{"id":65430,"date":"2017-02-05T15:58:04","date_gmt":"2017-02-05T19:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=65430"},"modified":"2017-02-05T15:58:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-05T19:58:04","slug":"dont-believe-claims-that-trump-botched-the-yemen-raid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=65430","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Believe Claims that Trump \u2018Botched\u2019 the Yemen Raid"},"content":{"rendered":"

by DAVID FRENCH \u00a0| \u00a0The Corner
\n<\/a>National Review<\/span><\/p>\n

On Twitter, many journalists are rapidly reaching the point of maximum credulity \u2014 they\u2019ll immediately believe virtually anything negative about Donald Trump, not matter how thinly-sourced or implausible. Take the kerfuffle that erupted last night in response to this Reuters report where unnamed defense officials blamed the losses<\/a> in last weekend\u2019s Yemen raid on, you guessed it, Trump:<\/p>\n

U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.<\/p>\n

As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Journalists spread the Reuters report far and wide, but anyone with the slightest experience in complex special operations missions should have been instantly skeptical. The anonymous attacks on Trump look a lot more like ass-covering than whistle-blowing.\u00a0Absent truly extraordinary circumstances not outlined in the report, these officials seem to be\u00a0relying on reporters\u2019 ignorance and willingness to believe anything about Trump to cover to deflect criticism of a dangerous operation that turned out to be even more dangerous than anticipated. That happens in war. It happened all the time when I was in Iraq.<\/p>\n

While the president is often\u00a0the ultimate approval authority for raids in sovereign countries, he does not design or plan the operation. Do you really want any modern American president not named Dwight Eisenhower\u00a0checking, say, to make sure that the Navy has tasked a sufficient Super Hornets for support? More than fifteen years after 9\/11, our military knows how to plan and carry out special ops missions, and a prudent president leaves the planning to military officials.<\/p>\n

Indeed, a more in-depth New York Times<\/em> report<\/a> shows that the operation was actually planned during the Obama administration but held over to Trump because the need for a dark night\u00a0to minimize enemy visibility:<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama\u2019s national security aides had reviewed the plans for a risky attack on a small, heavily guarded brick home of a senior Qaeda collaborator in a mountainous village in a remote part of central Yemen. But Mr. Obama did not act because the Pentagon wanted to launch the attack on a moonless night and the next one would come after his term had ended.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CNN\u2019s reporting<\/a> agrees with the New York Times<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Both defense and Obama administration officials said the operation was never vetoed by Obama and that \u201coperational reasons\u201d were why it was pushed back after January 20 and why Obama left the task of authorizing the raid to his successor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the Times makes clear, there were \u201cmonths of detailed planning\u201d that took place under Obama,\u00a0and the Department of Defense had conducted a legal review that Trump approved. Oh, and it turns out that Trump approved the raid at a dinner attended not just by General Mattis, but also by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the vice president, and his national\u00a0security adviser (a man who has enormous experience with special forces operations).<\/p>\n

Then, war happened. The element of surprise was lost, perhaps because of low-flying drones:<\/p>\n

Through a communications intercept, the commandos knew that the mission had been somehow compromised, but pressed on toward their target roughly five miles from where they had been flown into the area. \u201cThey kind of knew they were screwed from the beginning,\u201d one former SEAL Team 6 official said.<\/p>\n

With the crucial element of surprise lost, the Americans and Emiratis found themselves in a gun battle with Qaeda fighters who took up positions in other houses, a clinic, a school and a mosque, often using women and children as cover, American military officials said in interviews this week.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

People who haven\u2019t been exposed to war with jihadists tend to think of firefights as precise affairs. Instead, they\u2019re extraordinarily destructive, and the battle is waged against an enemy who intentionally and flagrantly violates the laws of war:<\/p>\n

The commandos were taken aback when some of the women grabbed weapons and started firing, multiplying the militant firepower beyond what they had expected. The Americans called in airstrikes from helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft that helped kill some 14 Qaeda fighters, but not before an MV-22 Osprey aircraft involved in the operation experienced a \u201chard landing,\u201d injuring three more American personnel on board. The Osprey, which the Marine Corps said cost $75 million, was badly damaged and had to be destroyed by an airstrike.<\/p>\n

The raid, some details of which were first reported by The Washington Post, also destroyed much of the village of Yakla, and left senior Yemeni government officials seething. Yemen\u2019s foreign minister, Abdul Malik Al Mekhlafi, condemned the raid on Monday in a post on his official Twitter account as \u201cextrajudicial killings.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

None of this sounds unusual. All of it resonates with my own experience in Iraq. One deadly evening, al Qaeda ambushed our troopers from inside a mosque (law of war violation), blended in with the civilian population (law of war violation), and fought a day-long gun battle with an armored cavalry troop that ultimately destroyed most of a village. Thankfully, there were no civilian casualties in that incident, but if there had been, each of those casualties would have been the legal and moral fault of an enemy who uses human shields and tries to hide amongst innocent women and children. Similarly, in this instance, the blood of the innocents is on jihadist hands.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon of course study the Yemen raid closely to determine why American forces lost the element of surprise and misjudged the amount of enemy firepower. We should also grieve the SEAL who gave his last full measure of devotion for his country, but let\u2019s not lose the forest for the trees \u2014 it\u2019s an impressive\u00a0feat of arms to assault an alert enemy in a prepared defensive position, defeat that\u00a0enemy, and leave with valuable intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, no, don\u2019t believe claims\u00a0that Trump botched the raid in Yemen. He didn\u2019t plan the operation, and we don\u2019t want him\u00a0planning operations. We want presidents to rely on professionals. But those same professionals will tell you that\u00a0war is\u00a0terrible by its very nature, and no president can guarantee victory without cost.<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/444560\/dont-believe-claims-trump-botched-yemen-raid<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}