OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
It is truly a fool’s errand for any decent person of conscience governed by honesty to engage in debate with the likes of these people. Never has that folly been more acute than in the aftermath of the president’s release of the five Kingpins of Terror.
To engage them is like walking onto a battlefield of steel and lead in nothing but sandals and a sackcloth, unarmed. No matter how honorable your motive or how right your cause, you will be slaughtered with impunity.
Your morals will be ridiculed. Your belief in a code of decency will be used to ensnare you. Your truth-bearing tongue will be ripped from your throat and fed to your children.
You may be marked as God’s child, but that will do you no good here today. You will be killed on this battlefield of these people’s choosing and at their vile hands.
So it is today for Americans who have never before felt a pang of disloyalty toward their country or the soldiers who fight for their freedom. For them, patriotism is both a cheap thrill at a ballgame and a profound comfort and compass during the blurred horror of wartime.
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What diabolical scheme might these shape-shifters devise to turn American patriotism against itself? What deceits might they deploy to scramble proud Americans into panting disarray, jabbering senselessly in countless different languages?
Quite simple, it turns out.
Release the Kingpins of Terror — these cur dogs of a cur war — back onto the hot battlefield. And do so in exchange for an ex-American soldier who spoke openly of his hatred for the country that coddled him into a spoiled, deluded, cowardly brat.
An ex-soldier who denounced America and called the title U.S. soldier “the lie of fools.”
An ex-soldier who apparently plotted his desertion by sending his possessions home to Mommy and leaving a note before going AWOL.
An ex-soldier who is accused of aiding the enemy by sharing intelligence about his former comrades and teaching battle tactics to an enemy hell-bent on killing more U.S. soldiers and innocent American children.
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But there is an errand even more foolish than decent people attempting to engage these people in an honorable debate. It is the errand of loyal soldiers sent into the battlefields of Afghanistan to “rescue” the turncoat deserter.
Those honorable soldiers, of course, had no choice. Six of them, according to reports, never came back. Sent they were to save a rat.
And all of this why?
Because the administration just discovered where Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was being held “captive” or he was in some kind of imminent danger?
Widespread reporting indicates the Pentagon knew where he was all along and that, indeed, he was in no particular danger. Enough men, the military felt, had already died trying to save this wretched ingrate.
Was it because the administration has for months been hot-stepping it from one disaster to the next and, in the depths of depraved cynicism, needed a political “win” to change the conversation?
Well, nobody is talking about all the veterans being abused and dying in VA hospitals anymore.
Was it so President Obama could finally make good on his reckless — though apparently vacant — promise to close Gitmo within the first 100 days of his first term? Five down, how many more terrorists to go now that this new soldier marketplace is open for business?
• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com and on Twitter @charleshurt.
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