The president, too, appears stunned. He has so little understanding of (or interest in) the values and traditions of our troops that he and his advisers really believed that those in uniform would erupt into public joy at the news of Bergdahl's release - as D.C. frat kids did when Osama bin Laden's death was trumpeted.
Both President Obama and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. They have no idea of how great a sin desertion in the face of the enemy is to those in our military.
The only worse sin is to side actively with the enemy and kill your brothers in arms.
This is not sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.
But compassion, please! The president and all the president's men and women are not alone.
Our media elite - where it's a rare bird who bothered to serve in uniform - instantly became experts on military justice. Of earnest mien and blithe assumption, one talking head after another announced that "we always try to rescue our troops, even deserters."
President Obama did this to himself (and to Bergdahl). This beautifully educated man, who never tires of letting us know how much smarter he is than the rest of us, never stopped to consider that our troops and their families might have been offended by their commander-in-chief staging a love-fest at the White House to celebrate trading five top terrorists for one deserter and featuring not the families of those soldiers (at least six of them) who died in the efforts to find and free Bergdahl, but, instead, giving a starring role on the international stage to Pa Taliban, parent of a deserter and a creature of dubious sympathies (that beard on pops ain't a tribute to ZZ Top).
How do you say "outrageous insult to our vets" in Pashto? Nor, during the recent VA scandal, had the president troubled himself to host the families of survivors of those vets who died awaiting care. No, the warmest attention our president has ever paid to a "military family" was to Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl.