Even Worse
We got an interesting update, yesterday, from
NBC News↱:
In what an official said was the first military raid carried out under President Donald Trump, two Americans were killed in Yemen on Sunday — one a member of SEAL Team 6 and the other the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born al Qaeda leader who himself was killed in a U.S. strike five years ago.
The raid in southern Yemen, conducted by the supersecret Joint Special Operations Command, was intended to capture valuable intelligence, specifically computer equipment, according to a senior U.S. military official. Three al Qaeda leaders were killed, according to U.S. officials.
Contrary to earlier reporting, the senior military official said, the raid was Trump's first clandestine strike — not a holdover mission approved by President Barack Obama. The mission involved "boots on the ground" at an al Qaeda camp near al Bayda in south central Yemen, the official said.
"Almost everything went wrong," the official said.
And, you know, it's not like there is some rule against top-shelf bureaucrats doing other things while something important is happening; governing is a big job. Still, though―
Defense Secretary James Mattis had to leave one of Washington's biggest annual social events, the Alfalfa Club Dinner, to deal with the repercussions, according to the official. He did not return.
―
really? The first military act of the new administration,
and apparently cooked up within the administration compared to something that has spent months in development and planning, and SecDef is at the Alfalfa Club dinner the president is apparently skipping in order to oversee the job?
(Even President Barack Obama managed to attend the dinner in honor of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, but skipping out on the dinner isn't really the biggest of deals; indeed, Bill Clinton skipped the dinner after his '93 inaugural.)
I had suggested↗ I didn't expect the Trump administration to be happy with the optics, but this is even worse an outcome than it looked like at the time. Indeed, there is an alternative interpretation of the optics:
Karen Greenberg, director of Fordham University's Center on National Security, said the girl's death will be a boon to al Qaeda propagandists.
"The perception will be that it's not enough to kill al-Awlaki — that the U.S. had to kill the entire family," she said.
‡
Nawar al-Awlaki is the second of Anwar al-Awlaki's children to be killed by U.S. forces. Two weeks after Anwar was killed in late 2011, his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was also struck in a drone strike. U.S. officials said the younger al-Awlaki was in the wrong place at the wrong time — that he was with their intended target, an al Qaeda leader.
Intentional or not, Greenberg said, the deaths of three al-Awlaki family members will enhance the al Qaeda narrative. She noted that as part of propaganda efforts, terrorist groups have begun to circulate photographs of children reputedly killed by U.S. forces. Photos of Nawar al-Awlaki alive and dead are already circulating widely in Arab media.
She said, "Don't cry, Mama, I'm fine." That's the legend already in effect.
If there is one thing Donald Trump can do ... okay, look, for years Republicans and conservatives have used this phrasing about a clash of cultures or civilizations; it verges on genocidal, which it's supposed to, but doesn't actually go that far, because it's not. But if, for instance, one wants to make certain our so-called War Against Terror becomes just that, it seems well enough to suggest that President Trump's action was very successful.
It occurs to wonder whether Secretary Mattis was informed of the raid at all before it started.
†
Max Boot is on a tear. There's actually a point to that, so here is kind of the serious version, from
Kevin Powers↱ for the Huffington Post:
With the dust settling, we’re looking at high civilians casualties―including women and children. It has been reported that some of the women were combatants. We’re also looking at one SEAL killed in action, multiple wounded and the total loss of a $72 million dollar aircraft. It’s not clear what the objective was, nor whether any real intelligence was gathered or any high value targets were engaged. The San Diego Union-Tribune and a few other outlets reported the mission targeted the al-Dhahab family, said to be allies of al-Qaeda, but also the in-laws of al-Awlaki. So that raises the question, was this a mission just to wipe out the remaining al-Awlakis?
This is troubling because during the campaign, Trump promised to kill terrorists and their families. Given the number of dead civilians being between 30 and 59, but the death of an 8-year-old girl is confirmed, it would seem as though Trump was serious and literal ....
.... Given the confusion and the high cost of the operation and no clearly definitive objective or goal, there are a number of questions the Trump administration needs to address surrounding this operation.
First and foremost, given Trump’s very public distrust and rocky relationship with the Intelligence Community, who delivered the Intel? Did it come from the CIA? Did it come from JSOC or another agency? Did Trump trust the source? If the raid was first planned by the Obama administration, was the most up-to-date intelligence provided to make the most informed decision? Did Trump―who skipped daily briefings during the transition―understand what was happening?
Who advised the raid be carried out? Where did General Flynn and General Mattis stand on the raid? What about General Dunford? Was there Intelligence about the number of potential armed hostiles? What about the children? Did the SEALs know there were women and children at the target location? Were the SEALs ordered to carry out a full kill mission? These kind of raids have been fairly routine in the past decade, did the SEALs also have the most recent information they needed before they embarked?
Furthermore, what was Steve Bannon’s role in the decision-making process? A highly-controversial figure and someone who is openly out to, in his own words “destroy the state,” did he advise Trump to order the raid? Why? What Intelligence and experience does Bannon have that would give him the wherewithal to advise such a high-risk raid?
(Boldface accent added)
It's not so much that Boot isn't serious. Well, okay, here's the thing:
Bannon’s ascendancy has been crowned by his inclusion in the high-level Principals Committee of the National Security Council, while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence have been excluded. (Now the CIA director has been added to the committee—but his ostensible boss, the director of national intelligence, is still excluded.) To put a political operator like Bannon, who was chairman of Trump’s campaign, in the midst of decision-making about the gravest issues of war and peace is an extraordinary step. President Obama was criticized, and rightly so, for even letting David Axelrod sit in as an observer on a few Principals Committee meetings, but Axelrod was never invited to join the group as a participant.
This is a sign of the new pecking order in the White House, with Bannon, the New York Times wrote, looming “above almost everyone except the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.” Even Mike Flynn, the retired three-star who is the national security adviser, appears to be getting elbowed aside by Bannon and his allies, who are likely the sources of unflattering leaks about Flynn’s supposedly “stumbling performance” and the extent to which Trump is supposedly unhappy with him.
That particular article is called,
"The Bannon Administration?"↱
The one called
"Sorting Out the Yemen Raid"↱ is simply wallows in vice:
The first military operation of the Trump presidency did not go as planned, but, in this case, no blame attaches to the president. It was simply one of those things that happen amid the “fog of war” ....
.... In spite of President Trump’s bluster about targeting the relatives of terrorists, the civilian deaths were undoubtedly accidental—an unfortunate byproduct of the fact that terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda hide among non-combatants, including women and children. But that is not the message that will go out to much of the Muslim world. Already, rumors are circulating that at least 59 people were killed in the raid and that the Americans killed an innocent eight-year-old girl because they were bent on exterminating the entire al-Awlaki clan. The danger of such collateral casualties is that they can wind up creating more terrorists than they eliminate.
Nevertheless, it’s important to take risks in the battle against terrorists and Trump deserves credit for approving the raid. The challenge now will be to manage the “battle of the narrative” about what happened, which will in many ways be even more important than the actual events. The president has unfortunately handicapped himself in this struggle because of his record of telling falsehoods and by the perception, which his rhetoric creates, that he is animated by anti-Muslim animus. This is one area where Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will be forced to take the lead even if he lacks a megaphone of the kind that the president commands.
The unfortunate fact for you is Brooks is a widely respected conservative journalist. Unlike many partisans on the left and right, he isn't a dittohead.
