The decision to trade for the release of Bowe Bergdahl isn’t political in the traditional sense, but the role of commander-in-chief is so critical to the presidency today that decisions made in that capacity are just as important in evaluating a president as more “political” ones. The story has many layers – Bergdahl is a deserter whose name is spoken with disgust by many in the military – but whether we should treat those who desert the same as those who are captured fighting is a question for another forum, and it is not the ground on which GOP leaders in Congress criticized the Obama administration for its decision.
Rep. Buck McKeon and Sen. James Inhofe, the senior GOP members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees respectively, released a statement over the weekend expressing concerns that the deal may represent “negotiating with terrorists” and may violate a prohibition on moving prisoners from Gitmo without giving 30 days’ notice to Congress. It was admirably restrained and civil, but it was also misguided.
First, the negotiation issue. From the statement:
“America has maintained a prohibition on negotiating with terrorists for good reason. Trading five senior Taliban leaders from detention in Guantanamo Bay for Berghdal’s release may have consequences for the rest of our forces and all Americans. Our terrorist adversaries now have a strong incentive to capture Americans.”
The reflexive concern about “negotiating with terrorists” is understandable, but when they are your opponent in an armed conflict, you will sometimes deal with them as you would an actual opposing country. Taking something like prisoner swaps off the table means we value that prohibition more than the return of a solider. I can’t endorse that, not when the “no negotiation” rule mainly comes in to play when terrorists target civilians in ways they can easily repeat (e.g. piracy), not rare events. President Reagan traded arms for hostages in Iran, and that crisis was thankfully never repeated.
Will this deal give the Taliban more “incentive” to repeatedly capture U.S. soldiers? Absolutely not. The extremist zealots of the Taliban rarely capture an American soldier because we are hard to capture, not because they are apathetic about the concept. Trust me when I say that each side is already at maximum incentive. A soldier in my old unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, received the Medal of Honor in part for preventing a wounded comrade from being dragged away by the Taliban in 2007. We protect our own with such loyalty and devotion that Bergdahl was only “captured” because he walked off the base in apparent pursuit of some infantile fantasy about wandering the mountains of Pakistan. The Taliban believed Bergdahl was a “big shot” because of how urgently we searched for him, and they quickly sought to broadcast their possession of him across the world. The value of a captive soldier was clear long before now.
Second, the possible violation of the law on transfers:
“In executing this transfer, the President also clearly violated laws which require him to notify Congress thirty days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and to explain how the threat posed by such terrorists has been substantially mitigated.”
If you believe that this kind of decision is part of conducting a war, as I do, then you should also believe that Congress has no business telling the president exactly how to make it. The president oversees this kind of deal as commander-in-chief. The idea of Nancy Pelosi looking over the shoulder of a future GOP president as he/she conducts a war should give us great pause before we endorse this kind of meddling. The explanation requirement is more understandable (and constitutional), but it also seems like a passive-aggressive way of forcing the president to fight as Congress demands.
All this doesn’t mean there are no reasons to question the deal: were the five Taliban members too high a price to pay? Will keeping them in Qatar really prevent them from contributing to the Taliban? Did we wait too long to make a deal? Or should we have kept holding out? GOP leaders must ensure the president is held accountable even when the subject matter is extremely sensitive, and I’m glad they stepped forward to try to do so here. But they should not be worried primarily about increasing their own branch of government’s warfighting power or whether the otherwise polite Taliban have suddenly acquired a desire to capture Americans.
