Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day. We mark the occasion here.
~Tomorrow morning, Saturday, I'll be swinging by "Fox & Friends", live coast to coast, just after 9am Eastern/6am Pacific.
~On last night's Hugh Hewitt Show, Hugh and I discussed the continuing fall-out over the Bergdahl/Taliban deal, of which every aspect - whether you come at it from the terrorist end, the deserter end, the legal end, the pajama-boys-with-the-keys-to-the-White-House end - gets more revolting as the days go by. Apropos the President's determination in his remarks in Brussels to dig in deeper, I said this:
MARK STEYN: Obama's words in Brussels today, for example, saying "Well, this was a father and his child, his 28-year old... whatever that is, Grade 23 child. You know, every parent wants to get their Grade 23 child back …and we don't leave anyone behind. The fact is he walked out and he left America behind, this guy - and he did it, by the way, on the advice of his father. He wrote to his father saying, 'I hate America, it's a horror, I want to renounce my citizenship.' And his father emails back, 'Follow your conscience."
HUGH HEWITT: Oh, my God.
I don't think this point has been emphasized enough. Yes, one can argue that it's appropriate to cut Bergdahl Jnr some slack - thankless war, out on the front line, the strain of it all beginning to tell... But what's the father's excuse? He gets communications from his son indicating he's about to crack. He knows that out there, beyond their vulnerable encampment, is a primitive tribal society where pretty much everyone would either ransom his boy or cut to the chase and saw his head off to make a blockbuster jihadist snuff video for the bazaars of Jalalabad. Surely any responsible parent would say, "Look, I know it can't be easy for you out there. But there are people who wish to do you harm beyond the fence. Stick with it, talk to your platoon leader... You're serving honorably in a worthy cause..." You don't encourage him to take a one-way ticket into the badlands of Afghanistan.
And just to underline that: the justification for Bergdahl Snr's wacky behavior - the Taliban beard, the invocations of Allah, the Arabic and Pushtu, the pledge that the death of every Afghan child will be avenged - the justification for all this is that, well, he's also been under a lot of strain. He hasn't seen his kid for half-a-decade. That could unhinge anyone. Give the guy a break...
But the point is he was pulling this strange stuff before his son was kidnapped.
Which makes that Rose Garden ceremony even more bizarre in its weird optics - the President of the United States embracing a Taliban sympathizer at the White House. There was no need to hold such an intimate photo-op. Yet Obama chose to do it. Why?
As I said to Hugh:
I remember I had a lunch with a very prominent Republican figure just before Obama became president, and I was all unnerved about it, and he said well, don't worry, you know, okay, Obama doesn't seem to know anything, he's a community organizer, he's a left winger. But the usual guys are going to be in charge. And he implied that around Obama, there would be like Lloyd Bentsen figures preventing this stuff from happening. And the reality is the only Lloyd Bentsen figure in this administration, the Lloyd Bentsen part is being played by Joe Biden, which is dumber than getting it played by Leslie Nielsen. There's just nobody, there's nobody with a serious worldview in this administration.
That's the benign explanation - that the President's a know-nothing surrounded by 12-year-old pajama boys. The alternative is far worse.
That Rose Garden ceremony was repulsive. Coming on the eve of today's D-Day observances, it invites comparisons that reflect very poorly on us.
You can read the full transcript of my conversation with Hugh here. Kathy Shaidle has more on my and other talk-show hosts' reactions to the Bergdahl affair in her weekly radio review.
