Monday, November 19, 2018

Max Boot essay: "Donald Trump really is a genius — when it comes to second-guessing other people’s decisions"

From Max Boot's Nov. 19th essay, below, in The Washington Post:

"So convinced is President Second Guesser of his own superior virtue and perspicacity that he does not hesitate to cruelly mock those who have displayed actual heroism in real life. In 2015, he attacked John McCain for being captured by the North Vietnamese — an implicit second-guessing of the split-second decisions McCain made as a Navy pilot flying over some of the most heavily defended airspace in the world. A few months later Trump attacked the generals who had failed to defeat ISIS and suggested that he would do so with torture and indiscriminate bombing.

"And on Sunday, he attacked retired Adm. William H. McRaven, the Navy SEAL who supervised the raid that killed bin Laden and who now has the temerity to criticize Trump’s attacks on the media. “Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice?” the president said. Trump showed no awareness that it’s not the job of Navy SEALs to find wanted fugitives. That’s the responsibility of the intelligence community — and as soon as the spies had found bin Laden, McRaven’s men were spinning up for the mission."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/11/19/donald-trump-really-is-a-genius-when-it-comes-to-second-guessing-other-peoples-decisions