10-28-2019, 10:30 AM
Now that my commentary on commentary has been had, my thoughts on the raid itself:
I'm glad this individual is no longer in place. It's sad that he took three children with him. I'm curious if this would've ended differently had the timeline not been moved up drastically due to our withdrawal from Syria. In the long term I have to wonder what this will do to IS. I don't know about the organizational structure that he had in place, but it would be difficult to fill those shoes. He was a piece of shit, but he managed to be far more organized than Bin Laden. IS as an organization was much more difficult to manage than AQ logistically. So someone being able to fill in that void would be difficult.
All of that being said, does this mean IS weakens, or becomes more dangerous? Now there are ~15k fighters scattered in different parts of the globe with no central leader (that I know of, anyway). Do they put down their arms and slip back into society, or do they form in more locally focused organizations and we will now have dozens of different terrorist groups to deal with? That's left to be seen, but the death of Baghdadi is still a good thing.
As to how it was carried out, not notifying the Gang of Eight is concerning to me. I'm not saying that Trump did wrong in this--I don't know the actual rules/policies with this--but it signals an issue with cooperation between the branches. I'm curious if Republican leadership was left completely in the dark as well. It is also my understanding that this was a joint effort with Kurdish fighters, so it just reminds me how sad it is to me that we are abandoning them.
I'm glad this individual is no longer in place. It's sad that he took three children with him. I'm curious if this would've ended differently had the timeline not been moved up drastically due to our withdrawal from Syria. In the long term I have to wonder what this will do to IS. I don't know about the organizational structure that he had in place, but it would be difficult to fill those shoes. He was a piece of shit, but he managed to be far more organized than Bin Laden. IS as an organization was much more difficult to manage than AQ logistically. So someone being able to fill in that void would be difficult.
All of that being said, does this mean IS weakens, or becomes more dangerous? Now there are ~15k fighters scattered in different parts of the globe with no central leader (that I know of, anyway). Do they put down their arms and slip back into society, or do they form in more locally focused organizations and we will now have dozens of different terrorist groups to deal with? That's left to be seen, but the death of Baghdadi is still a good thing.
As to how it was carried out, not notifying the Gang of Eight is concerning to me. I'm not saying that Trump did wrong in this--I don't know the actual rules/policies with this--but it signals an issue with cooperation between the branches. I'm curious if Republican leadership was left completely in the dark as well. It is also my understanding that this was a joint effort with Kurdish fighters, so it just reminds me how sad it is to me that we are abandoning them.
"A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy..." - TR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - FDR
