Don’t Politicize the Failed Yemen Raid
Don't Politicize the Failed Yemen Raid by Andrew Exum, The Atlantic
The United States lost a Navy SEAL this past week in a raid in Yemen that went wrong. In addition to the loss of the SEAL and a $75 million aircraft, it also appears that several innocent civilian lives were lost—never a good thing, and even worse when one of those innocent civilians appears to have been an 8-year-old girl.
Unnamed military officials told Reuters that “Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations.”
I was born a few years after the end of the Vietnam War, but never in my own memory has the political opposition to the sitting president been this intense. No president in my lifetime has become so unpopular, so fast. Yes, there was a lot of domestic opposition to President Bush, which culminated in the 2006 midterms, and yes, Republicans in the Obama years used a wave of Tea Party resentment to obstruct the president’s agenda, but this really and truly is something different. I was catching up with a friend in Congress, a Democrat, earlier this week, and he described the anger of his base as something he had never seen before.
So take a deep breath, because I’m about to tell many of you something you do not want to hear: Blaming Trump for what happened is both inappropriate and counterproductive. There are some good reasons to disapprove of this president: He is a man of demonstrated low character whose first few weeks in office have weakened both the international alliances and American values that have preserved our preeminent place in the world for over a century. Keep your powder dry for those things—but not this.
This raid, according to The New York Times, was approved by and recommended to the president by his secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For the recommendation to have gone forward to the president, the senior leadership of the Department of Defense would have signed off on this operation. And for that to have happened, special operations and regional U.S. commanders would have had to have blessed the planning that went into the operation itself.
The left cannot on the one hand claim Donald Trump is ignorant of military and security affairs, and then on the other hand expect him to second-guess the professional recommendations of his uniformed and civilian military leadership…
Good points from Andrew Exum (especially the final paragraph excerpted below):
BEGIN QUOTE
So take a deep breath, because I’m about to tell many of you something you do not want to hear: Blaming Trump for what happened is both inappropriate and counterproductive. There are some good reasons to disapprove of this president: He is a man of demonstrated low character whose first few weeks in office have weakened both the international alliances and American values that have preserved our preeminent place in the world for over a century. Keep your powder dry for those things—but not this.
This raid, according to The New York Times, was approved by and recommended to the president by his secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For the recommendation to have gone forward to the president, the senior leadership of the Department of Defense would have signed off on this operation. And for that to have happened, special operations and regional U.S. commanders would have had to have blessed the planning that went into the operation itself.
The left cannot on the one hand claim Donald Trump is ignorant of military and security affairs, and then on the other hand expect him to second-guess the professional recommendations of his uniformed and civilian military leadership.
Americans have to allow those men and women to be aggressive, to take risks, and to, on occasion, fall short. And we cannot immediately blame the president if and when they do.
END QUOTE
Neither Obama or Trump should be “blamed” for this and this “debate” is unhelpful. It was absolutely wrong for Spicer to invoke the staffing process in the Obama administration to imply that since according to him the mission was approved so as to imply this was Obama’s responsibility just as it is unhelpful to blame Trump. We are no longer in the campaign season and now is the time to lead and govern. It is Trump’s responsibility as all that our nation does or fails to do lies at the feet of of our Commander in Chief and he had to make the ultimate decision. Perhaps his decision making process needs work, sure. But no intelligence on the objective will ever be perfect and the enemy always has a vote. But we have to nip this in the bud and stop politicizing every overseas military action or we are going to have some real problems down the road. And I am talking about both sides politicizing this operation. Please stop.
And the WH blame game after a highly successful raid…just continues onward and upward…..
Spicer flat out lied that Obama team had ok’d Yemen mission. @ColinKahl was at the meeting and that was not discussed.
What Team Trump has not fully yet understood when it happens on your watch…it is your responsibility…you own it….
THIS is what actually happened and it goes back to my original question…WHY the haste to push this particular raid WHEN apparently even the Obama WH was uncertain and hesitated….
Colin Kahl,Obama NSC adviser says his team ran thorough process not to do Yemen.Trump took over& did not run a thorough process
WHY did then DoD/CENTCOM decide evidently on their own to push it forward if in fact the NSC was hesitating in the past…
WHAT did NSC see that evidently DoD/CENTCOM did not see and or did not want to see?
Maybe the regional and political fallout far outweighed the effects of the raid….
which is now fully and completely apparent…..
So while Excum writes in one direction…. CENTCOM cannot avoid some very serious questions over this major failed raid….
Namely..why the rush to judgement???? AND was that rush pushed by the WH NSC……namely Flynn…???
EXCLUSIVE: Navy Seal raid in Yemen missed main target, who is now taunting Pres. Trump, U.S. officials tell NBC News
http://nbcnews.to/2kLOOsY