Thursday, October 12, 2017

TRUMP AND TRUDEAU SECURE HOSTAGE RELEASE

    This morning, President Trump announced that Joshua Boyle and his wife Caitlyn and their three children were rescued from Taliban kidnappers and are now free. The family had been held hostage during the entirety of Obama's second term, but Trump secured their release only nine months after taking office.

     Boyle is a Canadian national and his wife is American. According to a statement from the White House, the American, Canadian, and Pakistani governments coordinated the efforts to bring the family home. The CIA located the Boyles in a village along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and, this morning, Pakistani troops raided the camp bringing the family away unharmed, though Boyle is being treated for a shrapnel wound. The Jihadist guards were all killed, according to a communique from the Pakistani General Staff.

      President Trump stated that the rescue was a positive sign, and vowed that remaining kidnapped Americans would also be freed. 

       The Corporate Media likely won't give Trump any credit for this achievement, but it's noteworthy that, once again, Trump accomplished in a few months what Obama neglected to do in several years. Along with swamp-draining, stalled Obama-Era crises and scandals are being unraveled and cleaned up. We've seen long-standing trade issues resolved; the drug and gang problems taken on; and several legal issues getting mopped up. Among the latter, the Volkswagen Scandal, Epipen, LIBOR, the 'Fat Leonard' Scandal and a constellation of lesser-known issues that spanned Obama's term are either resolved or close to resolution. 

       Another positive thing about this story is that Trump achieved the hostage-release without violating Pakistani sovereignty. Under both Bush and Obama, this was a major issue between the two countries. Hopefully, the days of unilateral US military interventions in Pakistan are over; and Trump will pursue a win-win cooperative arrangement as he did today. The Pakistani Media was expressing the same hope in its editorial pages today. 

     The Boyle Family lives in New Brunswick, and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said that they would be repatriated to Canada shortly. She asked the media to respect the family's privacy but declined, on national security grounds, to comment on Canada's role in their release. 



No comments:

Post a Comment