The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
09 February 2017
Failure
I didn't expect to take Senator McCain's side against President Trump very often, but I was overestimating the Trump administration. McCain and Trump are in another spat already, this time over the raid in Yemen in which a Navy SEAL and several Yemeni civilians were killed. One objective of the raid was to take out an al-Qaeda leader, and because that target survived while a SEAL was killed, McCain says, reasonably enough, that the raid was not a success. He hasn't learned yet that you can't tell Trump that he didn't succeed in something, while Trump and his press secretary have learned to use the troops as human shields defending the President's narcissism. To say that the raid failed, they claim, both emboldens the enemy and insults the memory of the dead SEAL. In other words, "winning" under Trump means taking the attitude of totalitarian nations, whose armies, according to their propaganda, won at everything they tried. But for Trump to pick a fight on this subject with McCain, who's probably more gung-ho about such operations than most other Senators, looks like the opposite of winning. It also goes against American principles as best expressed by Theodore Roosevelt. During the George W. Bush administration Teddy was much quoted by people defending their right to criticize the President during wartime. Much of the time those people quoted him out of context to defend their right to criticize the war itself, while T.R. did not believe Americans had any right, legal or moral, to repudiate a war once the country had committed to it. However, he did believe that Americans had the right to criticize the President's conduct of the war. His words from 1918 are always relevant, but they're arguably more relevant on his own terms now than they were in Dubya's day:
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The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.===Theodore Roosevelt
The President's behavior up to this point suggests he hadn't read word one of the above statement by Teddy Roosevelt, who knew exactly what he was talking about. As much as I respect the office Mr. Trump now occupies, I stand by my own warning to him, published in a local paper the other day. Mr. Trump needs to man up and stop with the childish behavior. The press isn't going to play nice with him as long as he continues to play the role of a spoiled brat occupying the biggest office in the country. Other men at Trump's present age (70) have occupied that same office with greater class, maturity, and understanding of the requirements of the position.
Meanwhile, in Greenwich, Connecticut, Vince McMahon is having a few laughs, seeing as how his pal Trump has surrounded himself with idiots like Sean Spicer & Kellyanne Conway. It's how Vince hires his writers. The less you know about your job, the more likely it is he'll hire you.
I give no credence to anything McCain says, being that he is a traitor who "spilled his guts" under torture in Vietnam, rather than acting like a true hero and patriot and give his life for his country. That being said, anyone with a brain understands that there is NEVER a guarantee that a covert operation in enemy territory will be successful. I would be more interested in finding out why, exactly, this particular mission was unsuccessful in achieving success.
Given the conspiracy within EnCon to subvert and rebel against the President, despite oaths of office these people took, one must wonder if some other tRump hater didn't inform the enemy of the impending action.
I am really sick and tired of these liberal assholes who allow their hatred of tRump to get the better of their reason. tRump is the fucking president, like it or not, and, if anyone who is a government employee - whether through election or appointment, has taken an oath of office to obey and faithfully execute the laws of this country; to defend - to the death - the Constitution of the United States. And ANY shitbag who will not live up to that oath should have the decency to resign their position and those who won't should be removed from their position, by force if necessary.
Now, insofar as McCain's quote, considering that he opposed the previous President with equal fervor, if not loquacity, then one must wonder what, exactly, does McCain stand for? Other than cowardice in the face of enemy imprisonment, that is.
Remember that McCain's statement that got him in trouble with Trump was hardly a policy criticism, but merely a description of one raid as less than the "winning" that Trump uses to describe everything he does. If the Arizonan has a consistent position it's that the U.S. needs to confront a myriad of threats to a world order congenial to American values and interests. He seems to find both Obama and Trump insufficiently aggressive, Trump's specific failings in his eyes including his supposed disparagement of NATO and his presumed indifference to Russian revanchism in Eastern Europe. McCain's hatred of Putin goes back to the days when he mocked George W. Bush's claim to have looked into the Russian's soul. McCain said he had done the same and seen nothing but "KGB."
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