Trump's criticism of architect of bin Laden raid draws fire

“The president’s remarks were wrong on every level,” Nicholas Rasmussen, a top counterterrorism official in the George W. Bush, Obama and Trump administrations, said in an email Monday. “Wrong about Bill and his politics. Wrong about the bin Laden raid. And most troubling, wrong about what it takes for a commander in chief to enjoy the genuine respect of the women and men he should be honored to lead.”

Trump’s comments, in an interview broadcast over the weekend, reignited a war of words that started in 2017 when McRaven, a four-star officer, called the president’s description of the news media as the “enemy of the people” the “greatest threat” to American democracy he had ever seen.

Asked to respond during an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump criticized the retired admiral as a “Hillary Clinton fan” and an “Obama backer” before suggesting that he should have caught bin Laden faster.

“Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice?” Trump said. “You know, living — think of this — living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan, in what I guess they considered a nice mansion, I don’t know, I’ve seen nicer. But living in Pakistan right next to the military academy, everybody in Pakistan knew he was there.”

The comments also underscored Trump’s complicated relationship with the U.S. military and spy services: In this case, the president appeared to not understand that intelligence agencies were responsible for finding bin Laden. The Special Operations commandos led by McRaven were in charge of capturing or killing him.

In a statement to CNN on Sunday, McRaven said he did not endorse Clinton or anyone else in the 2016 presidential election. He said he had supported Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both of whom he worked for while in uniform.

“I admire all presidents, regardless of their political party, who uphold the dignity of the office and who use that office to bring the nation together in challenging times,” McRaven said. He declined Monday to comment further.

McRaven was a senior member of the Navy SEALs when he oversaw the bin Laden raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during which the al-Qaida leader was killed. Soon after, McRaven was put in charge of the Pentagon’s entire contingent of Special Operations forces and built the command into a national security behemoth.

After 37 years of military service, McRaven retired in 2014 and became chancellor of the University of Texas — where he studied journalism as an undergraduate — in early 2015. Now 63, he stepped down from that post this past spring, amid a battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

“It’s baffling why the president would launch an uninformed, spiteful attack on a public servant like Bill McRaven,” said Stephen Slick, former CIA station chief in Israel who is now the director of the intelligence studies project at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s not clear what psychological need or political purpose is served by such behavior, but it can only feed the anxieties of our most important security partners.”

In an August op-ed article in The Washington Post, McRaven defended former CIA Director John Brennan, whose security clearance was revoked after he criticized Trump. In a succinct but searing critique, McRaven wrote that the president, instead of setting an example as a leader, had “embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.”

After nearly two years in office, Trump still has not fully grasped the role of the troops he commands, nor the responsibility that he has to lead them, top Defense Department officials say. In the Fox News interview aired Sunday, the president addressed another criticism — that he had not yet visited U.S. troops in the war zones of Iraq or Afghanistan.

Trump said he had “an unbelievable busy schedule” but that “things are being planned.” He added, “I think you will see that happen.”

In picking a fight with McRaven, Trump was taking on a highly decorated military leader.

Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, McRaven, a captain at the time, was assigned to the White House’s National Security Council to work on counterterrorism issues while he recovered from injuries from a parachute training incident.

From 2006-08, he served as commander of Special Operations forces in Europe and Africa, and was one of the first senior officers to identify the looming danger of violent Islamist extremists in Africa.

Later in 2008, he took over as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, which oversees the military’s elite commando units such as the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, formally known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

It was in this job that McRaven joined the final hunt for bin Laden, whose code name was Geronimo.

A veteran of the covert world who had written a book on U.S. Special Operations, he spent weeks working with the CIA on the operation and came up with three options for striking the Abbottabad compound. A helicopter assault emerged as the favored option, and a hand-picked commando team swept into the al-Qaida leader’s compound on May 1, 2011.

Later that year, he took over the military’s Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, and its 70,000 military and civilian members. Along the way, some critics accused the admiral of empire-building, an accusation he denied.

“I don’t command and control anything,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “I hope to be able to influence some of their decisions. But I’m not going to move pieces around the chessboard.”

In his nearly four years as chancellor at the University of Texas, McRaven was credited by colleagues with expanding the university’s focus on national security and elevating its national profile in the field. In his farewell letter to his colleagues on his last day as chancellor, he offered a path forward.

“The future rests with whether we have taught our young men and women the importance of being noble, the power of the noble deed,” he said. “If we have taught them well, they will understand the importance of honesty and integrity, two qualities that will define their legacy in life.”

The New York Times

Trump's criticism of architect of bin Laden raid draws fire

Enhance Your Pulse News Experience!

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!