One murder by ISIS isn’t a national emergency
by David Atkins
In keeping with Digby’s points today about ISIS and presidential vacations, I feel it’s appropriate to repost part of another Washington Monthly piece I did yesterday on the subject:
It was a brutal, evil despicable act by a group of horrible human beings. But it’s not a national security crisis. The United States was well aware of the situation for months. A rescue operation was meticulously planned and executed but failed to reach him before he was moved to a different location. Per its policy, the United States did not pay a cash ransom. Probably as a response to the rescue attempt and as blackmail to encourage the United States to pay for the next prisoner, Foley was barbarically executed.
Everything about that situation is awful, and the perpetrators must be punished accordingly. But it doesn’t constitute a national crisis that demands a world leader cut short precious time being used to recuperate and relax from a very stressful job. The situation with ISIS is terrible now, and it’s going to remain terrible for the foreseeable future. Foley’s murder does nothing to change that, unless it alters the calculus for other hostages being held—in which case I would expect military and civilian leadership to make those changes as quietly as possible.
The conservative press knows this. It defended President Bush for taking vacation time during legitimate crises for which the Bush Administration was utterly unprepared. It also knows that no persuadable voters will remember this kerfuffle a month from now.
But they just can’t help themselves. The cheap opportunism is reflexive at this point.
Every time the Right and their little too-cool-for-school Village enablers like Dowd start talking, you realize how little they actually seem to know or care not only about the plight of the average worker, but even about basics like national security. They’re so petty and willfully obtuse that the thought of them being in charge of the nation’s security is frankly terrifying. Indeed, we saw what happened the last time we let them run things, from 2000 to 2008. They still haven’t proved themselves any more capable since.
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