PRESIDENT OBAMA AND PRESIDENT PUTIN MUST RETHINK AFGHAN STRATEGY

The affair of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, released by Taliban captives in exchange for five Guantanamo  terrorists, must be viewed by the Kremlin as a Kafkaesque, political farce.   .  Meanwhile, unnoticed by the White House and Kremlin, the anti-Taliban, presidential candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, was almost assassinated by terrorists on D-Day.  The White House must cease bizarre deals with the terrorists and even  engage  Russian President Putin in preventing another 911.

No, this was not Saturday Night Live!  This was the White House Rose Garden. Speaking in Idaho Pashtun, Bowe Bergdahl´s father, Bob, sporting a scraggly, Islamic beard, offered  one of the most frequent Koran phrases to his son´s  Afghan captors, “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim”[ “In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Compassionate”].

Bob´s desire for the release of his son was  understandable, but what will be the impact on Russia´s foreign policy with this  Bergdahl barter?  How may it affect the Putin-Obama relationship and the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine as well as our cooperation with Russia in fighting international terrorism? 

Obama´s moves during the Sochi Olympics and the Ukrainian crisis have all been geared primarily to the interests of his Democratic Party constituents. The winning Obama election strategy thus far has been based on an outreach to single issue groups, voters and donors, rather than on the vital national security interests of Middle America. 

With Bergdahl it is the anti-Afghanistan war and close-Guantanamo constituency.   During the Sochi Olympics it was the gay lobby.  Obama even included gays in the U.S.  Olympics delegation, while ignoring the brewing Ukraine crisis. Before the Crimean invasion Obama´s key national security issue became  not pre-emptive diplomacy on the Ukraine , but  climate change. This strokes another segment of the Democratic coalition, the ecological lobby .

Moreover,  Russian leaders, surely noticed  that, while America is still recovering from a deep economic recession, the White House plays politics with a key national security issue, the Keystone Pipeline, on behalf ecological donors.

As repugnant as is Vladimir Putin´s disregard of international law vis-a-vis  the Ukraine,   Russia´s President has engaged in strategic cooperation with us for more than a decade on international terrorism.  He was the first foreign leader to express to President George W. Bush support against the 9/11 attack. Then he helped to turn former Soviet republic Kyrgyzstan into a joint supply base for the U.S. war  in Afghanistan. Russia also shared intelligence with us on Chechen-born,  Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnayev.  

  “No negotiation with terrorists” is ingrained in Russia´s uncompromising handling of this issue, even more so than Israel´s.  To the Kremlin it must be  incomprehensible that, no matter what the extenuating circumstances,  the leader of the earth´s most  powerful nation, the American president, would trade a group that includes four Taliban, dream team  war criminals for a confused, malcontent -turned deserter at best  and  traitor at worst.  One can see Putin shaking his head when he learned that six U.S   Special Forces men died in seeking Bowe after he walked off his base without his gun.

 Putin must be weighing his Ukraine ambitions against the need for America as an ally in the war against Islamist terrorism.  But unless Obama forgoes his bizarre White House games,  you can hardly expect the  mistrustful Kremlin to renew  a genuine strategic cooperation with Obama any time soon. The Bergdahl  barter  was a signal that Obama´s  Afghanistan endgame might eventually  follow his losing Iraq script.  By the end of 2016,  the Russians see us again abandoning Afghanistan to its fate as we did in 1992.  Obama wants to close  Guantanamo and repatriate inmates like those just released, to resume their reign of terror.  Moreover, as Putin explained a few weeks ago, some Islamists from Russia´s north Caucasus   have already been recruited  to fight not only in Syria but also Afghanistan-- and later to return to Russia.

Exploiting President Obama´s naivete, a reign of anti-American terror is already being encouraged by the release of the senior Taliban leaders.  Almost unnoticed is the D-day, terrorist attack on Afghan presidential candidate Abudllah Abdullah, a friend of the U.S.   The former advisor of Tajik leader Ahmad Shah Massoud  the late Northern Alliance leader  known as the "Lion of Panjshir,"  Abdullah  luckily survived – this time.  Massoud, an ally  of the U.S. and Russia, was assassinated in September 2001, two days before 911.  

 The Kremlin heard tough Obama language on the Ukraine, articulated during the president´s recent visit to Warsaw.  Yet   Obama´s reluctance to furnish small arms to Kiev,  multiple scandals and poor decisions like the  Bergdahl blunder,  must only encourage Putin to view Obama  as  another Richard Nixon engulfed in several inferno-gates.

 “The real power of a nation cannot be measured in the number of missiles or the technological edge…[but] by the ability of the nation to meet the goals it sets for itself” explained Dr. Andrey  Kortunov,  Director General of the prestigious, Moscow Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC). “Given the US track record (Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria), U.S. is a weak nation today. … its current deterrent potential is not credible… And Vladimir Putin knows that too well. “

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations , Dr. Jiri Valenta is president of the Institute of Post-Communist Studies and Terrorism, jvlv.net.  @JiriLeniValenta on Twitter.