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I know I shouldn't let jackasses bother me, but the latest Donald Trump tirade about bin Laden has raised my blood pressure.
Trump's claim is that President Obama deserves no credit in connection with our ridding the world of this terrorist leader. He says the President was just sitting around in the White House when the generals called and said "We got him". All the President had to do was make the no-brainer decision to send in the troops.
My opinion is that Trump is even farther off target than usual in this case. For one thing, the President had decided to ramp up our efforts to find bin Laden, despite the fact that we had been looking for him for years. When the actionable intelligence was presented, President Obama made the difficult choice. He sent in the Seals to do the job.
Setting aside the option of doing nothing, the President had to decide whether to use drones/bombs/missiles or a boots on the ground operation. The safe choice was the unmanned approach. Even if it goes awry, we haven't lost much. But the down side to using bombs, etc., was huge. Even if the strike were made, we wouldn't have evidence that bin Laden was actually killed. We wouldn't have all the information we got from the dozens and dozens of storage devices. And we would have faced a real chance of killing a lot of innocent people.
Sending the Seals eliminated those possible down sides, but was a huge risk, even for the best trained and equipped operatives in the world. A thousand things could have gone wrong. (There was the problem with one of the helicopters.) And what would have been the blowback if there had been a mission failure? Worse, what if there had been a failure that involved us losing some or all of our Seal operatives? Does anyone remember Jimmy Carter and the failed rescue mission in Iran? The blame for that debacle went to the President, not the military. It marred his presidency and no doubt contributed to his defeat in the 1980 Presidential election.
So, essentially, President Obama risked not only the lives of our fighting men, but also put his Presidency on the line by sending in the Seals. I have read that members of his own cabinet urged him not to do it. To me, it was the gutsiest call to come out of our White House in a long time.
The President doesn't claim all the credit. He praises the military and the intelligence agencies who made everything happen. But to deny the President any credit at all is just plain wrong.
So, I don't think Trump lurks here, but if anyone disagrees with my take on his comments (it's not hard to find them, he gave several interviews), please chime in.
Trump's claim is that President Obama deserves no credit in connection with our ridding the world of this terrorist leader. He says the President was just sitting around in the White House when the generals called and said "We got him". All the President had to do was make the no-brainer decision to send in the troops.
My opinion is that Trump is even farther off target than usual in this case. For one thing, the President had decided to ramp up our efforts to find bin Laden, despite the fact that we had been looking for him for years. When the actionable intelligence was presented, President Obama made the difficult choice. He sent in the Seals to do the job.
Setting aside the option of doing nothing, the President had to decide whether to use drones/bombs/missiles or a boots on the ground operation. The safe choice was the unmanned approach. Even if it goes awry, we haven't lost much. But the down side to using bombs, etc., was huge. Even if the strike were made, we wouldn't have evidence that bin Laden was actually killed. We wouldn't have all the information we got from the dozens and dozens of storage devices. And we would have faced a real chance of killing a lot of innocent people.
Sending the Seals eliminated those possible down sides, but was a huge risk, even for the best trained and equipped operatives in the world. A thousand things could have gone wrong. (There was the problem with one of the helicopters.) And what would have been the blowback if there had been a mission failure? Worse, what if there had been a failure that involved us losing some or all of our Seal operatives? Does anyone remember Jimmy Carter and the failed rescue mission in Iran? The blame for that debacle went to the President, not the military. It marred his presidency and no doubt contributed to his defeat in the 1980 Presidential election.
So, essentially, President Obama risked not only the lives of our fighting men, but also put his Presidency on the line by sending in the Seals. I have read that members of his own cabinet urged him not to do it. To me, it was the gutsiest call to come out of our White House in a long time.
The President doesn't claim all the credit. He praises the military and the intelligence agencies who made everything happen. But to deny the President any credit at all is just plain wrong.
So, I don't think Trump lurks here, but if anyone disagrees with my take on his comments (it's not hard to find them, he gave several interviews), please chime in.
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