MAD Magazine Goes Political in Bergdahl Prisoner Swap.
Who didn’t read MAD Magazine when they were kids? I did. But I didn’t know it was still being published. MAD Magazine always had a political bent, but in the internet age there is so much competition that the edgy type of material we grew up with reading MAD can be found in so many different places today.
MAD’s tagline, “Get more stupidity delivered right to your mailbox! Subscribe to MAD today!,” is quaint given that we can get a great deal of stupidity delivered to us in seconds via a mouse click or a finger swipe.
I’ve never known the political position of the editors at MAD. The magazine always seemed to be an equal opportunity offender. MAD’s latest entry will go down as a classic and may do more damage to President Obama “legacy” than any negative editorial. As one comment stated, “Obama, when you’ve lost MAD magazine, you’ve lost America.”
Here’s the poster that MAD created about the Bergdahl Prisoner Swap with the following introduction:
“Recently, President Obama exchanged five Taliban leaders for an American POW, Bowe Bergdahl,” the online post reads. “One prisoner for five is an iffy trade to begin with — but even more so when it was revealed that Bergdahl had deserted his post. So, Obama got his man, but there was a lot of collateral damage — it kind of reminds us of a movie we once saw…”
When I heard that there was only one Afghan prisoner of war, and he was about to be released, I was immediately suspicious. Why hadn’t we heard about Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl? If the most recent reports are true, Bergdahl was a deserter.
The search for Bergdahl began soon after he went missing on June 30, 2009, in the southeastern Afghanistan. Like in the film Saving Private Ryan, men lost their lives in the search for him.
Again, if reports are true Bergdahl not only walked away from his post but he gave aid and comfort to the enemy.
I don’t blame someone for not wanting to fight in a foreign land for a cause that has no immediate effect on the United States. We’ve had too many of these combat missions and too many deaths and injuries that go along with them.
Too often our efforts make things worse.
As we’ve seen in Iraq and will most likely see in Afghanistan, wars are disruptive in so many ways, especially when the replacement is worse as we’re seeing in Egypt and Libya. For example, just yesterday this happened:
“Libyan militias loyal to new Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq, who is backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, stormed the prime minister’s office on Monday ahead of a planned Supreme Court session to adjudicate the dispute between him and interim Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni.”
If Bergdahl was truly conflicted about the war, he should have made his thoughts known to his commander. Going over to the other side is not an option, no matter what you think of America and any particular war.
By the way, the folks at MAD should expect a visit from the IRS very soon.