When President Obama delivered the commencement at West Point, he sounded less a commander-in-chief addressing brand-new Army officers than a local college professor speaking to a chapter of the Elks.
Now he’s channeling George Patton. Five Taliban commanders for a private whose fellow soldiers believe he deserted them? Matter of honor, he asserts: America doesn’t leave our people behind. And that’s that.
In a little-noticed part of his infamous Rose Garden appearance with Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s parents, the president suggested the same principle applies as well to other “American citizens who are unjustly detained abroad and deserve to be reunited with their families, just like the Bergdahls.”
So how are these Americans faring? Start with Alan Gross, who has been rotting away in a Cuban prison since 2009. Gross was working for USAID — bringing in communication equipment to Cuba’s small Jewish community as part of a democracy-promotion program — when the government threw him in jail.
Havana is willing to send Gross home if we give it back a few convicted spies we’re holding. Which invites the question: If the Obama White House is willing to let five Taliban commanders go free, why not the spies Havana demands? Surely the Cubans are far less a threat to American life.
Or what about Warren Weinstein, a USAID development contractor who was working in Pakistan in 2011 when he was abducted? The man is now 72 years old and held by al Qaeda.
Of the Bergdahl swap, Weinstein’s daughter Alisa told CNN that President Obama “can’t just pick and choose, decide that it works to get one person out and then leave everybody else there.” Again, hard to fault her logic.
Then there’s Amir Hekmati, a former Marine of dual nationality visiting his grandmothers in 2011 when Tehran accused him of espionage and clapped him into prison. In a letter Hekmati had smuggled out of prison, he said a televised confession he’d made earlier had been done under duress — and asked Secretary of State John Kerry to reject any overture to trade him for Iranian operatives held in the US.
“I had nothing to do with their arrest, committed no crime, and see no reason why the US Government should entertain such a ridiculous proposition,” wrote Hekmati. “I do not wish to set a precedent for others that may be unlawfully [obtained] for political gain in the future.”
Meanwhile, there’s Robert Levinson, an ex-FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007 while working for the CIA. Later a video of him in prison garb surfaced. But we let the Iranians get away with saying they don’t know where he is. Sure looks like we’ve left behind one of our own here.
Or Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, an Afghanistan war vet being held in Mexico for mistakenly crossing into that country with three registered guns in his truck. Mexico’s supposed to be our friend. So why hasn’t the Obama administration succeeded in getting this Marine sprung?
Finally, there’s Shakil Afridi. Though this Pakistani doctor isn’t a US citizen, he was instrumental in helping the United States bring Osama bin Laden to justice. His reward? A Pakistani prison cell.
In contrast with the messy case of Sgt. Bergdahl, so far as we know not one of these men acted dishonorably. If leave-no-man-behind is the guiding principle of our approach to Americans who’ve been locked up abroad while serving (or being accused of serving) their country, these men surely have an equal claim to it.
There are moral reasons for this, starting with what a free nation owes the men and women who suffer for their service. But there are practical reasons as well.
For one, it’s an assurance to those whom we send into harm’s way that Uncle Sam will be there for them if they get in trouble. And when we secure their freedom by exacting a price instead of paying one, we send a healthy message to the world: Mess with an American at your peril.
It’s understandable that some families of these men — unlike Amir Hekmati — want their loved ones home no matter what the deal. It’s understandable too that a White House might well conclude that the price demanded by an Iran or Cuba or al Qaeda is simply too high, that there are limits on what we will give away even to bring home an American who has served his country.
The problem for President Obama is the bar he’s set: It’s simply hard to imagine any price higher than the release of five commanders in a Taliban still at war with us. Which makes it all but impossible for him to justify not doing the same for any of these other captured men.