Rice Raises the Rhetorical Roof, Insisting Something Sinister About POTUS
The nation’s mood at this very moments, amidst the glitz and glamor of the Christmas season, is, at heart, a gloomy one.
There are dark spots approaching on the horizon. Some come in the form of Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into the alleged collusion between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. Other concerns in our purview include Russian nuclear assets now in the Western Hemisphere, a stock market fidgeting on the hims-and-haws of speculative Federal officials who may or may not be looking to “resist”, and a rabid class of incoming democrats with impeachment on their minds.
To say that the nation is stressed would be an understatement.
Now, as if to entirely overshadow this Christmas spirit we’ve been looking for, enter Susan Rice.
Rice wrote that Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria — a conflict that the Obama administration allowed to drag on even after dictator Bashar al-Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” and gassed his own people — represented “[c]utting and running,” and she said that the departure of Secretary of Defense left the administration unstable (emphasis added):
The president couldn’t care less about facts, intelligence, military analysis or the national interest. He refuses to take seriously the views of his advisers, announces decisions on impulse and disregards the consequences of his actions. In abandoning the role of a responsible commander in chief, Mr. Trump today does more to undermine American national security than any foreign adversary. Yet no Republican in Congress is willing to do more than bleat or tweet concerns.
Against this backdrop, Mr. Mattis’s resignation is even more worrisome. Even though his record was mixed, he provided desperately needed reassurance to our allies, an unabashed if private counterweight to the president’s worse instincts, and experience and stature too great for Mr. Bolton to ignore. His departure will leave the administration all but devoid of wise, principled leadership and the guts to check a president who consistently places politics and self-interest above national security.
Rice’s comments come just days after a damning government shutdown began; one on which the democrats can hang their hats and congratulate themselves over their stubbornness.
