The case of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is exhibit A on what is wrong with politics in the US today. Understanding this issue requires one to put their prejudices, partisan loyalties, and kneejerk reactions on the shelf. It also requires breaking the issues into smaller manageable parts. Finally, to understand this issue, you must realize that you have to reserve judgment on some things as there are not enough facts.
The reaction on the right is both disheartening and disgusting. In typical fashion, they have decided that any enemy of their enemy (i.e. Cliven Bundy) is their friend, and any friend of their enemy (POTUS) is their sworn enemy. Along those lines, they have decided that Sgt Bergdahl is a traitor. In fact, the truth is probably much more complicated. He was clearly disillusioned with our role in the war and how we were treating the Afghani people. He clearly went AWOL as he did at least two other times, but he may have just wondered off for the sake of wondering off; we don’t know, but there is no reason to tar and feather him yet. In fact, I don’t think a POTUS evaluates how good of a soldier someone is before deciding to help free him or not. The quality of this soldier has nothing to do with the President, and the vile treatment of him is totally inexcusable.
Having said that, there are questions about this action that merit discussion. One important aspect of this story is the whole idea of swapping prisoners with known terrorists good foreign policy? I tend to think it is not as it encourages the taking of hostages.
http://time.com/...
There is an argument that we would have had to release these men anyway since they are POWs, but it still seems that this sets a bad precedent. Having said that, it is the job of POTUS to set foreign policy, so POTUS was fully within his rights to exchange prisoners, except that these prisoners were in Guantanamo, which is covered by the NDAA.
Check out page 181 of the NADA.
It is clear that a 30 day notice to congress (along with other criteria in a process) is required by law. Even Jeffrey Toobin, hardly a conservative, has said that there is no doubt that POTUS broke the law. OTOH, the President could believe that this part of the law is unconstitutional (separation of powers), but that begs the question of why President Obama signed it into law. I will be interested in hearing a legal justification for the seeming outright flouting of law.