David Brooks, Gets It Right...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
David Brooks, a moderate conservative gets it absolutely right in his New York Times opinion column in support of President Obama's decison to bring Sgt. Bergdahl home. We don't leave American soldiers behind irrespective of circumstances and the President understands that. Brooks effectively lays out the reasons why.
SOOOOO, to all you that have chosen to criticize the President for doing the right thing, something America has done since the days of the Revolutionary War, may I suggest you read, and re-read slowly until it sinks in and you understand.
More BELOW THE FOLD.
Via: Memeorandum
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
... The president and vice president, the only government officials elected directly by the entire nation, have a special responsibility to nurture this national solidarity. So, of course, President Obama had to take all measures necessary to secure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Of course, he had to do all he could do to not forsake an American citizen.
It doesn’t matter if Bergdahl had deserted his post or not. It doesn’t matter if he is a confused young man who said insulting and shameful things about his country and his Army. The debt we owe to fellow Americans is not based on individual merit. It is based on citizenship, and loyalty to the national community we all share.
Soldiers don’t risk their lives only for those Americans who deserve it; they do it for the nation as a whole.
It is not dispositive either that the deal to release Bergdahl may put others at risk. The five prisoners released from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a swap for Bergdahl seem like terrible men who could do harm. But their release may have been imminent anyway. And the loss of national fraternity that would result if we start abandoning Americans in the field would be a greater and more long lasting harm. ...
David Brooks, a moderate conservative gets it absolutely right in his New York Times opinion column in support of President Obama's decison to bring Sgt. Bergdahl home. We don't leave American soldiers behind irrespective of circumstances and the President understands that. Brooks effectively lays out the reasons why.
SOOOOO, to all you that have chosen to criticize the President for doing the right thing, something America has done since the days of the Revolutionary War, may I suggest you read, and re-read slowly until it sinks in and you understand.
More BELOW THE FOLD.
Via: Memeorandum
I think the Right would be wise to listen to Brooks and Krauthammer on this. It's making them look very bad in the eyes wise voters, bashing this thing.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
David Brooks is a moderate conservative?
ReplyDeleteI always saw him as the MSM's token RINO.
Any conservative who speaks rationally and doesn't denigrate Obama 24/7 is seen as a RINO. Unless you're a raving Malkin or Alex Jones, the Tea Baggers dismiss you as a traitor to America.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason that I might give Obama the benefit of the doubt on this is a sneaking suspicion that he's probably going to smoke these bastards the very first instance that he gets (and, yes, I will praise him greatly when it happens). Then we'll have some justice.......That, and I must have missed the al Qaeda Appomattox-style surrender ceremony.
ReplyDeleteI believe few would have a problem if Obama "smokes them."
ReplyDeleteWhether or not that is his plan is a seperate issue. His decision was the correct one. Period.
Krauthammer, Brooks, and others get why the decision was the right one.. Tea Party types (think Hannity) non stop bleating is giving Tea a bad taste Will.
I don't know about the period part, Les. According to the Washington Post, Gates, Panetta, Hillary, and Clapper were all opposed to making previous iterations of this swap and the fact that a couple of these individuals are apparently war criminals also gives me pause.......That, and Obama absolutely broke the law by not giving Congress the mandatory 30 day notice (per Jonathan Turley, per Jeffrey Toobin, and per Senator Feinstein).
ReplyDeleteA strong case can be made the 30 day notification is unconstitutional. Review Article II Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States.
ReplyDeleteI hope the U.S. Supreme Court is forced to weigh in and make a ruling.
That whole 30 day thing was just more of congress wanting a say in something they already punted away. Our congress has become nothing by a den of sleaze.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
An Uber Presidency, Jersey. That's how Jonathan Turley (not exactly a right-winger) is currently characterizing this administration and I think that he may be right.
DeleteEh. It doesn't seem any more Uber than any other presidency. I think we're a little too contemporary in our thinking about this.
DeleteJMJ
"Obama is really the President Richard Nixon always wanted to be." He also points out that the U.S. has fallen all the way to 46th in the world when it comes to press freedoms (according to the World Press Freedom Index) under Obama. Sorry, but there's really not a lot to like about this President, Jersey.
DeleteA lot of that "freedom" ranking is because of our state and local governments, especially state. To think Obama has eroded our freedom any more than any prior President would seem subjectively critical.
DeleteJMJ
Bay, are you are hard-core. Read Jonathan Turley. Read Jeremy Scahill....There was an old expression back when I was a kid on the playground, Jersey; "When your own guy says so." You just might want to familiarize yourself with it and not be such a damned lap-dog. I mean, for Christ sakes, he made Fox News's James Rosen an unindicted co-conspirator. If that isn't Nixonesque then nothing is!
DeleteBrooks is a conservative. Not to be confused with the liberal Brookings Institution.
ReplyDeleteThere's no need to make personal redefinitions of liberal/conservative.
Just to clarify the 'liberal' Brookings Institution-
Delete"To this day, Brookings is commonly, and inaccurately, dubbed "liberal" (e.g., Baltimore Sun, 8/9/98; Cincinnati Enquirer, 7/30/98; Dallas Morning News, 7/1/98; AP, 5/29/98). CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg even publicly chastised one of his colleagues for not tagging Brookings as "liberal" in his reporting (Wall Street Journal op-ed, 2/13/96). It's called "centrist" almost as often, but never "conservative," though that label would be more accurate than "liberal."
In fact, much of Brookings' top brass has come from Republican administrations. Its current president, Michael Armacost, was an undersecretary of state for the Reagan administration and ambassador to Japan under Bush. Brookings' president from 1977 to 1995, Bruce MacLaury, spent most of his career in the Federal Reserve, with a stint in the Nixon Treasury Department.
As for Brookings' most prominent analysts: Richard Haas, who heads the think tank's foreign policy department, was a senior director at the National Security Council under Bush. Stephen Hess was a speech writer for Eisenhower, an adviser on urban affairs for Nixon and editor-in-chief of the Republican platform under Ford. Brookings has dubbed itself as the home of "fanatic moderates," offering the "full spectrum of opinion from K to Q" (Brookings Review, Winter/97)--but, moving right, it's becoming more like "M to V."
--just because the Tea Party says so, doesn't make it correct.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/03/03/think-tank-employees-tend-to-support-democrats
ReplyDeleteUS News and World Report describes this organisation as 97.6% Democrat. That's overwhelmingly liberal. Not sure what the tea party has to do with this at all, BB?
Also, in the same list, the Heritage Foundation is almost all conservative...the opposite of the Brookings Institution. I won't try to redefine them either. Regardless of what jobs members held before joining it.
ReplyDeleteNot impressed with think tanks of any ilk. They 'think' up theories and they are probably 'tanked'.
DeleteI would probably call Brookings idiosyncratically centrist. Yeah, they donate mostly to Democrats but they ultimately sided with Bush on Iraq and one of their scholars just recently came out with a paper that advocated doing away with the corporate income tax. There are definitely more partisan groups than these folks.
DeleteOn this we agree, BB. And these tanks are often so... shallow.
DeleteAnyway, there's the old think tank joke from Leno that I think anyone but the most partisan prig should find amusing:
""I heard Quayle is going to work for a think tank in Indiana," Leno said
from Hollywood. "Let's hope they have a lifeguard on duty. Stay in the shallow end, Dan."
The Defense Dept has a new think tank. in production. It is over budget already and the prototype is obsolete ....next they plan on building a think truck.
ReplyDeleteAnd if we had single-payer, the same sort of thing would happen to healthcare.
DeleteBrooks, as usual, gets it ABSOLUTELY wrong. To suggest as he does and to which you agree, would suggest that the individuals in the US are a cohesive mass. The founders sought nothing of the kind. The strength is in the individual, the rights are of the individual. The responsibilities are of the individual to the other individuals which make up the country and by respecting and protecting their rights thusly protects our own. The US as a military entity strives to "accomplish the mission" and presses that imperative upon the office corps, as set forth by the commander in chief. The individuals as members of military, have suborned some of their rights (under UCMJ) and congealed themselves to the mass in protection of unit. Trading hostages or buying them, is a concession to the terrorists that will exploited over and over. Each time they will demand more as we have proven ourselves (NOW) to be weaker and willing to give in to their demands.
ReplyDelete//Trading hostages or buying them,// oh oh oh...unless Ron Reagan does it. Sheesh, get a life or get a beer.....but quit talking smack.
ReplyDeleteI have examined my submission, I have not mentioned Reagan or any previous administration. The negotiation with terrorist merely emboldens them for next time. Fact, this particular terrorist group has a long history of telling the world how to deal with them. The camel and tent truism.
DeleteIf you are referring to the Taliban as a terrorist group you might want to check it out. I do not believe the Taliban has been recognized as such by the US government, or the UN. Other western nations as well. I could be wrong but I don't believe so.
DeleteAsk any little girl who was killed for going to school or had her clitoris burned away for "religious" purposes.
DeleteIf your authorities on all things Terrorist is either the USG(state dept) or the UN, you have bigger problems than can be solved online.
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1889.html
ReplyDelete...yup, Republicans do not deal with terrorists....or supply them with wapons.
As General McCrystal noted, the US Army does not leave their people behind as prisoners.
DeleteI've never quite understood the Taliban: they are religious zealots, they instill sharia law and they are hard on Americans. But, as far as I know, only in their own homeland. Unlike the Al Quaeda, they don't seem to come looking for trouble in our country Along those lines, until very recently, we NOTE HERE :
"The Afghan Taliban, not to be confused with the TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan) is not designated as a terrorist group by the United States Department of State or any other U.S. government entity. Additionally, the Taliban is not designated by the United Nations, European Union, or other major foreign government as a terrorist organization".
...except for 9/11,bb. Hardly an obscure incident. When the Taliban was united with AQ in seeking aggression against our homeland, far from Aghanistan's borders.
DeleteAnd it is a sort of sophistry to denythe current Taliban is terrorist, even if they are a different branch than the one that attacked us in 2001. They certainly have murdered enough innocent Americans, and they do desire to kill us here as well.
Thank you for posting this very pertinent information BB Idaho. I'll never understand the republicans response to the President's decision. I guess it's just them deciding they can play anything both ways if it suits their interests. Their agenda is so transparent it is almost comical.
ReplyDeleteIMO, we've only begun to get information about this Bergdahl-Taliban trade.
ReplyDeleteHave you see today's WaPo and the stories about Bowe Bergdahl? Please take a look at Bergdahl: ‘I am the lone wolf of deadly nothingness’.
Do you blame his home schooling, AOW?
DeleteBB,
DeleteI don't blame his home schooling per se. I think that he had "pre-existing" issues. He could also have been rebelling against the strictness of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Many of the OPC churches are strongly Calvinistic -- the kind of Calvinism that greatly emphasizes predestination and amounts to fatalism, IMO, at least the way that many ministers in the OPC present the doctrine of predestination.
How do I know so much about the OPC? I was a member for 10 years. One day, I walked away. All that minister ever did was yap about predestination and in a particularly fatalistic and dark manner. Now, I did find some good elements in the OPC, particularly the in-depth Bible studies.
But I can see how someone might become depressed if strongly immersed in the OPC. Bergdahl apparently turned to Buddhism for a while, then deserted Buddhism and enlisted in the military. See Wikipedia's article about Bowe Bergdahl.