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Reactions to the Bergdahl story

Reactions to the Bergdahl story

Team Obama is audacious in its defense of its bumbling.

Nothing about the Bergdahl/Taliban affair should have been surprising to people who have studied Obama over the years.

Not Obama’s audacity, nor his disregard of prior bipartisan warnings in Congress or from the intelligence community, nor his aides’ attempts to discredit those from Bergdahl’s unit who are calling Bergdahl a deserter or worse, nor Obama’s refusal to offer any apologies whatsoever for his actions in this affair, nor his lies and broken promises, nor the fact that quite a few Democrats are lining up to defend him like the good party hacks that they are.

An intellectual reaction is one thing. But there’s still an emotional reaction—what Peter Wehner referred to as a visceral reaction—which is to be stunned, disgusted, outraged, and full of trepidation about both the long-term effects of this move and what Obama will be doing for a series of encores.

I’ve been wanting to know what the American electorate thinks of it all. Today I read that the results of a Fox News poll showed Americans evenly split on the subject, and that news surprised me, too, although it probably shouldn’t have.

But turning to the poll itself, it seems that it was taken June 1-3, which would be the second, third, and fourth days after the story broke. If I understand these things correctly, that would mean that approximately a third of respondents were questioned June 1, and another third on the second. That makes the results of the poll as a whole nearly meaningless, since so much of importance in the story hadn’t yet come out.

The poll is a curious document, as these things often are. It contains questions about many topics, and Bergdahl was hardly one of the main issues it probed. That was one of the very last questions asked, number 45, and its phrasing went like this: “Do you approve or disapprove of the United States releasing five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for the release of a U.S. soldier who was being held as a prisoner of war in Afghanistan?,” with 45% approving, 47% disapproving, and 8% uncertain. Note that Bergdahl’s name isn’t even mentioned.

So we may not be able to conclude much about public opinion of the Bergdahl exchange from this poll; subsequent ones will tell the tale. The poll did measure a fairly high level of dissatisfaction with Obama about the VA scandal that had been dominating the news prior to the Bergdahl incident. Hmmm. And I found the response to this question interesting, too: “Do you think the Obama administration is more or less competent than the George W. Bush administration?” Only 42% said more competent and 48% less competent. Interesting, no? And yet Obama’s approval rate in the poll was 40%, which seems to represent the percentage of Americans who will not desert him no matter what.

[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]

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Comments

“Not Obama’s audacity…”

You didn’t read his book ‘The Audacity of Hope (I get away with this shit)’ ?

Not A Member of Any Organized Political | June 5, 2014 at 2:33 pm

Never Forget!

Sen. Barack Obama slips up on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos and refers to “my muslim faith”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKGdkqfBICw

I heard that Obama was outraged when he found out about the prisoner swap by reading about it in the New York Times.

/s

    Not A Member of Any Organized Political in reply to Musson. | June 5, 2014 at 3:23 pm

    I think you mean “When it was ‘read’ to him.” LOL

LukeHandCool | June 5, 2014 at 2:53 pm

Josh “Talking Points Memo” Marshall vs. cub reporter LukeHandCool.

https://twitter.com/starrfin/status/474236876828577792

    Estragon in reply to LukeHandCool. | June 5, 2014 at 5:22 pm

    Whether or not prisoners of the Taliban can be considered POWs or not is irrelevant since, contrary to press reports, Bergdahl wasn’t captured by them.

    It was instead the Haqqani Network, islamic terrorists who fund their activities with ransoms. They are friendly with the Taliban, but a separate group which, unlike the Taliban, HAVE been designated a terrorist organization.

    (Taliban never won the designation because we wanted to preserve the option to talk to them, and it is prohibited to negotiate with terrorists).

    Of course, Obama wants us to think it was the Taliban so the only law he may have broken was the 30-day notice.

“Do you approve or disapprove of the United States releasing five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for the release of a U.S. soldier who was being held as a prisoner of war in Afghanistan?”

OK. I am suppressing a scream…

Berghdal was NOT A FLUCKING POW. He was a HOSTAGE. Who APPEARS to have VOLUTEERED to be a HOSTAGE. Or worse…

The Taliban 5 were not POWs. They were piratical terrorists in custody.

Flucking words mean flucking things…

CRIPES…!!!

Have I told you lately how much I despise this administration?

So what’s next for Taliban Bowe, Obama’s surrogate son?

How about a 24/7 365 day tour of VA hospitals so that he can see what American heroes actually look like and hear what they have to say to him?

All in favor? OK, all hands raised. That’s my poll and I’m sticking to it.

Not A Member of Any Organized Political | June 5, 2014 at 3:32 pm

OH! And those poll numbers? THEY’RE FAKE! Like everything else in this Criministration!

I can get you high poll percentages saying people want to go into deep debt to buy 4-MPG, 80-foot long Puke Green Yugo cars too.

Henry Hawkins | June 5, 2014 at 3:44 pm

Fell asleep at my desk, had a dream, it was thirty years in the future, Bowe Bergdahl had married Sandra Fluke, they were the toast of DC, ‘the New Clintons’, all media speculating, ‘will he run?’, at which time I woke up covered in sweat, horrified, and shot myself.

NC Mountain Girl | June 5, 2014 at 4:03 pm

This is a simple narrative even the most lo-info voter can understand. Obama just freed five unrepentant bad men in return for a deserting weasel who may also be a traitor. Only liberals educated well in excess of their intelligence will see any possible upside in the deal.

This administration and their supporters are treating Bergdahl as if he were a barista who got pissed off at his boss and left in the middle of a shift. They just can’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Henry Hawkins | June 5, 2014 at 5:24 pm

Basically, this is how Obama looks without full media protection.

    9thDistrictNeighbor in reply to Henry Hawkins. | June 5, 2014 at 6:05 pm

    Well, given that members of the military aren’t sucking it up and saluting…maybe this is how Obama looks after six years with full media protection. Without full media protection I’d certainly hope he’d look much worse.

      Henry Hawkins in reply to 9thDistrictNeighbor. | June 5, 2014 at 9:04 pm

      Looks to the LIV, I mean. Those of us over here on the right saw clearly in 2007. I even saw John Roberts on CNN openly mocking Hillary Clinton. I just hope it signals a move by media to rehab their lost credibility since Obama is racking up scandals at an indefensible pace. Forget his name, but a Probama reporter stated on national air that the Taliban has been far more transparent and generous with info than the Obama admin on the Bergdahl swap.

Henry Hawkins | June 5, 2014 at 11:52 pm

MSNBC: “With the Bergdahl swap, Obama has lowered by five the number of people dependent on federal entitlements while simultaneously creating five well-paying jobs, and still the GOP objects. The inherent racism is palpable.”

Instead of swapping Bergdahl for 5 Talibanskis, we should have sent Obama over there. That would have been a fair trade.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to Marco100. | June 6, 2014 at 10:43 am

    I’ve already suggested we offer all the Gitmo prisoners for nothing, except they have to take Obama too.