The Republican right is making a big show condemning the prisoner-swap: the release of five Taliban officials from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay into Qatar's supervision, in exchange for the release of the lone U.S. prisoner held captive by the Taliban for the past five years: Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a 26-year-old Idaho native.

It is a campaign stage managed by such Republican schemers as former Romney foreign policy consultant Richard Grenell. They hastily branded Bergdahl a "traitor" before the circumstances of his capture had become 100 percent clear. Right-wing Fox News' Bill O'Reilly even went so far as to insinuate that Robert Bergdahl's beard was a telltale sign that he is now a "Muslim convert" and Taliban sympathizer. Robert is Bowe's father, a former Presbyterian pastor.

According to Robert, "At first, (Bowe's) e-mails were effusive. 'He was happy as a clam'." Yet soon the tone of his son's e-mails darkened. There was one unmistakable clue: the sergeant saw U.S. soldiers in an armored truck laughing and joking as they intentionally ran down an Afghan girl. In other words, he witnessed war crimes. He found that U.S. soldiers regarded Afghans with aggressive contempt: "I am sorry for everything here. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live."

In an e-mail later published by Rolling Stone magazine, Bergdahl wrote, "The U.S. army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools and bullies. The few good SGTs are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same."

Bergdahl had joined the army when it was short of soldiers to send to Afghanistan as part of Obama's "surge." With too few men, the army had to issue "waivers" to recruits who were facing felony charges or drug problems; in other words, recruits who would previously have been disqualified for the army.

The sergeant was so frustrated that he complained about how three good sergeants had been forced to move to another company and "one of the biggest shit bags is being put in charge of the team." The commander of his battalion was a "conceited old fool" and other officers were just as bad. "In the U.S. army you are cut down for being honest…but if you are a conceited brown-nosing shit bag you will be allowed to do everything you want; and you will be handed your higher rank."

The Republican right is after Bergdahl because they want to find a scapegoat for the failure of the Afghan war started by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, which they originally (and enthusiastically) supported.

As for the release of five Taliban officials, there is no fault to find. They are war prisoners, not terrorists. The Geneva Convention requires that POWs be promptly released at the conclusion of hostilities. Obama has announced that as of January 2017, there will be no more U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The Taliban officials are released into Qatar's supervision, not sent back to Afghanistan, and they have been in captivity for more than a decade. They could not make any difference on the battle field.

The case of Sgt. Bergdahl shows that the war party has not reconciled to the fact that the wars are ending in Iraq and Afghanistan. They want to keep fighting in those countries in spite of the fact that the wars are unwinnable and the American people are sick and tired of 13 years of endless battle.

Why? Because war justifies huge expenditures that only benefit the political elite and arms manufacturers.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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