A few nights ago, Sean Hannity had the unmitigated gall to call on Oliver North to attack President Obama over the prisoner swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban prisoners. Fortunately for the rest of us, Jon Stewart had some choice things to say about it.
As Americans against the Tea Party notes:
Stewart reminded his audience that North’s “hands-on experience” came from helping to sell 200 missiles to Iran, despite an embargo in place against the nation, to free American hostages. North then used the money he got from selling the missiles to fund Nicaraguan “coke-fueled jungle death squads.”
Watch Stewart's smackdown below. The part about North occurs in the latter part of the video. But Stewart's earlier comments about Republicans are just as entertaining.
Republican politicians and pundits are screaming about the hostage swap for Bergdahl, saying that this somehow makes us “weak” and “unsafe”. Riiight.
Let’s take a minute and look back at the attempted “arms for hostages” trade of 1986. Keep in mind that at first it was just supposed to be a sale of TOW missiles to Israel who would in turn sell them to Iran for use against Iraq. President Reagan was warned at the time that this was illegal, and that washing the missiles through Israel wouldn’t be illegal. Reagan famously answered his cabinet by saying that he could deal with the legal matter but couldn’t deal with the notion of Ronald Reagan refusing to take an opportunity to get hostages out. To which Cap Weinberger famously answered “visiting hours are on Thursdays”. And the purpose of that arms/hostages swap was to allow Reagan to stand in the Rose Garden with multiple freed hostages, just in time for the 1986 midterms.
Who knew that Ollie North would think it a “neat idea” to take the proceeds of the TOW sales and then give the money to the Contras? Who knew that Bob McFarlane would find himself in Tehran with a bible and a cake trying to play “Let’s Make a Deal”? Who knew the whole thing would blow up when Eugene Hasenfus’ plane got shot down as a Contra resupply operation went bad?
It’s entirely possible that Bergdahl was trying to walk away from the Army. It’s entirely possible that the 5 people released from Gitmo may try to participate in further mayhem now. The former will be established in military court. The latter may never be known – and in fact may never happen since these guys have been out of commission for 13 years and may no longer be of much use to their buddies. But these are debatable matters that the right wing is desperately trying to inflame, just as they have every other thing that’s happened during the Obama presidency.
It’s not debatable whether the sale of missiles to Iran in the 1980s absolutely presented a danger to the US in every way imaginable. It’s not debatable whether Ronald Reagan knew how serious this matter was – he absolutely did. If Andrew Napolitano is concerned about President Obama somehow giving “aid and comfort to America’s enemies”, how does he deal with Reagan’s presentation of TOW missiles to a known hostile state harboring terrorists?
If George W. Bush had made a deal to release a US soldier being held captive, Fox News would be trumpeting this as a sign of Bush’s dedication to the troops and never leaving a man behind. Since it’s Obama taking this action, Fox News wants to find a way to attack it – and to attack the soldier and his family. I think Paul Begala put it best – if President Obama found a way to cure cancer, Fox News would immediately attack him for putting all those oncologists out of work.