Your assertIon that this was an ill prepared whim is not supported as the only possibility. At best out is only one of a very broad range of possibilities. Even your lengthy discussion of the subject has your primary source referencing a belief that DOD may well have been deliberately planning this but hadn’t briefed it for approval yet.
With the information we have, based on 24 years of commissioned service, I can’t even rule out the possibility that this was a well planned operation topped by a sound decision. Murphy is a motherfucker and the enemy gets a vote.
We have the testimony of Obama’s staff that the Yemen raid was not fully planned out.
We have the testimony of Donald’s staff that the Yemen raid relied on the planning prepared by the Obama staff.
If Donald’s staff prepared its own plans, including a detailed, fully worked out plan of attack, they wouldn’t have to lie about how they were using detailed plans from Obama’s time. If Donald’s team made plans of their own, they are now the ones trying to obscure that fact by blaming the (non-existant) Obama plan.
Either Donald’s team didn’t bother drawing up full plans of their own or Donald’s team’s plans are so shitty they’re afraid to talk about it.
Add in the fact that the failed Yemeni raid happened within two weeks of the inauguragion, meaning that Donald’s team didn’t have a lot of time to assess or draw up plans of their own, and it’s obvious that they just went with the half-finished plans without taking the time to assess things themselves.
Oh - I meant to include a link to this piece too, at Slate, about how the decision to pursue the raid was made over dinner on the 25th, before the plans were finalized.
So we know that Trump made this decision based on an informal meeting and that the deputies didn’t draw up the final plans for it until after Trump had already decided to go ahead.
No we don’t. There was no plan briefed to the approving authority. That does not mean there was not a very comprehensive plan developed by the people on the relevant staffs whose job is it to actually conduct planning. I have gone do far as starting execution (on pieces that didn’t need approval) before ever briefing to higher just to be ready if I got a yes.
The relevant people to actually conduct planning worked for Obama and now work for Trump. It is not like they are distinct teams. Only at the topmost final review and approval level is there a difference. I loathe Trump. Going full weasel when the pressure on its pretty slimy. That doesn’t directly answer the question of whether it was a sound plan
Let me offer a different, although likely more accurate, false dichotomy > you are either wildly ignorant of how military planning works or tightly in the grip of confirmation bias. I can see a huge range of options that we don’t the information to discount or even say are less likely. I base that on experience actually serving multiple times on Army staffs. I wouldn’t mind calls for a follow up congressional hearing since so many are in jump to conclusions mode. I don’t know if that will help the furor since the classified pieces still won’t be out there if people don’t trust congress.
The actual people almost certainly responsible for the heavy lifting in the planning phase are uniformed service members along with civilian agency folks that aren’t appointed. They didn’t magically brain dump and start over on the 20th.
I am not even at the point of calling it failed yet. Costly yes, but the reports indicate the raid completed what I would guess we’re likely mission objectives to include site exploitation. Even as bad as it went achieving objectives isn’t failure. Even a failed mission doesn’t guarantee bad decision making as the cause.
It is hard to take a story seriously when he complains about the lack of top commanders when SECDEF and CJCS where there.
I think we run into one of the key differences here. I think about and use the word planning differently. I would call what the deputies did more on line with implementation. There are always changes right up until an operation is over. Planning in that sense never stops. Those deputies excluded should not be principal planners anyway. It does raise issues about possibly missing relevant concerns about the mission before approval from outside DoD. I haven’t seen anything.to say that was a contributing factor to the result though. The nature of the meeting also does not necessarily mean the plan Mattis brought him was not detailed and well developed. Presidents make decisions from vacation all the time let alone a working Dinner.
I never really saw why Jimmy Carter got the blame for helicopters getting caught in sand.
I attributed it to the volatile lunacy of the American electorate.
I’m trying to imagine how it would have been possible to win WWI, WWII, etc with the know it all arm chair generals of today second guessing every move.
All presidents make mistakes. The result was terrible, but that’s not as upsetting as the process which was careless. Had all due caution been taken, I think the criticism would be muted at worst. We can hope Trump will take the right lesson from this, but I rather doubt it.
So people died during the raid? So what? The distinction between civilian and non-civilian doesn’t really apply out there. It would have been nice if the US had achieved the raid without friendly casualties, but it happens.
The most important take-away for those who would harm American interests is that Trump is not afraid to act.
Of course the plan was started before it reached the approval stage. The approval stage is part of the finalization process. The planning is not over before the plan is approved and finalized.
That’s what I’m saying. The process wasn’t finalized before Trump got a brief mention of it over dinner.
Some do and some don’t. Colin Kahl, for example, is out of a job and he’s not the only one.
Here’s a third option: you’re full of shit.
Again, these are facts not opinions.
Obama did not have a final plan completed and approved when he left office. (We know this is fact because of the testimony of people who were involved in the planning process, including a meeting in early January. There was no completed plan in place at that time.)
Trump didn’t not have a final plan completed and approved in the five days before he gave his approval over dinner (we know this is fact because Trump’s approval came over a private dinner, not in a formal meeting, and because of the testimony of the people on the Deputies Committee who met to work on the plan the next day, even though approval had already been given.)
When the raid went sideways, Trump didn’t cite his careful completed plan, instead he lied saying that the raid was planned by Obama’s team. Trump himself claimed that all the planning was done by Obama. If Trump had carefully planned the raid, this would have been the time to mention it. Instead, Trump has denied doing any of the planning at all.
You’re correct that a mission where lives are lost is not necessarily a failure and also that it’s possible that the mission in Yemen had objectives that were acheived.
You’re correct that many of the people in planning government actions are career planners some of whom will span multiple administrations. Some of the people - but not all of the people.
Where you’re full of shit is in thinking that we should ignore the fact that people who executed the plan were not the people who started developing it.
The involvement of people at the top makes a difference. It matters that Obama looked at the preliminary plan and said, “no, not yet.” It also matters that Trump didn’t bother to look at the completed plan before saying, “Yes, go ahead.” It matters that when shit hit the fan, Trump tried to pass the buck to Obama.
There’s simply no honest reason to assume that Trump’s indifference to the details of the plan and his lack of interest in its subsequent execution had no effect on the outcome.
There’s no rational reason to give Trump the benefit of the doubt here, not while he lies and tries to shift the blame.
Handwaving aside the observable facts of the argument while puffing yourself up about your expertise in order to imagine details such as Obama staff finalizing all the plans or maybe the raid was really a success! Is exactly the sort of full-of-shit nonsense that Trump supporters prefer.
We know for a fact that Trump didn’t see the finalized plans before deciding to go ahead with the raid. Any military man who wants to lecture me about how this doesn’t deserve criticism is simply full of shit.
This does not seem like a departure from long-term US policy. We have been attacking terrorists for decades. Obama’s weapon of choice seemed to have been the drone. W was, uh, more blunt. Clinton bombed terrorists and was accused of trying to divert attention away from his blowjobs. HW had a good enough reason to invade regardless. And Reagan, Mr. Conservative Ur-military impulse…
That said, Trump owns all things military. If we see a lot of repetition of certain details, people will start to ask, “Is it US policy to drop troops into foreign countries and gun down civilians?” But at this point, I personally have to regard this as effectively normal.
Bannon is a chaos monkey. I don’t expect any restraint to come from him.
What I can’t understand is how the very experienced General Mattis reportedly green-lighted this mission without the thorough vetting of intelligence. I’ve not researched exhaustively, but the SoD seems to be pretty silent on the subject.
Great. He’s not afraid to act. Now, if we can just get him to think first, we might be getting somewhere.
I think the takeaway for our foes is that Trump is easily provoked into taking stupid risks and lashing out at anyone and everyone. Now if Ethniklashistan wants to weaken Theocrastia, they can just gin up some flimsy pretext and get Trump to do it for them. Yippee! We’re all gonna die.
The attack was a botched job. To do something like this, you need to carefully weight the information, get all the intelligence that you can and not act until you’re sure of what you’re doing. You need to bring in the diplomats to assess the ramifications. This was shoot first and ask questions later. The presidency is not a job for someone who wants to pretend he’s Dirty Harry.
People can dis Obama all they want, but when he sent people into harms way, he was on top of it and he made damned sure all the precautions that could be made were made.
He never sent in a team prepped for light resistance into a combat role facing twice as many armed combatants, all of which were much more heavily armed than the intel reports and all of them aware ahead of time that the team was inbound.
Enter Trump, who obviously just pisses away the lives of Armed Forces Staff needlessly like a 12 year old with an Xbox controller and a video game.
I foresee the demand for coffin transport from Delaware to Arlington to be YU-uuuge…
I thought GWB viewed the military like the plastic pieces in his own elaborate game of Risk. I fear Trump will make us all long for those days. He’s not even at the level of Risk. More like Angry Birds, maybe.
Besides the unfortunate loss of one brave American hero, the operation seems to be a success.
And FYI, that 8 year old girl that was killed was the daughter of the traitor and primitive terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki.
And in a funny coincidence, her 16 year old brother was killed by an Obama drone strike a while back.
Being a terrorist can understandably have unfortunate consequences, both for the terrorist and for their family members. Perhaps they should have chosen a safer profession.
Well, that’s a trade: One Dead Decorated American Combat Vet for Zero new intel and a dead 8 year old girl who was a terrorist leader’s daughter.
(Bonus points if anyone reading this can remember WHY Gaddafi hated the US so much and for so long? Buehler…?)
But, I guess that’s one less 8 year old that won’t have to be handcuffed and terrorized at an airport. That’s Quite a Success…!
Good Job, Drumpfy…! /s :dubious:
