I encourage you to join me in demanding the full story behind why the filth who orchestrated [the murders of captured American soldiers] are walking around free. We won’t get those answers unless we push for them, with the same courage and dedication our fallen heroes gave to their duty. This story will go away, unless you keep it alive. Love the warriors, by making it clear to Washington that their lives are worth more than any politician’s career.

Hayward devotes much more attention to capsule biographies of the American soldiers executed by Qazali’s forces and apparently on Qazali’s orders, than to the Qazali release itself (actually the second release of a Qazali brother to Iraqi authorities ahead of probable full freedom), and much of the rest of the post is taken up by free-form indictments of Obama security policy from an admittedly “hostile” perspective.   The responses from HotAirite commenters are unsurprising:  re-echoing rage, plaudits for the good Doctor… and a trollish attempt to change the subject to Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra.

For wider political resonance, Hayward brings in Janet Napolitano’s performance as Homeland Security Secretary in relation to the foiled Christmas Day Flight 253 bombing, as well as the simmering issue of Navy SEALs charged with abusing an Iraqi captive.  Other conservatives have followed a similar pattern of attempting to connect Qazali to issues that are only indirectly related, at best:  Andy McCarthy also hits the Christmas Day attack, and expresses “astonish[ment]” that he’d be observing a capitulation to Iranian-backed terrorists even while “Iranian tyrants are brutally suppressing a revolt by the Iranian people.”  In a post entitled “No Conceivable Justification for This One,” Jennifer Rubin asks for Democrats to join Republicans “call[ing] foul on the entire Obama approach to terror.”  Allahpundit refers to the apparent exchange as “unreal” and “mind-bendingly insane”:  Linking to an item on former Gitmo detainees who may have been part of a Flight 253 conspiracy, he asks, “How many jihadis do we have to release before someone figures out that releasing jihadis is an exceedingly bad idea?”

We don’t have to accept every notional connection to the Qazali affair to admit it raises serious questions, and to agree with Senators Kyl and Sessions, who have formally requested answers from the Administration on important policy questions.  Concerned citizens have a right to demand a full accounting.  Still, if we decide to reject the explanations – those already available and any further ones to come – we should be clear what else we’re rejecting, and what else we’re asking for.

The pundits and bloggers have been primarily responding to reports from Bill Roggio at the Weekly Standard and the Long War Journal in which anonymous U.S. intelligence officers are quoted denying that the release was anything other than an unequal “swap,” and ominously warning of Qazali’s eventual return to violence and subversion:  “We are going to pay for this in the future,” says one individual identified simply as “a military officer.”  Roggio deserves credit for breaking this story – as well as for his long service to all of us in reporting on the Conflict Formerly Known as the War on Terror – but you have to turn to official U.S. military statements, or perhaps the typically even-handed summary by ABC’s Jake Tapper, to get much understanding of why anyone would even consider letting this particular detainee go along with some 100 of his comrades.

According to Tapper, a spokesman for US Forces Iraq (formerly Multinational Forces Iraq) has denied a quid pro quo, and asserts that the release was performed under the terms of the US-Iraqi Security Agreement, in recognition of the Iraqi government’s sovereign rights and responsibilities.  At Contentions, Max Boot provides useful details and context, responding directly to conservative bloggers (including his colleague Rubin) while also pointing to the larger implications of their “understandably irate” reactions.  After explaining the relationship of Qazali’s group to the larger and better known Shia militia under Moqtada al-Sadr, he compares the Shia fighters to the Anbar Sunnis whom the US military and Iraqi government have brought into a complex reconciliation process – inevitably involving the forgiveness of past violence, including terror and other war crimes.

More critically for our purposes here, Boot reminds us that a policy of laying every ill in the world at the feet of President Barack Obama, and reflexively grouping each new incident with every other criticism, has its limits – and dangers:

All of these deals have been brokered by Prime Minister Maliki with the close oversight of General Ray Odierno, now the U.S. Forces-Iraq commander, and his boss, General Petraeus. They can hardly be accused of being “soft” on terrorism, yet they know that in the end warfare alone will not suffice to end an insurgency. There must be a process of political reconciliation, which involves accommodating even vile figures such as the Qazali brothers, who have American blood on their hands. It is the same realization reached by Lincoln, Churchill, and other great wartime commanders who understood that after the guns fell silent they would have to learn to live with former enemies.

If we insist on the political equivalent of a “terminate with extreme prejudice” order, we should be aware that the Commander-in-Chief may happen to be well away from the target zone on this one.

As we pass the first zero-U.S. casualty month since Operation Iraqi Freedom began, with our forces on track for effectively complete withdrawal in 2011, there may be little interest in, and less practical basis for, an assertion of American prerogatives on what amounts to Iraqi policy toward former insurgents.  Assuming that Boot’s description is more right than wrong, and assuming further that we’re not demanding a complete reversal of current U.S. policy in Iraq, entailing the recall of Odierno and Petraeus and the commencement of military operations against Iran from the territory of our newly declared protectorate Iraq, what are the critics demanding we do differently in such cases?  Summary executions justified as acts of revenge?  Forcible transfer to indefinite or permanent American custody?

Rightly or wrongly, we have accepted that “what happened in Iraq, stays in Iraq,” and we long ago, indeed from the very beginning, disclaimed any intention to take Iraq over.  On the day we changed this policy, or declared all-out war on Islamism (the two would likely go together sooner or later), there would be plenty more where the Qazalis came from, and there would soon be many more fallen heroes to avenge – in perpetuity or ’til kingdom come.