How many members of the Russian Government were briefed on this mission?
I’m not “concealing” my own views. I’m relaying factually-correct information, even though I may disagree with the philosophical underpinnings of it. The AUMF has been cited (and widely accepted) as justification for our military actions against ISIS for as long as they’ve existed. Likewise, if someone asked “how is abortion legal?” I’d point them to Roe v. Wade even though I personally find that decision deeply flawed.
That libs suddenly have a new-found interest in Congress authorizing military actions that they were disinterested in while Obama was president doesn’t change any of the above. They’re still hypocrites.
You just made this nonsense up. Nobody is arguing that Congress needs to individually authorize these types of actions. While one can argue that the AUMF is narrowly constructed, nobody in Congress has argued to take this power away from the president.
There’s a world of difference between demanding pre-authorization, and demanding a modicum of respect for Congress, given their Constitutional duties regarding the use of our armed forces.
However, feel free to explain to me why the Russian government can be trusted with our secrets.
As I said above, as far as Trump is concerned, the only purpose of this raid was to provide him with theatrics to promote himself. That’s why he was jabbering on about the details as though he were describing the movie of the week, (instead of leaving the details for the Pentagon to describe, as is the usual custom). That’s all he cares about–putting on a show, because that’s the only level of cognition his base supporters are able to process.
Of course you’re concealing your disagreement with what you’re posting. There’s been a thousand times on this board where I and others have stated, “Well these people say this, and this is what they are thinking, but of course I think they are full of it.” It takes like three seconds for anyone to clarify they are writing something they don’t actually believe.
You don’t do that. Why?
So, uh, which libs actually raised the issue of a new AUMF for Syria? I’ll give you a hint, one of them had the initials BHO and another guy with the initials MM refused to hold a vote on it.
Also, pop quiz: how many times have libs tried to end the 2001 AUMF because it was overbroad? (I’m really just waiting to see if your answer is “zero because libs are such hypocrites.”)
Because when relaying factual information, my feelings about it are irrelevant. If someone wants to know, ask and I’ll usually answer, as I did in this exchange with you.
Sure, he “raised” it, and then when Congress didn’t authorize it, what’d he do? He kept fighting ISIS in Syria, and fell back to justifying it under the original 2001 AUMF.
I haven’t been keeping a precise count, but it hasn’t been enough to leave me with the impression that it’s something they actually cared to do. There have been periods of time where they’ve had substantial amounts of power, even controlling the House, Senate, and Presidency for a while. Why didn’t they do it then?
It seems prudent to me to inform senior members of Congress just in case the raid goes crazily wrong and instead of taking out a terrorist, the Marines wipe out the wedding reception of the son of the Minister of Finance. “Oops, I guess we are at war with Tunisia now. Sorry to spring this on you unannounced, but I think we are going to need a lot more funding in the near future.”
Of course in Trump’s case, he’d blame Obama.
How many “accidental” victims do you think are going to be in Baghdadi’s compound in Bashira, Syria, at 1 AM?
Is it actually necessary to make a list of all the times we hit the wrong target to see the necessity of telling someone other than the Russians about what we are doing? It’s not as if the Russians would mind if we fucked up and hit a wedding party or a hospital.
For the raid into Pakistan, a nuclear power and ostensible ally, to get OBL, this makes sense. We’ve been bombing and raiding over much of Syria for years now. Trying to notify Congress of each individual air strike or raid, when they’re already being done in that country at a fairly high volume, seems impractical.
I certainly wouldn’t mind if Pelosi were tied up in Syria briefings every day, but I think she, and her allies, would probably mind.
I agree that this didn’t rise to the level of having to inform leaders of congress. Neither did this rise to the level of having the president make a live TV announcement. An official WH statement would have been sufficient. Instead, we got the Orange Menace embarrassing the nation once again with incoherent blather and self-important bragging. Why? Because the attention whore in chief just can’t help himself.
It’s very likely that Trump didn’t even know who Baghdadi was. He probably just said to Esper: “I need something to make me look tough against ISIS. I want to do what Obama did with Binladen, but make it tougher, so I can be the hero.” I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been sitting on this and he rushed it for the publicity.
I dunno, how many wedding parties do you think have been attacked by American drones? I’m glad you’re content to assume the raid couldn’t go wildly awry but I’m afraid I can’t join you in the magical republic of Confidentistan.
By what metric do you establish this impracticality, and who said it had to be “each individual air strike or raid” ? If we believe Trump, and I’m unclear why any rational adult would at this point, this particular attack was highly significant. How many such raids do you think are happening every week?
Not sure how concerned they were with collateral casualties even after the raid. Less than 24 hours later, US jets turned the compound into a parking lot. Now, maybe everyone on the ground knew this was coming and stayed away. Maybe they were warned. Or maybe nobody checked before turning it into rubble and ash.
It may seem like this could be construed as an accusation of lying, but I don’t see it that way in this context. I see this as more of an assertion of strawmanning.
Carry on.
[/moderating]
Am I the only one who thinks it wouldn’t have been particularly important that he didn’t inform them if his reason for doing so hadn’t been essentially an accusation of treason?
Your previous post said:
Any given airstrike might accidentally wipe out the wedding reception of the son of the Minister of Finance (or some other innocuous gathering that I am guessing this particular example is a stand-in for). In fact, there’s probably more risk of that with airstrikes than with a boots-on-the-ground gunfight, so if your criteria is that it would be prudent to inform senior members of Congress just in case we kill a bunch of innocent people during the operation, that prudence would seem due for “each individual air strike and raid”, wouldn’t it? In other words, aren’t YOU the one arguing that we should be notifying Congress whenever there’s some risk of the operation going “crazily wrong” and killing innocents?
Ah forget it. This thread is a joke.
No, unless you’re determined to argue by strawmen and excluded middles. If so, have at it with my blessing.
Was this a significant attack or not, targeting a specific high-profile individual? Trump wants to establish that this is a HUUGE-ly bigly deal, simply too important to give congressional leaders a heads-up, so significant that it’s worth a post-raid staging of the situation room for a photo-op. If it had gone wrong, missed the target, ended up aggravating the situation, do we trust Trump to be honest about it? I don’t believe we can or should, and if there had been Russian casualties (oh, wait, the Russians knew about it), shouldn’t Congressional leadership be at least vaguely aware that a very big die had just been cast? Why are these people in charge of military budgets and yet not important to keep apprised of significant military operations? Got any evidence Pelosi is as blabber-mouthed as, say, Trump himself?
I get what you’re trying to do, I just can’t take it seriously. If this was a run-of-the-mill operation not important enough (even if it had gone wrong) to inform Congressional leadership, fine. Somebody should let Trump know. I think he’s about to give himself the Medal of Honor.