I said yesterday the Bergdahl's were Muslim and I have been saying it all along Obama is Muslim and now has endangered the safety of this country. Who cares if this deserter died. He freed 5 terrorist for an home grown Terrorist deserter. Put Obama in JAIL!
Taliban 'was thrilled' when deserter Sgt Bergdahl's father thanked 'Allah the merciful' in his White House press conference
- Bob Bergdahl said 'bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim', Arabic phrase in Koran
- He said his son had poor English after five years of captivity in Afghanistan
- But some commentators claimed he was 'claiming White House for Islam'
- One correspondent claimed Taliban sources were 'thrilled' at the phrase
- Obama has been accused of putting price on American life in prisoner swap
- Parade in Hailey, Idaho, axed yesterday amid claims Bergdahl was a deserter
The Taliban was 'thrilled' when Bowe Bergdahl's father 'claimed the White House for Islam' by thanking Allah in his press conference with President Obama, it has been claimed.
The father of the freed soldier - who former colleagues claim was a deserter - said he was speaking Arabic and Pashto because his son's English was poor after five years in captivity.
But commentators accused him of giving the Taliban a priceless propaganda tool, with one saying extremist sources in Pakistan were delighted.
Controversy: During a White House press conference (pictured), Bob Bergdahl stood alongside his wife Jani and President Barack Obama and thanked Allah in Arabic after his son was freed in Afghanistan
Moment of release: Sgt Bowe Bergdahl was shown struggling to adjust his eyes to the light at the moment he was released in a video released by a Taliban website. Former colleagues accused him of being a deserter
Mr Bergdahl spoke at the White House after 28-year-old Bowe - the only American prisoner of war in Afghanistan - was freed in exchange for five Afghan detainees held by the U.S.
Introduced by the President in the rose garden on Saturday, he spoke mostly English with some Arabic and Pashto.
'I'd like to say to Bowe right now, who's having trouble speaking English, bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim,' he said.
'I'm your father Bowe. The people of Afghanistan, the same.
'To everyone who effected this... throughout the whole of American government and international governments around the world, thank you so much.'
The Arabic phrase bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim appears prominently in the Koran and means 'In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful'.
Sara Carter, senior Washington correspondent for conservative news network TheBlaze, said her Taliban sources were 'thrilled' at the phrase being used.
Swap: Sgt Bergdahl, 28, was handed over to U.S. special forces in exchange for five Guantanamo detainees
Emotional: Bob and Jani Bergdahl wept as they spoke of their love for their son in another press conference
Accusations: Sara Carter, senior Washington correspondent for TheBlaze, said the Taliban was thrilled
She told TV commentator Glenn Beck, who founded TheBlaze: 'He definitely was, in a way, consecrating the area.
'He was reaching out. It's an Islamic phrase... And when I contacted my sources in Pakistan who have direct links with the Taliban, they were actually thrilled, the Taliban was actually thrilled that the father did this.'
She added: 'This is incredible, he's gone way way beyond just a father reaching out to his son.
Divisive: Bob Bergdahl said he studied Arabic to understand his son's captors
'He’s actually putting so many lives in danger, and he’s giving a propaganda tool to Mullah Omar, who is the leader of the Taliban who the U.S. has been looking for for years.'
Others, however, said there was nothing so sinister in the former UPS delivery man's speech.
After his son was captured by the Taliban in June 2009, Mr Bergdahl said he immersed himself in the language and culture of Afghanistan chiefly so he could understand the captors, and speak to them from afar.
He said in a previous interview: 'I'm trying to learn a little Pashto so that I can speak to people... I'm trying to write or read the language.
'I probably spend four hours a day reading on the region and the history.'
Stefanie O'Neill, a Bergdahl family friend, added to CNN: 'Wouldn't you try and connect with the people that had your child?
'Bob and Jani did everything possible they could to ensure Bowe's safety. And if Bob was trying to connect with them, it was to keep his son safe, I'm sure.'
Yesterday a public homecoming parade for Bergdahl featuring Grammy-winning singer Carole King was abruptly cancelled in his tiny hometown of Hailey, Idaho.
The official reason given was a concern for public safety - but MailOnline learned that a row erupted between Mayor Fritz Haemmerle and former US Army Platoon leader Jonathan Kennedy, who lives in the town.
In an email to Mayor Haemmerle, who wanted to hold the celebration, Kennedy said: ‘If Individual members of the community wish to hold sedate, private celebrations to commemorate Bowe Bergdahl's homecoming, they are of course free and welcome to do so.
Cancelled: A homecoming parade for Bergdahl was abruptly called off in his home town of Hailey, Idaho
Political firestorm: Senator John McCain - who was a POW for more than five years in North Vietnam - speaks to reporters yesterday. President Obama has been accused of putting a price on an American life
'It would be, however, a monstrous profanity if a public ceremony, financed by public money, were to be held.
‘It would be more monstrous still if this ceremony were to, in any way, heap undeserved adulation on Bergdahl, or to adopt the sickly hue of ostentatious jingoism that all too often colors such occasions.’
He added: ‘Until he is cleared of the charges against him, this man deserves no applause. For now, the only appropriate response is silence.'
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel phoned Bergdahl's family yesterday to update them on his condition.
In the 10-minute call Hagel wished the family well and told them the Defense Department will continue to support the soldier's medical care, along with the process known as reintegration.
An official said Bob and Jani Bergdahl expressed their gratitude.
Earlier Wednesday, Hagel told reporters that the rush to judgment about Bergdahl is 'unfair' to his family.
Footage: A video on the Voice Of Jihad Website was confirmed to show Sgt Bergdahl on the day he was freed
Released: Since he was taken back by the U.S., Bergdahl has been in debriefing with military psychologists
To freedom: The soldier was shown in the video being patted down by his own colleagues before boarding
The POW's exchange for five Guantanamo detainees has provoked a storm of controversy.
Many accused President Obama of negotiating with terrorists and allowing a clear price to be set on an American life.
And while the soldier has been hidden from public view, being debriefed by military psychologists, many of his former colleagues have accused him directly of desertion.
Some claim six servicemen died in the search for the POW, and a Facebook group called Bowe Bergdahl is NOT a hero! has attracted more than 13,000 members.
Its description reads: 'Bowe Bergdahl has been made out to be a hero, deserving of praise.
'However, the media and government have lied to the public and covered up the facts.
'I and many of my former battle buddies have first hand knowledge of what took place on that hill in Afghanistan.
'We are here. We will be heard. Bergdahl will be held accountable for his actions.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2649362/Taliban-thrilled-deserter-Sgt-Bergdahls-father-thanked-Allah-merciful-White-House-press-conference.html#ixzz33nnhnHRQ
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Obama makes 'absolutely no apologies' for Bergdahl terror trade and claims Taliban would have KILLED POW if he told Congress
- Obama appeared in Brussels alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron during a G7 meeting in Brussels
- He insisted that 'we had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated,' despite a fit-looking Bergdahl who appeared in a Taliban video during Saturday's hostage hand-over
- Administration officials reportedly told U.S. senators Wednesday that they weer kept in the dark because the Taliban threatened to kill Bergdahl if a prison-swap plan was leaked to the public
- But Congress was advised in 2011 and 2012 of two separate plans to make a similar deal, and nothing was leaked despite unanimous opposition
- Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday that giving Congress 30 days' notice, as federal law requires, 'would have seriously imperiled us ever getting him out'
- Hagel said the decision to swap five Taliban leaders for Bergdahl was 'unanimous' inside the West Wing of the White House
- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was told in advance, but he called it 'a big deal over nothing. ... What difference does it make?'
President Barack Obama doubled down Thursday on his handling of the Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap, saying he makes 'no apologies' for releasing five Taliban terrorists in exchange for the safe return of an accused U.S. Army deserter.
'I make absolutely no apologies for making sure we get back a young man to his parents,' he said in Brussels during a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, 'and that the American people understand that this is somebody’s child and that we don’t condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get them back.'
'We had a prisoner of war whose health had deteriorated, and we were deeply concerned about [him],' Obama told reporters about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. 'And we saw an opportunity and we seized it. And I make no apologies for that.'
Hours later the Associated Press published claims that the administration told U.S. senators that they were kept in the dark about the hostage swap because the Taliban threatened to kill Bergdahl if information about the negotiations was leaked.
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'I make no apologies': President Barack Obama spoke alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron during a news conference at the G7 summit in Brussels, Belgium
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was returned to the United States by Taliban forces on Saturday after nearly five years in captivity, but the announcement that the Obama administration had secured his release was met with widespread criticism because five Taliban leaders were released in exchange
A jocular Obama addressed a wide variety of foreign-affairs topics, but got the most attention for his continued defense of the White House's actions in the Bergdahl affair
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel visited the crew of the USS Vella Gulf on June 5 in Constanta, Romania, taking time out to defend President Obama's decision to trade five terrorists for a U.S. Army sergeant accused od deserting his post
Keeping the negotiations secret because of a death threat, however, may not hold water and is already being described among congressional aides as a flimsy excuse.
Congress was advised in 2011 and 2012 of two separate plans to make a similar deal, and nothing was leaked despite unanimous opposition on Capitol Hill.
Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, was told in advance, and his staff didn't leak Obama's plans.
'I’m not sure I’m the only one,' Reid told reporters on Thursday. aA big deal over nothing.'
Saying he was unimpressed by concerns over the notification timeline in Congress, Reid channeled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's famous one-liner about the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya.
'Is it Friday or is it Saturday?' he exclaimed. 'What difference does it make? What difference does it make?'
The president also defended his decision in Brussels to appear publicly on Saturday with Bergdahl's parents in a press conference that has become an embarrassing feature of the deepening controversy.
'With respect to how we announced it, I think it's important for people to realize that this is not some abstraction,' Obama told reporters. 'This is not a political football.'
'You have a couple of parents whose kid volunteered to fight in a distant land, who they hadn't seen in five years, and weren't sure whether they'd ever see again. And as commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, I am responsible for those kids.'
Obama also pushed back against members of Congress – both Republicans and Democrats – for stirring up a hornet's nest of opposition to his handling of the prisoner swap.
'I'm never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington, right?' he said. 'That's par for the course.'
Hagel said Thursday that no one would have forgiven the U.S> if the White House had let Bergdahl die in captivity
Obama appeared with British PM David Cameron at the G7 meeting in Brussels, an event originally slated for Sochi, Russia but moved West because of Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine
Arizona Republican Senator John McCain and the 99 other U.S. senators received a private briefing Wednesday night from Obama administration officials about Bergdahl's release -- a move designed to quell anger on Capitol Hill from members of Congress who were kept out of the loop
A jocular Obama addressed a wide variety of foreign-affairs topics, but got the most attention for his continued defense of the White House's actions in the Bergdahl affair
Obama has been widely accused of breaking a federal law that he signed in December, by failing to notify Congress 30 days before releasing detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
His administration has justified the action by citing fears about Bergdahl's health. Those concerns, according to a wide variety of news reports, were first raised when the Taliban delivered a video to the U.S. government in January showing a frail-looking Bergdahl apparently in need of medical attention.
However, some believe that video appears to have been a ploy to accelerate negotiations. In a subsequent video released by Taliban forces Tuesday night, Bergdahl appeared strong and in good health when U.S. Special Forces retrieved him from his captors.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stood firm Thursday on concerns for Bergdahl's health, telling BBC News that 'it was our judgement, based on the information that we had, that his life, his health were in peril.'
'Can you imagine if we would have waited or taken the chance of leaks over a 30-day period?' he asked.
'I will tell you what I know and I made a judgement on this too – that would have seriously imperiled us ever getting him out.'
Hagel added that the decision inside the White House to green-light the five-for-one hostage exchange was 'unanimous.'
All 100 U.S. senators attended a private closed-door briefing Wednesday night with Obama administration officials, designed to quell anger on Capitol Hill among members of Congress upset about being out of the loop prior to the prisoner swap.
Party canceled: Flags and balloons in Hailey, Idaho mark the release from captivity of local son Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, but town leaders have canceled a planned party for the accused deserter, officially citing costs as the reason
'It appeared that he was drugged and that he was barely responsive, in the video itself,' Senate Intelligence Committee vice-chair Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, told reporters.
Obama referred to the Senate briefing on Thursday, saying that 'we’re now explaining to Congress the details of how to move forward.'
He said his administration had vaguely discussed with members of Congress the 'possibility that something like this might occur.'
'But because of the nature of the folks we were dealing with and the fragile nature of these negotiations, we felt it was important to go ahead and do what we did.'
A 2013 law that Obama signed in December required Obama to provide chairmen of congressional intelligence and foreign affairs committees with 30 days' notice before transferring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to foreign countries.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday that Obama will face certain impeachment if he secretly released more prisoners in the same fashion.
And Wednesday night on the Fox News Channel 'Hannity' program, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said he plans to introduce a bill formally stopping the transfer of any more detainees from the military prison camp.
'I intend next week to file legislation to halt any releases from Guantanamo until we get to the bottom of what happened in Bergdahl,' Cruz said, 'and provide some real congressional oversight here, because it is really needed.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2649726/Obama-makes-no-apologies-Bergdahl-terror-trade-dismisses-anger-controversy-whipped-Washington.html#ixzz33nsgM9tU
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'Drugged but not near death': Senators shown Bowe Bergdahl video that 'forced Obama to act' leave unconvinced that Taliban terror trade had to take place
- Senators shown a video sent to the US by the Taliban in January that administration says forced them to override intelligence concerns and swap Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees in Guantanamo
- Claims to show Bergdahl in ill health and it was feared he would die
- But lawmakers at secret meeting last night who were shown the video left unconvinced that it showed him on the verge of death
- Senators said he 'did not look good' but not near death
- Lawmakers outraged they were not consulted - a law signed by Obama six months ago says President must give them 30 days notice before a prisoner is freed from Guantanamo
- Defense Sec Chuck Hagel today said the decision to release Bergdahl was 'unanimous' within the White House
Senators say Sgt Bowe Bergdahl did not ‘look good’ in proof-of-life video that they were shown at a meeting last night and may have been ‘drugged’ but did not appear to be near-death like the Obama administration claimed.
‘It appeared that he was drugged, and that he was barely responsive in the video itself,’ Senate Intelligence Vice-Chairman Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, told reporters on Wednesday.
‘I don’t think from a health standpoint there was any issue that dictated the release of these five nasty killers in exchange for Bergdahl,’ he added.
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Tense: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein talks to other Senators ahead of the meeting last night. Many came away feeling the video still did not justify ignoring Congress in making the trade
'Proof'? Sen. John McCain was among those shown the 1 1/2 minute long video - believed to have been filmed in December - at a briefing with Pentagon and intelligence officials at the U.S. Capitol last night
‘That did not sell me at all. The proof of life was basically five months ago. December? At that time he was impaired,’ Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin told ABC. ‘That is not the person that was released here. He was not in that type of dire situation when he was released.’
The terms of the trade for Bergdahl, coupled with stories from former platoon-mates of the soldier’s erratic behavior in the days leading up to his capture and remarks about wanting to desert the army, have had the Obama administration on defense since the president announced last Saturday that Bergdahl had been released.
Whatever the reason Bergdahl wandered off base alone, the U.S. has a commitment to rescue its men and women in uniform, the president and other administration officials have repeatedly said.
'I make absolutely no apologies for making sure that we get back a young man to his parents and that the American people understand that this is somebody’s child, and that we don’t condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get them back,' President Barack Obama said today during a press conference at the G7 Summit in Brussels.
And when the Taliban provided evidence that Bergdahl’s health was deteriorating, cabinet-level officials made a ‘unanimous’ decision to strike a deal, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said today.
‘It was our judgment based on the information that we had that his life, his health were in peril,’ Hagel told BBC in an interview that aired this morning.
However, a close friend of Bowe Bergdahl’s parents, Bob and Jani, told MailOnline that ‘Bob hasn’t said anything about Bowe’s health.
'Deserter': Senior Dem Dutch Ruppersberger said Bergdahl's release (exchange caught on video above) in the swap with five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo put Americans at risk all around the world
Anger: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., center left, speaks with Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., as senators emerge from a closed-door briefing
‘There was never any doubt in Bob and Jani’s minds that Bowe was coming home, they have been the most resilient people I have ever met,’ said Chip Deffe, owner of the bike shop where Bob Bergdahl works. ‘But they have never mentioned any medical concerns.’
Members of the U.S. Senate were shown a classified 1 1/2 minute long video at a briefing with Pentagon and intelligence officials at the U.S. Capitol last night that was supposed to prove Bergdahl was deathly ill when the president and his cabinet decided to rescue him without consulting Congress.
But last night’s meeting did little to satisfy the concerns of the lawmakers, who say they still have unanswered questions about the trade.
‘There’s a lot to be answered here and there’s a lot of peculiar behavior that’s gone on between the family, this solider and his actions,’ Sen. Manchin said on Wednesday.
‘We all agree that we’re not dealing with a war hero,’ he said. ‘We’re dealing with a soldier who should be looked in more extensively.’
The executive branch is required to let members of Congress know 30 days in advance when it is going to release prisoners from the government’s detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In this case, it gave lawmakers only hours notice or no notice at all that it was planning to release five detainees with ties to the Taliban.
‘I don’t see how anybody can walk out of there with any kind of comfortable feeling that the administration from a notification standpoint, and I emphasize that, did what they should have done or what they had the opportunity to do. I mean, it was like they didn’t trust Dianne [Feinstein] and me,’ Chambliss told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren after the meeting.
All in: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel (pictured with with sailors aboard the USS Vella Gulf during his visit to Constanta today) said the White House had been unanimous in its decision to free Bergdahl
Chambliss told reporters earlier this week that he didn’t find out about the trade until it had already happened.
The White House has since apologized to Chambliss and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic, for failing to notify them of the swap in a timely manner, calling the mistake an ‘oversight.’
Chambliss said on Wednesday that it’s too little too late, though.
‘My comment back to the administration is that I’m not going to believe anything they tell me from now on,’ Chambliss said.
‘They are willing to violate the law but even short of that, when they commit to us that they are going to give us 30 days’ notice and then they don’t do it, how in the world can we trust the administration on anything they tell us?’
Senators from both parties said they are still worried that the Taliban associates released from prison by the White House are a threat to national security.
‘We have a 29 percent re-engagement rate from Guantanamo and I would argue that the conditions upon which these five detainees will be held is a real troubling aspect of this whole thing because four of them, at least, are very high-level members of the Taliban,’ New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, told ABC on Wednesday night.
‘These are all high-level people. This is not low level,’ Manchin said. ‘These are people who basically have the ability to go back and hit the ground running, and we’re concerned about that.’
In releasing ‘five of the most dangerous individuals in Guantanamo, if not the five most dangerous,’ Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said, ‘The president has now set a precedent that will encourage enemies of the United States to target American men and women in uniform, to capture them in order to carry out some other exchange in the future.’
Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican, admitted to Fox News that Bergdahl did not ‘look good’ in the classified video lawmakers were shown.
‘But there will be hell to pay if we find [the Taliban fighters] go on to kill Americans,’ he said.
The meeting came after a tumultuous day on Capitol Hill when Democrats joined the ranks of those expressing their anger over the swap. Senior Democrat congressman Dutch Ruppersberger said it was a 'dangerous precedent' that put the lives of Americans around the world at risk.
Putting on a brave face: Obama, pictured at the meeting of the G7 in Brussels overnight, has been taken aback by the level of discontent over the trade
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2649642/Drugged-not-near-death-Secret-Bowe-Bergdahl-video-showed-health-deteriorating-doesnt-convince-Senators.html#ixzz33ntHRqIU
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The House is not in session this week, so lawmakers from the legislative branch’s other chamber have not yet had the opportunity to quiz administration officials. Members of the House Armed Services Committee will have their shot at questioning Secretary of Defense Hagel at a hearing next week. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2649642/Drugged-not-near-death-Secret-Bowe-Bergdahl-video-showed-health-deteriorating-doesnt-convince-Senators.html#ixzz33ntjEs8o Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Another shabby day for the marshmallow President: As his Taliban hostage swap sours, why Obama is a pygmy compared with the wartime leader Roosevelt, says MAX HASTINGS
Of course it is a challenge for any modern national leader, to stand tomorrow on the beaches of Normandy and recall the greatest days and martial triumphs of World War II.
The comparison is obvious and embarrassing, between the giants and the pygmies: Churchill and Cameron, Hollande and de Gaulle, above all Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama.
In 2014, at least Britain’s prime minister and France’s president must bear responsibility only for their own countries.
But the President of the United States is the standard-bearer for the global cause of freedom, commander-in-chief of the principal might of the forces of democracy.
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Barack Obama (right) has disappointed his nation and its allies as have few presidents in modern times. Comparisons with America's wartime leader Franklin D Roosevelt (left) are embarrassing, Max Hastings writes
This week, however, at the D-Day Commemoration, America’s representative will be a man who has disappointed his nation and its allies as have few presidents in modern times.
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From the moment of his first inauguration in January 2009, he was expected to be a healer rather than a warrior. But nobody, not even his foremost Republican foes, believed that halfway through his second term of office, Obama would be giving the world a convincing impersonation of a marshmallow.
That is nonetheless where we have got to, with the black comedy of his Administration’s exchange of five top-rank Taliban prisoners for an alleged ‘Afghan war hero’, who now appears to have been a deserter whose comrades despised him.
It is suggested by one officer that in 2009 some American soldiers were killed in vain pursuit of then Private Bowe Bergdahl, after he went walkabout one night from his post in the south-eastern mountains, leaving his belongings neatly piled behind him.
Bergdahl’s story has been compared to the great TV drama series Homeland, starring Damian Lewis, which featured a Marine sergeant hailed as a hero after returning from Al Qaeda captivity, who proves to have been turned into a would-be suicide bomber.
But what matters in this huge American political story is not how mad or bad Bergdahl — since promoted to Sergeant — may have been, but what possessed Obama first to create the deplorable precedent of exchanging him for a row of Taliban heavy-hitters held at Guantanamo Bay; and then to welcome home this young man as an alleged hero, before discovering that many of the men who served with him believed he deserved to be shot.
This lapse of judgment caught the White House in the headlights at a moment when the world was already gazing in bewilderment and dismay at Obama’s blurred response to Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Just at the moment when a clear voice was needed, Obama spoke out with a frail and reedy one. Just as Vladimir Putin, the most dangerous thug to occupy the Kremlin since the Cold War, tests the resolve of the West, his U.S. counterpart waffles, and slashes the defence budget.
Obama does have a case in mitigation. After the presidency of George W. Bush, who led Blair’s Britain as well as his own nation into a series of disastrous wars, it is welcome that his successor should tread more cautiously.
And Obama was right when he told an audience in Poland this week that his allies need to do much more towards their own defence.
The European Nato nations, led by Germany, have almost abandoned credible security policies, and the United States is sick of paying their bills as well as its own.
It has been suggested by one army officer that in 2009 some American soldiers were killed in vain pursuit of then Private Bowe Bergdahl (pictured), after he went walkabout one night from his post
Britain is also a guilty party here: the Cameron government’s running down of our armed forces reflects ignorance and irresponsibility.
The U.S. president is also right to make plain that his own country has no interest in direct military intervention in Ukraine. In making foreign policy, sabre-rattling is foolish and often dangerous.
But all that said, it is painful to recall the brave, ringing rhetoric that I heard Obama deliver to middle America on the campaign trail back in 2008.
The world gazed in bewilderment and dismay at Obama's blurred response to Putin's aggression in Ukraine. Just at the moment when a clear voice was needed, Obama spoke out with a frail and reedy one
Today, the man in charge of the world’s most powerful nation seems deeply uncertain about where he, and it, should go.
He appears disengaged, detached, almost an alien from another planet. Whether he was right or wrong to reject intervention in the conflict in Syria last year, it was a crippling display of weakness publicly to assert that any use of chemical weapons by President Assad would represent ‘a line in the sand’ which the dictator would cross at his peril. For then Obama ignored exactly such an atrocity.
All of this means that America’s allies in Asia question what Obama’s goodwill is worth as they confront Chinese expansionism. The Baltic states, meanwhile, fearful of new Russian aggression, ponder what their membership of Nato and the EU may mean, if Putin stretches out a claw to seize them. Will Obama again bend, or fight?
On the beaches of Normandy tomorrow, the world will gaze upon images of America’s president at the anniversary ceremonies, and recall his predecessors.
Greatest of all, of course, was Franklin Roosevelt, who led his nation out of Depression through World War II. He was a man who brilliantly articulated his nation’s hopes and fears. But he went further by leading the U.S. into places that at the outset his people did not think they wished to go.
Harry Truman, his successor, was also a man of notable courage and wisdom, who sent an army to Korea in 1950 to drive back communist invaders.
Dwight Eisenhower was a shrewder and wiser leader than the comics allowed when they cracked — in reference to his love of golf — ‘somebody take that putter off Ike!’.
This image of Obama alongside Bob Bergdahl, father of the newly-liberated Taliban hostage and one of the most obvious fruitcakes ever to sport an Old Testament prophet's beard, could come back to haunt him
Kennedy, despite all the controversy that stalks his memory, was a man of indisputable high intelligence and star quality. But for the curse of Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson would be remembered as a magnificent domestic reformer.
Before Nixon became the Watergate man, he sought rapprochement with China. Ronald Reagan was no brainbox, but he saw the demise of the ‘Evil Empire’, and made the American people feel better about themselves than any of his peers before or since. Even Bill Clinton had his moments, for instance, if belatedly, in the Kosovo conflict.
But Obama today finds himself being compared - and not always by Republican enemies - with that most pitiful of modern presidents, Jimmy Carter, the man who presided over the humiliation of the Tehran Embassy hostage drama; remembered for the symbolic photograph of himself falling on his face while out jogging.
Maybe this week’s image of Obama alongside Bob Bergdahl, father of the newly-liberated Taliban hostage and one of the most obvious fruitcakes ever to sport an Old Testament prophet’s beard, will end up on the same page of history.
Whoever let the president get photographed in such company?
The judgment of the Leader of the Free World looks terrible. He has 30 months left to serve in office, but unless some amazing lightning stroke descends on him, Obama’s presidency seems set to end in failure.
Precisely because he is America’s first black chief executive, the man on whom such huge hopes rested five years ago, this makes his plight today all the more wretched.
He is not a bad man, nor a stupid one, but he has shown himself tragically weak. And in a world occupied by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Putin, Nigeria’s Boko Haram kidnappers, and a terrifyingly ambitious China, that is no way for the occupant of the White House to be.
The best Barack Obama can hope tomorrow, when he evokes the spirit of June 6, 1944, on the Normandy shore, is that no cruel listener laughs.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2649132/Another-shabby-day-marshmallow-President-As-Taliban-hostage-swap-sours-Obama-pygmy-compared-wartime-leader-Roosevelt-says-MAX-HASTINGS.html#ixzz33nub90nS
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