The "Happy" guy is playing a concert at the Apollo theater tonight and is streaming it on the internet so his fans in Iran can watch it. Seeing this story this morning reminded me of my disgust when I originally read about Iran prosecuting the kids who made a fun video dancing around to "Happy". It cannot be a proud moment for a regime's legitimacy when you have to prosecute young people for having fun and being happy.
A striking pose of a mean ill spirited angry mullah comes to mind and I wonder who would want to live in a place where that is the spirit of the government. While it is a distance from the Congressional GOP, they are certainly in the same county.
David Brooks wrote today about something I have been personally concerned about. The ability of the internet to draw me into watching videos of things that are momentarily interesting and distracting from things that would have more meaning like reading books faster so I can read more books in a year.
David Brooks Column
Also. now that more information has come out about the circumstances of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl original disappearance, I am faced with the reality that this decision was on the edge of decision making. I can see there was no right answer that everyone would agree with. Do you leave an American soldier a POW because he did something stupid that resulted in unnecessary armed conflict and casualties or do you bring him home with a POW swap of some really bad people who are now getting up in age and may or may not return to the battlefield.
The Army did promote Private Bowe Bergdahl to Sgt. while he was in captivity.
The Army and Marines bring home the dead and the wounded and as a matter of policy do not want to leave a POW a POW.
The guys we sent back are bad people although they were not frontline soldiers for the most part but rather politicians who governed under the Taliban. The Taliban is a political organization and these guys were probably some of their best managers and they probably hate the U.S. more than ever after 12 years in Guantanamo's hot humid weather prison.
But we are leaving Afghanistan and the real enemy is the ISI of Pakistan that allows the Taliban to operate and protected Osama bin Ladan. There would be no Taliban if Pakistan did not want them to exist. What difference do these guys really make and if they were the price to get our POW home, so be it.
The issue of precedent is a smokescreen. If we don't bring POW's held by the enemy home, the enemy will either simply kill them or co-opt them into their society. They won't stop capturing POW's and removing them from the battlefield.
The GOP who are truly sorry these guys are going home and wanted to keep them locked up with the U.S. taxpayer paying for their upkeep should reflect upon the fact that if they had been brought to a U.S. court, convicted of crimes against the U.S. and humanity, sentenced under U.S. law and held in a U.S. jail (where a CRIP would likely have sliced their throat), they would not have been available to the President and Army for a POW swap.
Anyway, I am glad this was a decision I did not have to make.
No comments:
Post a Comment