Saturday, October 19, 2019

Flaws, omissions & partisan crap highlight McConnell's courageous [sic] op-ed

There has been some praise for this op-ed to which Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell paid staffers affixed his name for The Washington Post. 
Mitch McConnell: Withdrawing from Syria is a grave mistake
Hold your applause.
Mitch McConnell 2016 official photo (cropped).jpg

The op-ed's principal failing is that nowhere in it will you see the word "Trump."

McConnell criticizes the withdrawal as if it was self-actualized, or self-directed by "the administration" he cites as the decision-maker. 

The reason for this intellectual and political dishonesty is that McConnell is in the re-election fight of his life and dares not be associated with a sentence like 'Trump's grave mistake' or 'Trump abandons allies, enables genocide,' which an opponent would copy accurately and verbatim into TV spots and door-hangers.

But there's more: McConnell twice takes shots by name at former President Barack Obama and other Democrats as as if we and they were responsible for the decisions Trump has made and implemented after consulting no one inside his Administration of 1.
We saw humanitarian disaster and a terrorist free-for-all after we abandoned Afghanistan in the 1990s, laying the groundwork for 9/11. We saw the Islamic State flourish in Iraq after President Barack Obama’s retreat. We will see these things anew in Syria and Afghanistan if we abandon our partners and retreat from these conflicts before they are won. 
Which further distorts the use of phrase "the administration" in the op-ed as the blame-worthy party, because Trump did this on his own after chit-chatting mano-a-mano, or pupil-to-teacher with Recep Erdogan, the Turkish President and Trump strongman role model.

A better headline on the op-ed would have been:
Mitch McConnell: I'm distorting Trump's grave mistake 

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