The buck stops with the generals

There was so much focus on Trump's address to Congress, and the surprising conclusion that he sounded faintly presidential at last, that his most unpresidential remark, uttered before he left for Congress, was lost in the wash of verbiage. Speaking on Fox News, increasingly the preferred platform for his views, the one-month-old President of the United States said the special forces raid in Yemen which led to the death of US Navy Seal, Special Operator William "Ryan" Owens, was not his fault and placed the blame firmly on the generals who had come to him with the plan to raid the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula compound in south-central Yemen on January 29. His actual words were: "They lost Ryan." One of Trump's more illustrious predecessors, President Harry S Truman, popularised the phrase, "the buck stops here". So convinced was he that the president, and no one else in his administration, had to take responsibility for every decision taken, he put a sign on the desk in the Oval Office with those very words to remind him every day that he was in charge. But Trump placed the blame for Owens' death on the generals in the Pentagon. He even tried to offload any responsibility for the raid itself, saying the planning had all been carried out before he entered the White House, so he wasn't really involved. Well, we may be in a fake news world now, but that is grossly untrue and extraordinarily cowardly of the new president to try and absolve himself of any blame for the raid going wrong. The FACT is that he was presented with the plan five days after he came into office. He had time to look it over and discuss it with the generals before giving his authorisation the following day. Trump's go ahead was crucial. The operation would not have gone ahead without the president's say-so. That's the way the executive system works. So, while it was not his personal fault that Special Operator Owens died, he cannot just step aside and say the generals were to blame. The buck, Mr President, stops here. And "here" is not the Pentagon but the Oval Office. OK, so he praised the hero, Ryan Owens, and invited his widow to hear his speech to Congress, cleverly uniting everyone attending in the most emotional moment of the address. But only a few hours before, Trump had in effect pointed the finger of blame for the Seal's death at the door of General Jim Mattis at the Pentagon and General Joseph Votel at Central Command. Pretty disgraceful in my view.