The Legitimacy of Critiquing Military Operations
URI FRIEDMAN 9:58 AM ET
In the wake of the Trump administration’s first counterterrorism mission, which reportedly killed 14 al-Qaeda fighters, one U.S. Navy SEAL, and an unknown number of civilians in Yemen, the president and his press secretary have set a remarkably steep standard for when the administration’s military actions can be criticized: If the action is against an enemy and involves sacrifice, it must be accepted as a success.
That message was underlined by a series of tweets sent Thursday morning by Donald Trump, who was responding to John McCain’s characterization of the raid as a “failure.” McCain, as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is one of the congressional leaders charged with oversight of the American military. But the Republican senator “should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media,” Trump wrote. “Only emboldens the enemy!” ...
Trump himself was a frequent and vocal critique of military operations during the Obama administration. But his tweets on Thursday laid out a very different position—arguing that public review or accountability for military missions is, in effect, disloyal.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/02/trump-yemen/516111/