I just got back from work and I am exhausted. But I happened across a bit of Fox News and I saw Charles Krauthammer talking about what a bad precedent Bergdahl sets and how Israel had to release over a thousand terrorists for one guy. At first I thought, “Yeah, and that was a deal that the Israelis were willing to make to get Gilad Shalit back. Who are you to second guess them? They obviously thought it was a good deal!”
But then it occurred to me. The right wing in American politics would not have been okay with us trading these five Taliban soldiers for President Obama. A couple of things are crystal clear. One is that there is absolutely nothing that the Obama administration could do about anything that they would not find fault with. Second, is that they just hate Obama. Of course, after he’s out of office and another Democrat is in, they will talk about how he wasn’t that bad but whoever is in at that time is just terrible, although admittedly, not from Kenya.
The right in this country has no credibility. It isn’t that their ideas are bad. It is that they have no ideas. All they stand for is whatever opposes what the Democrats stand for. That’s a lot more dangerous than is commonly understood. Because I don’t know where they go from here. If they regain power, they will not do what they now claim to want to do: all the silly Tea Party stuff about the government not interfering with anything except for abortion rights. For one thing, such a government would destroy the red state base of the Republicans’ power. If they really did that, they would be voted out as quickly as possible. So they will just go back to their usual crony capitalism.
But when that doesn’t work out, what then? Are they going to turn on a dime yet again and be for “liberty”? I don’t think so. I think there is a real crisis going on in the Republican Party but we won’t really see it until it is far too late. And that’s when the right wing nuts might just start a new civil war. But I hope we deal with this one better. I say life without parole for all such traitors. The last thing we want is wingnuts a hundred years from now celebrating another wave of traitors.
But that is my question to Charles Krauthammer, “Would it have been a good deal to give up those five prisoners for President Obama?” I’m certain he would say no, just as I’m certain that if it had been eight years earlier, he would have said yes. Consistency is not something that matters to Krauthammer, or pretty much any conservative.
I’m not so sure President Obama is going to become more palatable when he is out of office. He frustrates them by not giving them a real scandal. Clinton gave them one, and got punished for it. And Clinton isn’t black. And I may provoke those who were paying more attention than I was at the time, but they weren’t as crazy. As much as Newt Gingrich did to discredit the conservative movement, he was no George W Bush. And we had yet to meet Sarah Palin. All of this is so normal to us now it’s boring. They are retreating from reality because they can’t breathe the air there.
Lawrence – Yeah, they have become anaerobic. But I don’t think you are right about the scandals. Because remember: there really was no scandal. They were given full authority to look into any scandal and in the end, all they found was that Clinton was fooling around on his wife.
Obama’s being black has only brought out the natural racism that exists on the right. Exactly the talk of "socialism" that we hear today was said about Clinton then. It will take another Republicans president and then they will notice (Oh my God!) that the Democratic president is just slightly more liberal than the Republican. And you know what that means: socialism! But they’ll look back on Obama and remember that the communists didn’t take over and think that he was okay. Unlike this new guy/gal.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v3etuIw-aM[/youtube]
As Groucho Marx sang "Whatever your for, I’m against it!"
The only thing I would bring to your attention is that Israel exchanged Palestinian prisoners, not ‘terrorists’, for Shalit – many of the men held in Israeli prisons are locked up without charge, held on flimsy security certificates that are renewed month after month, year after year. The vast majority of those exchanged should never have been held and even those guilty of some offenses were long overdue for release.
@Ryan Hall – Thanks!
@R.Ward – I understand that. Israel and the United States show how countries can be largely civilized and still be savages. But many of those people were serving life sentences. Also, depending upon who you listen to, those 5 men would have had to be released next year anyway when we officially end the occupation. (You know: we will have a "no occupation" force of 10,000 troops!)