Stop Comparing Bergdahl and Benghazi!
There’s no more surefire way to get me to (a) stop taking you seriously and (b) get annoyed with you than by bringing up Benghazi (BENGHAZI!!!!11!11!) Seriously, it makes me think you’re hyperpartisan and, if I am brutally honest, fairly deranged, actually. There is not a scandal there, there will not be a scandal there, stop trying.
And then you have the unfolding Bowe Bergdahl release controversy. Berghadl-zi!!! NO. If you do that, get out. Leave the Internet. Bengazi and the Bergdahl saga are not equivalent in any way. And so it really annoys me that people are equating the two. Usually it is Republicans- Tea Party types, let’s be honest- linking them, with Syria, Ukraine, Fast and Furious (another non-starter BTW) in an attempt to show how awful Obama is and how he needs to be impeached. This is frustrating for many reasons, but importantly, because it serves to diminish the seriousness of the Bergdahl incident. Bengazi was a failure of intelligence and a tragedy that killed American citizens. The Bergdahl exchange was a good-faith effort to free a captured American soldier and return him home, and also get prisoners out of Gitmo (which has been a goal for years). Only one of these is a potentially impeachable offense, and you will never guess which one I mean.
But let’s back up a minute here. I actually have a really big problem with how the Bergdahl situation is being handled by the media (and you know how I hate to blame the media). They are still using the tired old “he said-she said” frame: Republicans criticize Obama’s decision to negotiate with terrorists, Democrats defend commander-in-chief. Vox has an interesting take on this, archiving some hypocritical tweets from prominent conservatives flip-flopping on the issue. Beauchamp correctly points out that many of these people didn’t know all of the facts about Bergdahl’s AWOL status and possible desertion, or his father’s (or his own) alleged beliefs, when they called for his release. But the “revelations” are not new, or news; Rolling Stone ran a piece back in 2012 about them. People didn’t pay attention then, in part because it didn’t fit into their preconceived party line. And then the party line changed, and so did their opinion. (This is classic echo chamber effect, and Fox “News” is responsible for it. There is no liberal equivalent in terms of spreading talking points/propaganda.) “As the collected tweets prove, people just totally transformed their beliefs about Bergdahl to fit the more politically convenient conclusion. As a consequence, the legitimate issues about his release - whether Obama broke the law, for instance - are in danger of being ignored.”
That part I bolded there is important. The partisan bickering distracts from the real issue, here as in every policy debate we’ve had in the last... well, as long as I can really remember, actually. And so the factions are set, the party lines are drawn, and people find arguments to bolster their side. He was “the only member of the U.S. military held as a POW from either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars,” Jay Carney says. He was secretly an Al Qaida operative, Republicans contend. And the familiar patterns come out, drawing people into their cocoon of ideology. I have found myself wanting to jump to Obama’s defense a few times today as my conservative coworkers jump on the Bergdahl issue. And this is another reason the Benghazi comparisons irk me, because as a knee-jerk I side with the president by dint of the absurdity of the Benghazi non-issue. The White House followed CIA talking points (crafted partially because the Agency didn’t want its secret operations known) that turned out to be false. But they acted on the best information they had. And admonitions about security were given by the State Department. It is not going to be a scandal with traction and we should stop devoting resources to it.
But Bergdahl... that is where it gets interesting. Assuredly freeing an American soldier is good, and we can be glad Bergdahl is home, getting medical care (We should be happy anyone gets to be free and no longer subject to torture!) and, for the law-and-order types, available for the military to prosecute for desertion if it’s warranted. There is no need to make Bergdahl seem “unworthy” of help or try to make his release a bad thing. So I get where the administration is coming from with the decision. But there’s this thing called the law, and even if you have the best intentions and an amazingly worthy goal, you need to follow it. And it’s definitely possible Obama did not.
It all comes down to a signing statement he made on the Defense Authorization Act. Signing statements are a president’s way around the line-item veto prohibition; he is stating what his interpretation of the law is. For this provision, it required the president to give 30 days’ notice to Congress before removing prisoners from Gitmo. Obama wrote that he thought this stipulation was unconstitutional. Cool, this is a precedent. But the Supreme Court decides what is and isn’t unconstitutional, not the president. Obama may be right and the provision might be struck down, but until that point it is still the law of the land. And so as president, he should enforce it.
I think he sort of knows it, too. He is also appealing to emotions, like ‘we don’t leave men behind. Why would you have us do that?’ As if the choice were do this or do nothing, when in reality the issue should be not with what he did but how he did it. And you get statements like this from White House chief of staff Denis McDonough: We totally consulted Congress, guys. “I was at many of those consultations myself when I served on the staff of the National Security Council. So, this should not have been a surprise to any of the members of Congress who have been…commenting about it.” It’s super clear that vague intimations of working on a deal- over years, mind you, so clearly slow going when it’s most likely to need follow-up updates- are not what was intended by the law. It isn’t going to cut it.
But instead of looking at the fact that this law was broken, even debating whether technically it was or not for whatever semantic or legalese reason, we are stuck in Partisan Mode where Republicans believe one thing for one reasons and Democrats another. And people assume it is just another Benghazi and tune it out. Outrage overload, as John Dickerson reports. But the situations are not the same. Because with the prisoner swap, Obama (probably) broke the law. Impeachable offenses are “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” according to the Constitution. Not failures of policy, which Benghazi was. And the Founders actually discussed this; they debated adding “maladministration” to the impeachment criteria, but decided against it because that would put too much on the whims of the Senate. So failure of policy, or even incompetence in officials necessarily, aren’t impeachable offenses. Historically, law-breaking has been (and this is warranted).
So, in sum: Please do not compare Benghazi and Bergdahl. Because when everything drums up the same amount of outrage, the things that should really make you angry, like the president ignoring a law and wiggling his toes (at the very least) over the line of separation of powers, get lost in the din. We need to have the conversation, and such comparisons make it impossible to do so over the partisan posturing.
And then you have the unfolding Bowe Bergdahl release controversy. Berghadl-zi!!! NO. If you do that, get out. Leave the Internet. Bengazi and the Bergdahl saga are not equivalent in any way. And so it really annoys me that people are equating the two. Usually it is Republicans- Tea Party types, let’s be honest- linking them, with Syria, Ukraine, Fast and Furious (another non-starter BTW) in an attempt to show how awful Obama is and how he needs to be impeached. This is frustrating for many reasons, but importantly, because it serves to diminish the seriousness of the Bergdahl incident. Bengazi was a failure of intelligence and a tragedy that killed American citizens. The Bergdahl exchange was a good-faith effort to free a captured American soldier and return him home, and also get prisoners out of Gitmo (which has been a goal for years). Only one of these is a potentially impeachable offense, and you will never guess which one I mean.
But let’s back up a minute here. I actually have a really big problem with how the Bergdahl situation is being handled by the media (and you know how I hate to blame the media). They are still using the tired old “he said-she said” frame: Republicans criticize Obama’s decision to negotiate with terrorists, Democrats defend commander-in-chief. Vox has an interesting take on this, archiving some hypocritical tweets from prominent conservatives flip-flopping on the issue. Beauchamp correctly points out that many of these people didn’t know all of the facts about Bergdahl’s AWOL status and possible desertion, or his father’s (or his own) alleged beliefs, when they called for his release. But the “revelations” are not new, or news; Rolling Stone ran a piece back in 2012 about them. People didn’t pay attention then, in part because it didn’t fit into their preconceived party line. And then the party line changed, and so did their opinion. (This is classic echo chamber effect, and Fox “News” is responsible for it. There is no liberal equivalent in terms of spreading talking points/propaganda.) “As the collected tweets prove, people just totally transformed their beliefs about Bergdahl to fit the more politically convenient conclusion. As a consequence, the legitimate issues about his release - whether Obama broke the law, for instance - are in danger of being ignored.”
That part I bolded there is important. The partisan bickering distracts from the real issue, here as in every policy debate we’ve had in the last... well, as long as I can really remember, actually. And so the factions are set, the party lines are drawn, and people find arguments to bolster their side. He was “the only member of the U.S. military held as a POW from either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars,” Jay Carney says. He was secretly an Al Qaida operative, Republicans contend. And the familiar patterns come out, drawing people into their cocoon of ideology. I have found myself wanting to jump to Obama’s defense a few times today as my conservative coworkers jump on the Bergdahl issue. And this is another reason the Benghazi comparisons irk me, because as a knee-jerk I side with the president by dint of the absurdity of the Benghazi non-issue. The White House followed CIA talking points (crafted partially because the Agency didn’t want its secret operations known) that turned out to be false. But they acted on the best information they had. And admonitions about security were given by the State Department. It is not going to be a scandal with traction and we should stop devoting resources to it.
But Bergdahl... that is where it gets interesting. Assuredly freeing an American soldier is good, and we can be glad Bergdahl is home, getting medical care (We should be happy anyone gets to be free and no longer subject to torture!) and, for the law-and-order types, available for the military to prosecute for desertion if it’s warranted. There is no need to make Bergdahl seem “unworthy” of help or try to make his release a bad thing. So I get where the administration is coming from with the decision. But there’s this thing called the law, and even if you have the best intentions and an amazingly worthy goal, you need to follow it. And it’s definitely possible Obama did not.
It all comes down to a signing statement he made on the Defense Authorization Act. Signing statements are a president’s way around the line-item veto prohibition; he is stating what his interpretation of the law is. For this provision, it required the president to give 30 days’ notice to Congress before removing prisoners from Gitmo. Obama wrote that he thought this stipulation was unconstitutional. Cool, this is a precedent. But the Supreme Court decides what is and isn’t unconstitutional, not the president. Obama may be right and the provision might be struck down, but until that point it is still the law of the land. And so as president, he should enforce it.
I think he sort of knows it, too. He is also appealing to emotions, like ‘we don’t leave men behind. Why would you have us do that?’ As if the choice were do this or do nothing, when in reality the issue should be not with what he did but how he did it. And you get statements like this from White House chief of staff Denis McDonough: We totally consulted Congress, guys. “I was at many of those consultations myself when I served on the staff of the National Security Council. So, this should not have been a surprise to any of the members of Congress who have been…commenting about it.” It’s super clear that vague intimations of working on a deal- over years, mind you, so clearly slow going when it’s most likely to need follow-up updates- are not what was intended by the law. It isn’t going to cut it.
But instead of looking at the fact that this law was broken, even debating whether technically it was or not for whatever semantic or legalese reason, we are stuck in Partisan Mode where Republicans believe one thing for one reasons and Democrats another. And people assume it is just another Benghazi and tune it out. Outrage overload, as John Dickerson reports. But the situations are not the same. Because with the prisoner swap, Obama (probably) broke the law. Impeachable offenses are “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” according to the Constitution. Not failures of policy, which Benghazi was. And the Founders actually discussed this; they debated adding “maladministration” to the impeachment criteria, but decided against it because that would put too much on the whims of the Senate. So failure of policy, or even incompetence in officials necessarily, aren’t impeachable offenses. Historically, law-breaking has been (and this is warranted).
So, in sum: Please do not compare Benghazi and Bergdahl. Because when everything drums up the same amount of outrage, the things that should really make you angry, like the president ignoring a law and wiggling his toes (at the very least) over the line of separation of powers, get lost in the din. We need to have the conversation, and such comparisons make it impossible to do so over the partisan posturing.