My point is that while yes, the outcome of the operation - the death of al-Baghdadi - was indeed a “big fucking deal”, there’s no reason to think that the risk of collateral damage / sparking a war with Russia, etc, was any more significant than various other operations we undertake within Syria on a routine basis, and without notifying Congress of with any significant level of detail beforehand. That risk seems to be the criteria you have adopted. If that’s what you’re concerned about, then I can’t see any real reason to notify Congress ahead of time, or at least no more reason to notify Congress of this al-Baghdadi raid than any mundane airstrike.
I suppose I’ll ask, do you consider this event to have slipped through the tiny window where things are both super-important and yet also completely mundane and unworthy of notice, or do you just figure it’s unnecessary to inform Congress of anything, so long as the congresspeople are Democrats?
Yeah… why? I simply don’t see any reason to trust Trump’s word on this, and even if we decide that established courtesies are optional… it’s Trump. Why are you taking his word for this? Hasn’t he lied to you so often that his motives become suspect by default?
I’m confident my position is better reasoned than yours, because if it was a Democrat president with Republican congressional leadership, I’d still think it was a good idea to keep them informed.
I don’t think there’s anything about this operation that required the President to notify Congressional leadership of it beforehand. At least, I haven’t seen any information to indicate that it was required. It seems that the dems are sore about it not having been done, but I can’t figure out why, other than that they’re generally sore about virtually anything and everything President Trump does, and how he does it, and why, and where, and when, and with who.
As a matter of courtesy, I can see why it might be a nice thing to do, but Pelosi and Schumer have chosen to pursue a toxic, vitriolic relationship with President Trump rather than a courteous and nice one, with the unsurprising result that they should no longer expect courtesies from him.
Lol
Yes, it’s terrible how Pelosi and Schumer are so impolite to the person who has been hurling kindergarten-level insults at them since day one.
And yet it was Trump himself who sabotaged all the Pentagon’s careful planning of the mission. Funny that.
What “this” do you think I’m taking President Trump’s word on?
That not informing congressional leadership was a good idea.
Ahhhh, then I’m not “taking his word on this”. He and you seem to have a difference of opinion on whether it was a good idea or not. He’s the elected president and in this case, AFAICT, he’s free to act on his opinion on the matter. I don’t have any particularly strong feelings about whether it was a good idea or not.
BTW, how did you conclude that the photo was staged post-raid?
It looks staged (not candid, certainly, the way the Obama-era bin Laden raid picture looks), and there are reports that the photo was taken about 90 minutes after the raid, during which Trump was golfing. It may turn out none of this is true, I’m open to the possibility.
On a related note, was it a good idea for Obama to inform congressional leadership of the above-mentioned bin Laden raid? If not, why not? If so, why is the situation different?
On further checking, it looks like Politifact is disputing the claim that the picture is staged, so I’ll cheerfully withdraw judgement until the matter is settled. I do not consider this in any way a positive for Trump, just a negative returning to neutral.
I would still like the second paragraph of post 71 to be addressed, if it’s not too much trouble.
Yes, Pete Souza, a photographer for Obama, seems to be the original source of that erroneous claim:
He has since backtracked quite a bit:
I suppose you’re free to consider it still unsettled, but this looks like one of those silly claims that libs jumped all over that turned out to be false, and pretty obviously so.
The second paragraph of post 71 is still addressable.
I thought I already addressed this in post #50:
If that wasn’t clear enough, some key differences I see:
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Pakistan is armed with nuclear weapons and Syria is not.
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Pakistan is an ally (ostensibly) and Syria is not.
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The raid into Pakistan represented a significant escalation of force (above and beyond the previous plethora of drone strikes in the tribal regions). The raid in Syria did not (there had already been various commando raids in Syria).
So Obama did the right thing, and you’re trusting Trump to use his best judgement?
Excuse me, I’ll be chuckling in the corner for a few minutes.
As I noted, there are some significant differences with a commando raid into Pakistan that made it rise on the (completely arbitrary) “HD-thinks-this-merits-a-notification-to-Congress-beforehand” scale. I don’t know if I’d say I’m “trusting” President Trump so much as noting that he has the authority to decide that, not you or I.
I’m curious about your opinion though: you seem to think that both the OBL and Al-Baghdadi raids merited a notification to Congress beforehand, or at least that it was a “good idea”. Are there some examples of military actions that you think it unnecessary? For example, you seemed to take issue with the idea that a president would need to notify Congress about “each individual air strike or raid”, but if the Al-Baghdadi raid is above your line, and other raids and airstrikes below it, what’s the difference you see there?
You’re the one who brought the quoted phrase into the discussion, not I.
I’m not sure why I’m wading into this mess, but Trump did inform members of congress, but just on the GOP side. He also apparently informed Lindsay Graham, who is not a leader of either party in either chamber. I think it’s common to inform the party leaders from each chamber (Majority and Minority leader in the Senate, and Speaker and Minority leader in the House). Trump didn’t do that – he informed the GOP side and irrelevant others in the GOP.
If this wasn’t important enough to inform the congressional leaders, that’s fine (I think it was, given the post-event fanfare), but that’s not what happened. He just left the Democrats out.
And this is back to the OP. Trump obviously determined that it was important enough to tell some members of Congress, but only those of his party. How can this be justified? (And stating that the Democrats are leakers is not a justification.)