He’s the one who pulled the trigger.
Fasten your seat belt, this half witted POTUS is just getting started.
Because this was “weaksauce”? Or because we’ve got so many worse ones coming up. After all, only one SEAL died…
The point is that if all the military people and intel people say it’s a good idea, the President approves it, and then it gets bungled, or the plan actually sucked, the President is only nominally responsible in his capacity as CinC.
Few Presidents (maybe Eisenhower or Roosevelt) have the ability to evaluate military plans or determine whether the support is sufficient, or to evaluate any number of other operational decisions and factors.
They’re just making the final decisions based on what their generals and intelligence wonks tell them, and if they said this was a good idea, then the President’s decision will likely be made within the context of the political ramifications, which he theoretically IS qualified to evaluate.
However, if the military and intel people were saying “Let’s not go- we’re not in position, we don’t have enough intel, etc…” and Trump basically commanded them to go in spite of all that, due to a desire to look tough or something, then it would definitely be his fault.
We don’t have any evidence either way yet, and I’m leaning toward this being more similar to Eagle Claw, which was hardly Carter’s fault, but failed due to a combination of really atrocious luck and some bungling on the part of the military.
Maybe I’m just weird, but if I ever had to personally give an order (Trump actually didn’t have to) that will get people killed, I’d at least be interested enough to monitor the progress. Of course, I would have conferred with the right people first - intelligence and military, not the Nazi from Breitbart and my son in law (or whatever that other asshole is).
Trump … yeah! let’s blow shit up! kick ass! kill things! but don’t interrupt my meal, or ask me to come all the way downstairs.
Exactly.
then we’re ALL fucked.
“Coming up”??? This current President has done more stupid shit in his first two weeks than George W. Bush did in his whole first year.
Besides, a special forces raid that goes tits-up is nothing remarkable. It’s the cost of doing business (make an omelet, break a few eggs & all that.) And pouncing on every tiny mistake makes our side look bad. Best to focus on Trump’s real doozies instead, and believe me, there will be no shortage of them.
Now I have a mental image stuck in my head of William Dozier breathlessly declaring “The worst is yet to come!” as Adam West and Burt Ward carefully squirm in place so as to not accidentally pull a hand or foot loose from their bonds.
I think it’s clear the Trump administration has a much lower standard on what amount of intelligence is needed to make important decisions.
True. But as far as I can tell this was greenlit before he decided to remove all the people who understood national security from the National Security Council.
There used to be a meme, or a poster of George W…
The caption said “miss me yet?”
Comparing the two, and after the shit show we’ve been seeing lately, I do miss him.
But this is presumably the first time that President Trump made a decision that got some Americans killed.
Kennedy learned from the Bay of Pigs. Do you think Trump has learned anything?
You don’t authorize a strike with the president you want, you do it with the president you got. I feel sorry for the poor troops who will pay for his brashness with their lives.
I’m leaning towards “let’s get more info before we pass judgement”. Still, I am very, very, VERY nervous about having Trump as the CiC. As I noted in one of he other threads, what’s going on in Syria right now, and who is calling the shots there? Are we still bombing the shit out of them? And in Afghanistan? Trump’s rhetoric puts him as a reckless nincompoop, so it would not surprise me in the least if this turned out to be bungled. We shall see.
Blame Obama before authorizing the mission?
In addition to being infinitely incompetent and having absolutely no regard for information or fact or truth, Trump is a living breathing recruitment poster for the terrorists.
He is so obsessed with “winning” and “getting even” that nothing else matters. Not fact, not lives, nothing. We are only seeing the beginning.
On the other side of the coin, Trump throws away a carefully worked out plan to take back Raqqa. Apparently he is still holding on to the old Republican playbook which was what ever the Obama administration sees as the best course do the exact opposite.
If we “took back” Raqqa, what would we do with it? I wasn’t aware that it was ever ours, but I’m eager to hear what you think.
Beyond all this, where is the proof that this was actually bungled or unsuccessful, other than a sailor getting killed?
One soldier getting killed in the course of a raid doesn’t even come close to the standard for bungling. It’s an occupational hazard when your job is to go in and kill people as well as effectively steal intelligence information.
It happens, even on the most successful and well-planned missions. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s older brother was the only Israeli killed on the legendary Entebbe raid- would you call that a failure? Plenty of other successful commando raids have had casualties as well.
The paranoid, Machiavellian conspiracy theorist inside me says Obama “left” this bad raid plan lying around, hoping Herr Twitler would find it and act on it, to make him look incompetent. Knowing it would fail spectacularly.
Maybe Obama left a few more bombs in the woodwork. Very Dune-ish. 