Pragmatism, Obama and the #Bergdahl Swap

From Caroline Glick, at the Jerusalem Post:

For nearly six years, Obama and his supporters have managed to fend off allegations that his foreign policy is even more ideological – and far more radical – than Bush’s by channeling the public’s aversion to pie-in-the-sky rhetoric and obfuscating facts.

US President Barack Obama is an artist of political propaganda. Both his greatest admirers and his most vociferous opponents agree that his ability to manipulate public opinion has no peer in American politics today.

So how can we explain the fiasco that is his decision not only to swap five senior Taliban terror masters for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, but to take ownership over the decision by presenting it to the American people in a ceremony with Bergdahl’s parents at the White House Rose Garden? Clearly Obama overreached. He misread the public’s disposition.

This much is made clear by the immediate criticism his actions received from the liberal media. It wasn’t just Fox News and National Review that said Obama broke the law when he failed to notify Congress of the swap 30 days prior to its implementation.

It was CNN and NBC News.

MSNBC commentators criticized the swap. And CNN interviewed Bergdahl’s platoon mates who to a man accused him of desertion, with many alleging as well that he collaborated with the enemy. It was CNN that gave the names of the six American soldiers who died trying to rescue Bergdahl from the Taliban.

What was it about the Bergdahl trade tipped the scales? Why is this decision different from Obama’s other foreign policy decisions? For instance, why is the public outraged now when it wasn’t outraged in the aftermath of the jihadist assault on US installations in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, in which US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were murdered? Politically, Obama emerged unscathed from failures in every area he has engaged. From Iraq to Iran to Syria to Libya to Russia and beyond, he has never experienced the sort of across the board condemnation he is now suffering. His political allies and media supporters always rallied to his side. They always explained away his failures.

So what explains the outcry? Why are people like Senator Dianne Feinstein, who have been supportive of Obama’s nuclear appeasement of Iran, up in arms over the Bergdahl swap? There are three aspects of the Bergdahl deal that distinguish it from the rest of Obama’s foreign policy blunders....

Obama’s success in getting away with serial foreign policy failures, and his success in hiding the radical ideological basis of his decisions has always owed to his supporters’ ability to plausibly deny both the failures and the ideological motivation for his actions.

His Rose Garden announcement made such spin all but impossible. Americans are not particularly interested in foreign policy. But there are a few things that they won’t buy.

They won’t buy that a man who comes to the White House sporting a Taliban beard and praising Allah in Arabic is a normal American father.

They won’t buy spin that describes a deserter as an exemplary soldier.

They don’t want to free five senior terrorists and mass murderers in order to buy Bergdahl’s release.

In believing that the public would side with him and Bergdahl and Bergdahl’s dad against critics of the deal, Obama showed that for all his propaganda prowess, he doesn’t understand the public...

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