Bergdahl... Policy Fail, Strategy Fail, Tactics Fail... PR win?

Ok... Something that some folks don't seem to understand... and thus do not understand why conservatives, and in particular why current and former servicemembers are extremely upset about... the Bergdahl issue (never mind how he got there in the first place).

Many seem to be mystified why conservatives, and in particular servicemembers, do not seem to be happy about "getting Bergdahl home at least", regardless of what they may think of Bergdahl personally.

They are ascribing this to nothing but reflexive Obama hate... That we hate Obama so much, we'd rather a servicemember remain a prisoner of the Taliban than allow the administration a PR victory.

That's not it. At least not for those who actually understand what has gone on here.

The so called "prisoner exchange" of 5 Taliban terrorists for Bowe Bergdahl was in fact NOT a "prisoner exchange", it was in fact "negotiating with terrorists".

This is against U.S. law in most circumstances, however the president can issue a "finding" that says that doing so is in the national security interest of the united states, or that not doing to presents a clear and present danger to the national security interests of the united states. Such a finding would make the action legal (mostly, under most circumstances, with caveats etc... etc...).

It is not clear whether this was done or not... therefore it is not clear if the law has been broken or not.

What IS clear however, is that "Prisoner Exchange" with non-state actors is not prisoner exchange, it is bribing terrorists. It is DANEGELD, and once you have paid the danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.

That is WHY we have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists.

Whether this is illegal or not, is irrelevant...

Whether Bergdahl is a hero, or a deserter, or something in between is irrelevant....

What IS relevant, is that the actions taken to "get him home" are guaranteed to harm the national security of the United States, and to put our people at greater risks.

These actions are GUARANTEED to increase the kidnapping, torture, and ransoming of our servicemembers, diplomatic corps, and citizens.

THAT is what so many of us are upset about.

Want to understand Putin, and the Russians? WATCH THIS NOW

A few months ago I wrote about understanding the Russians, and how and why Americans have such difficulty in doing so.

Mike McFaul, former ambassador to Russia, gets frank and explicit about Putin and Russia in this Hoover institution video:



If you want to understand Russians at all, watch this now.

If this is true, Italy need to be expelled from NATO

Fox News is reporting that Libyan officials claim the socialist government in power in Italy at the time of the 1986 air strikes against Libya, warned Ghudaffi on the day before the strikes, that the U.S. would be attacking them.

Full article here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,445450,00.html

The article has several details of the operation wrong, and of course the source is not necessarily the most reliable, so perhaps consideration should be given; however, if this story is true, Italy should be immediately expelled from NATO; the alliance under which this information was shared with them, and through which overflight permission was sought.

EVERYTHING is economics

I've said this many times before: economics isn't the study of money; it's the study of incentives, choices, and consequences.

In this video from the TED conference, economist Emily Oster performs an economic analysis of the spread of AIDS in Africa and shows once again, it's about the economics (which means it's about peoples choices and incentives):

What is abundantly clear here, is that government aid does little or nothing to combat AIDS; but choice, and incentives do a hell of a lot.

This is one of the fundamental principles of libertarianism in action. Rational actors, making rational, self interested choices.

Now, here's another TED conference video, but this one you may have heard of before; it's Andrew Mwendas speech about how foreign aid has actually HURT Africa.

Mwendas central point (though the language he uses may be a little to the left of the way I would put it) is that foreign aid has hurt Africa, because it has isolated the people from market driven incentives and consequences; and has in fact created perverse incentives towards greater poverty, and policies which HURT the people (and the ceonomies) of Africa. This is because more poverty means more aid, which means less attempts (and less success) at breaking out of poverty, ad infinitum.

Everything is economics, really.