what they need so they aren't so desperate anymore. Would no fellow Muslims have challenged the Taliban had they responded that way? Would the Taliban be in control now? We will never know, but I seriously doubt both things. I think everybody would've mellowed out, as you describe Iran. I also think it would've been a lot cheaper, with a lot less bloodshed.

The other one is simply to colonize the whole place. "Ride herd on the Middle East," as W said. Let them pay tribute. Not sea to shining sea, but oilfield to shining oilfield. It is our technology and our steel that we brought there to start the whole thing, we could take it back w/o a significant moral issue. I mean, the world is so convinced that's all we care about anyway, why not? I say this is easily proven to be false because we haven't even secured a call for ourselves on their oil. What our true motive is is to extend the lifespan of the USD as global reserve currency. Once we lose that, we're sunk. So why not let the rest of the world hate us and use our military might before we lose it?

Clearly that's a plan we weren't about to do either, just like we didn't take on Russia after WWII like Patton advised. Either one of these steps would improve our position greatly. Both? Might even have made us able to compete with China.

Anyway, that would be a tenable goal for the region; easily met, difficult to maintain. I furnished 2. I've never seen anybody else come up with 1.

Armed conflict was a mistake, since I think our ideal political goal should be "wash our hands of the whole thing and have nothing whatsoever to do with the place."

So you say leave the Taliban to train terrorists at will. They were doing it before we got there, nothing would've made them stop. You say this is a self-correcting problem, I point out it is not. These are weaknesses in your position, the biggest of which is the claim they are not stupid or crazy. The biggest weakness in my plan is crazy people unafraid to die are harder to kill than anyone else, while the greatest strength is we have not been (successfully) attacked since 911. My position seems not to be as stupid as you claim.

And that's the problem -- nobody defined "winning."

Before attacking AF I made the mistake of actually trusting my Govt that such a goal was "of course" already decided.

war is a political action with a political goal, and we couldn't decide on a goal in Vietnam: were we stopping the North Vietnamese incursion, or were we "advising" the South Vietnamese to train them how to do it themselves? We never could make up our minds about that, could we? So until we have a goal for the Middle East and a plan for how to achieve it, why should we be there?

The person that said we never had an exit strategy because the plan was to never leave is not only a vet of Nam, but was special forces. Not just your typical crazy, but unable to have a guest overnight for fear of killing them while he himself slept, right up until 2009. I was unprepared to embrace his ideas, finding them a bit too extreme. Now I don't know, but if that was the plan, we went about it all wrong and forming colonies would be better. Alexander the Great style?

"Losing" what? Our national pride doesn't handle "losing" very well, but pride alone shouldn't be our reason for continuing -- another lesson we didn't learn from Vietnam; necessitating Nixon's "peace with honor" speech to extricate us.

You shouldn't need Sun Tzu to tell you to bail when a conflict isn't worth it anymore. When the political goal of an armed conflict is no longer attainable, but you continue fighting anyway for no other reason than to "win..." (win what?) then you're not fighting for a cause anymore; you're just.... fighting.

Less Sun Tzu, more like Kenny Rogers: "You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em..."

Did Tzu actually cover my butter and blankets scenario? Because you have it going in with an armed escort, which was not at all my idea.

Either way, defining a clear objective also covers the national pride thing. Nixon didn't furnish either peace OR honor.

All the more reason to publicly wash our hands of the whole thing. They'll probably never like us because of our role in creating Israel, but they despise us for our continued support of it.

I say, time to cut our losses.

This one step might be enough to stop terrorism worldwide, but is not worth it. I have no moral issue with simply taking over Middle Eastern oil because we invented the technology as well as the things that create demand. "They" stole it from us, and we just let them have it, which was a huge mistake. So taking it back is no big deal.

OTOH, Israel was created in the wake of Holocaust sympathy, and any sane person who wasn't stupid could know Palestine was carved up in impossible fashion, designed to create unresolvable strife. We financed it. W/o US $, it could never have happened. The only moral way we could do what you suggest is to fix the dilemma, once and for all. Personally i really don't see why we didn't bring the Jews here for their homeland, we have plenty of room. Now? How do you fix it? I find your proposal morally reprehensible; it's totally irresponsible.

If you can't beat 'em, bribe em -- as long as it's subtle? Workable, IF Christians could be counted on to be subtle... I don't see it happening.

The only bribe being actually meeting their needs so they aren't desperate. In that condition, they'd be much more likely to create a viable Gov't.

 

[theophilus777]

Part 2 continued

Look what happened in Japan; the Shimabara Rebellion and 250 years of strictly enforced isolationism. You expect better luck in a region which already has no reason to trust our motives?

I have no idea about this, but I pointed out how your comparison to losing in Nam was invalid. Do you really think this comparison is valid?

And suppose what they want is for us to go away and leave them alone? Would you comply?

You have a desperate people, tyrannized by crazed gunmen, refusing basic humanitarian aid and preferring their status quo. I don't find that reasonable.
My scenario was designed to get us out of there ASAP, leaving a stable Gov't in our wake. So the answer to your question is obvious; yes.

Perhaps, but instead our goal was to assist them in developing a stable gov't that was beneficial to us.

What possible benefit could they give us? We want their poppy plants now? We're saying leave us alone, stop attacking us, you have them saying leave them alone too. I'm saying if it were that simple things would never arrive at the present dilemma, something else must be involved. The only possible "benefit" to their stable Gov't., would be a non-terrorist State. Which is exactly what was stated.

Which wasn't going to happen since our goal (a stable, allied Iraq) couldn't be accomplished through military means. We're the ones who destabilized it when we overthrew Hussein.

But our military operations did for all purposes end at that point. We reduced them to keeping peace within their borders, and facilitating elections. A horrible function for US military might! Its designed to kill people ...

Take Khomeini out of the equation, and Saddam "suddenly" becomes a brutal dictator whom the people of Iraq need to be "liberated" from -- which ended up turning loose all the creeps that his brutality was keeping suppressed.

You're over simplifying it again. Our priority shifted due to 911, and their ability to continue attacking. A closer look showed oppression we didn't realize before, and after ground was captured we realized it was far worse yet.

Besides, we supported Hussein (brutality and all) against Khomeini, and then turned on him when he "suddenly" became a liability -- the people of the Middle East remember when we pull stunts like that, even when we pretend to forget.

Our Gov't's pretty good at keeping this stuff secret, at least til long after the fact. The realm of Ian Fleming stuff is a truth far stranger than fiction.

As long as you're remembering it, try to understand it -- that wasn't some terrorist shoe attack; that was one of the people we were there to "liberate." Didn't seem so grateful, did he? How many millions of others do you think regret they weren't within shoe-throwing range?

You're over-simplifying again. We can't pretend all the people of either country were ever some monolithic block. Many did in fact greet us as liberators. There are widely divergent reports, because people held widely divergent opinions. And no accurate polls exist to give us a good indication.

"Winning," "losing". . . you keep throwing these words around, but what exactly are we fighting for? Give me an answer before trying to justify continuing the conflict.

Yet another strawman. I'm not attempting to continue any conflict, neither have I seen anyone else come up with any (attainable) objective, just a fuzzy "help them form their own stable Govt," but w/o any realistic means to get from point A to point B.

But the Taliban would still be in charge -- and I don't think they'd take kindly to us trying to buy off "their" people with food and medicine.

Those humanitarians and their aid would quickly become targets, which would necessitate our sending in armed forces to protect those targets, who would in turn become targets themselves... which would necessitate more armed forces...

See where this leads?

Nope. I don't think it would've been hard at all to avoid that scenario. Apparently Mr Sunny Zoo didn't cover this

Right -- you think the Taliban is afraid of bad publicity?

The point here is hearts and minds, right? If the entirety of the Muslim world sees Talibs killing those bringing humanitarian aid, at the very least they lose all support and sympathizers. There's also the chance that their geographical neighbors take up the armed part of the conflict, leaving us either out of it, or in a greatly diminished role. At worst, we wind up far better off than we are now. With fewer of our own dead, too.

 

[TLK Valentine]

Or driving, frankly, if he is supposedly really that unwell.

Indeed -- and since one of the symptoms of PTSD is an overly sensitive fight or flight response, it's a darn good thing the Mexican authorities took away his weapons... they may have saved some lives.

 

[MachZer0]

And what exactly is "terrorist mode," Mach?

That would be the mode where one practices terrorism

 

[GondwanaLand]

In all likelihood Bergdahl will be kept in Germany until the media fervor dies down. Then he'll be quietly returned to America to live out his days at the pay grade he achieved when he was upped in the ranks after deserting his post. And quite possibly helping the Taliban counter American troops movements.

Bergdahl is already in the US (Bowe Bergdahl returns home — to a long road ahead | Fox 59 News – fox59.com), so that part of your prediction fails.

As to the rest of your post, methinks you've been watching too much Homeland.

 

[TLK Valentine]

That would be the mode where one practices terrorism

Anybody can practice terrorism, Mach -- so what?

 

[MachZer0]

Anybody can practice terrorism, Mach -- so what?

Anybody can, not everyone does

 

[TLK Valentine]

Anybody can, not everyone does

And seeing as how terrorism has gone on just fine while these five men were in the hole, it seems their absence didn't change a thing. So why not do something useful with them, and get an American POW back?

 

[GarfieldJL]

And seeing as how terrorism has gone on just fine while these five men were in the hole, it seems their absence didn't change a thing. So why not do something useful with them, and get an American POW back?

I wouldn't call giving the enemy a huge boost to morale (and that's the best case scenario), being anything other than completely stupid...

The fact these guys are likely to return to terror or help recruit people into terrorism makes what the Obama Administration did completely insane.

 

[MachZer0]

And seeing as how terrorism has gone on just fine while these five men were in the hole, it seems their absence didn't change a thing. So why not do something useful with them, and get an American POW back?

 

[TLK Valentine]

I wouldn't call giving the enemy a huge boost to morale (and that's the best case scenario), being anything other than completely stupid...

Are you suggesting that our soldiers aren't worth the boost to morale that our enemies get from the exchange? That it's "completely stupid" to trade prisoners?

The fact these guys are likely to return to terror or help recruit people into terrorism makes what the Obama Administration did completely insane.

Our soldiers aren't worth it?

 

[TLK Valentine]

It's okay that you didn't see it before -- our friends on the right need practice in the subtle art of thinking things through.

Call it a learning experience and move on.

 

[Sistrin]

How many of those illegals come packing heat?

Ask those who engineered Fast and Furious. However your point is moot. By admitting they are "illegals" you acknowledge they violated our laws in coming here. Where is the same disdain for and outrage over that as is being shown toward Tahmooressi?

 

[MachZer0]

It's okay that you didn't see it before -- our friends on the right need practice in the subtle art of thinking things through.

Call it a learning experience and move on.

If that was what some liberals consider thinking things through, it's no wonder Obama has been such a failure